IFS Business Reporter is a reporting solution for analytical reporting based on a pre-packaged, high-level information model in IFS Applications, IFS Information Sources. IFS Business Reporter is integrated with Microsoft Excel and extends Excel from a desktop productivity tool to a more full-fledged, enterprise scale client for analytical reporting and planning. All report output is delivered in Excel, using the capabilities in Excel for presenting and formatting information according to the report design.
IFS Business Reporter provides an efficient and secure reporting solution that can be used by many different functions and user categories within an enterprise. All data and information is securely stored in IFS Applications and only aggregated, formatted and presented in IFS Business Reporter according to the report design. In addition to this, selected Information Sources support data entry, writeback, from IFS Business Reporter in a controlled and secure way for planning purposes, e.g. for financial planning, budgeting and forecasting. IFS Business Reporter is IFS main reporting solution for financial reporting and planning, but can also be used in many other product areas.
IFS Business Reporter is particularly suitable for number crunching:
IFS Business Reporter is a report based tool. Each new report update is initiated by a new report execution together with provided report parameters. The report can be re-executed any number of times with different parameter input for different reporting scenarios. Execution time is dependent on data volumes, data structure and report complexity. The output from a report execution is presented in Excel and intended to be viewed in Excel. As an option report output can be produced in PDF format.
Report output in Excel can also be viewing interactively, without re-execution of the complete report, by using slicers and dynamic structures. This makes it possible to view sub-sets of retrieved information and expand and collapse structures dynamically, e.g. accounting structures or project structures.
Together with IFS Business Planning, IFS Business Reporter can be used for interactive planning. Interactivity can be created by combining dynamic structures, slicers and detailed writeback on planning transaction level:
IFS Business Reporter retrieves information from IFS Information Sources. The
Information Source concept provides a way to publish data from IFS Applications in a business oriented format that is easy to use without the need to understand the underlying technical data structures. Information
Sources
are star schema models with Facts and Dimensions. The Fact includes all the measures that can be presented and aggregated in the report. The Dimensions are used for structuring and
grouping data and for filtering.
IFS offer a large number of standard Information Sources in different product areas.
IFS Business Reporter is an add-in to Microsoft Excel. It brings additional reporting capabilities for IFS Applications on top of standard Excel functionality and capabilities.
All main functions for IFS Business Reporter are accessed from a specific ribbon in Excel. Detail design functions are accessed from a Document Actions pane.
IFS Business Reporter can be installed using ClickOnce deployment technology, without any need for local interaction with each computer. A new version of IFS Business
Reporter can also
be automatically updated in the user’s computer.
Reports are designed by selecting measures and dimension items from one or several Information Sources. Design items are dragged and dropped into selected Excel cells where they shall be used and displayed. Excel
formatting and calculations are applied on these designs cells in the same way as for normal Excel cells.
Reports can be efficiently designed be utilizing the repeater concept. Repeaters can be applied on rows, columns and sheets. When a repeater is applied the selected object will be expanded at report execution for the interval of values that has been defined. E.g. rows can be expanded for an interval of accounts or customers, columns can be expanded for an interval of periods or
organization units and sheets can be expanded with an individual sheet for a cost center or a project.
Repeaters can be created on several levels, e.g. sub-repeaters, and also include calculation rows or columns for adding user defined calculations in the design. E.g. difference or margin calculations.
A more advanced form of repeaters are structure repeaters. In this case the
output is expanded driven by a structure. Structure repeaters can either be used
for more fixed format reports with pre-defined number of structure levels or use
dynamic structure expansion where the user can expand and collapse the structure
interactively in report mode.
Filters can be applied on many different levels for several dimensions in the report to select what information to be displayed in each area.
Slicers for interactive filtering in report mode can be applied on Excel book
level, sheet level and also used on dynamic structures.
With all different design capabilities in IFS Business Reporter, together with Excel’s formatting and calculation capabilities, many different types of reports can be created. It is also possible to mix data from several Information Sources as long as common dimensions are used for structuring the data.
Reports can be started and executed in several different ways.
Report execution consists of two main steps:
When a report is executed directly the two steps are done in one sequence. IFS Applications Reporting Services performs the first step
which can be a batch job if the report execution is scheduled. The report is fully rendered in Excel when the report is opened. By using
IFS Business Reporter Execution Server the report can also be rendered in Excel in batch.
Users can control report execution and content by providing parameter values according to set-up in report design.
IFS Business Reporter supports writeback for selected Information Sources, e.g. for Business Planning, cash flow reporting and Project Budgeting & Forecasting. With the writeback capability it is possible to use IFS Business Reporter in different, user defined planning scenarios. With writeback data can be collected from Excel and be written back to IFS Applications in a controlled way, according to report design. Data that is written back is always validated according to IFS Applications business rules and stored safely. With the writeback capability it is possible to create planning scenarios combining IFS Business Reporter reporting capabilities with Excel logic and IFS Applications business rules. The Business Reporter report acts a customer specific entry form and all data is securely stored in e.g. IFS Application. No data is stored locally in Excel.
There are two main types of writeback, the regular writeback and writeback on transaction level. The regular writeback does a direct writeback of the values that are entered or updated in a writeback configured Excel cell. Writeback on transaction level makes it possible to view information in the report on aggregated level but edit and update information on detailed level in a separate window. The content of the separate window, i.e. what dimension attributes to include and window layout, can be configured by the report designer. Transaction level writeback is enabled for select Information Sources in IFS Business Planning.
IFS Business Reporter in combination with Microsoft Excel offer a high level of
flexibility when it comes to designing different kinds of reports. This makes it
possible to design very efficient and compact reports as well as very
comprehensive and complex reports. IFS Business Reporter is intended for
analytical reporting, i.e. reports where information is aggregated and presented
on a higher level for analytical purposes. It is not directly a tool for
transaction reporting or transaction processing, e.g. for loading large numbers
of transactions into Excel. For these purposes there are other, better suited
tools.
Report execution and performance normally corresponds to the complexity in the
users’ data structures and the complexity of the report design as such. Reports
behave best when working with consistent data structures utilizing the repeater
concept as much as possible and minimizing the use of design filters on
individual design cells. The more fragmented the report design is, the longer
time it will normally take to execute the report. For more complex reports it is
recommended to execute these as batch jobs, using the IFS Business Reporter
Execution Server.
Login in to IFS Business Reporter - IFS Applications
If logging on for the first time, a login options dialog will open up where the user needs to provide URL to the IFS Applications instance (the URL is the same as to the IFS Applications landing page) and the language to be used. This makes the IFS Business Reporter client independent of the Excel display language. Next a dialog comes up where the user is authenticated, i.e. the username and password is provided.
User authentication should only be necessary the fist time IFS Business Reporter is opened. Once authenticated, it will be possible to open new reports without any authentication.
Excel and IFS Business Reporter client translations
The translation of the IFS Business Reporter client is independent from Excel. Therefore, it is possible to have the IFS Business Reporter client (client pane and report data) in one language and Excel in a different language. For example, you can have Excel menu items displayed in Swedish and the IFS Business Reporter client and report data displayed in English. The recommended usage is to have the same language in both. However, the choice of languages to use is entirely up to the user. Please refer technical documentation for more information.