WebSphere Lombardi Edition 7.2 >
Create reports
Lombardi reporting options provide a powerful way to collect, publish,
and consume process performance information. Specifically, Lombardi enables you
to easily:
- Define the data that will help you analyze process performance
- Configure the product components to collect this data
- Create the reports that consume the collected process performance data
The following sections provide more information about the reporting options in Lombardi and also describe how Lombardi enables you to collect and analyze performance data.
Reporting options
Lombardi provides the following options for reports:
| Report type | Description |
|---|---|
| Out of the box scoreboards | Enable you to analyze personal performance, team performance, business process performance, and SLA violations with minimal configuration. These scoreboards are available by default in Lombardi Process Portal. See Use out of the box scoreboards for more information. |
| Customized reports | Enable you to analyze business data
specific to your processes. You can define the variables to track and create
the customized reports to query your tracked data in the Designer in Lombardi
Authoring Environment. Users can view the resulting report scoreboards in
Lombardi Process Portal or any browser. The ad-hoc report wizard in the
Designer provides a way to quickly configure and publish a report as shown in
Create a quick custom report.
Or you can configure a more advanced report as shown in the sample in
Create a more advanced custom report.
Lombardi also enables you to create ad-hoc reports in the Process Portal. To learn more, see the online help for the Process Portal or the Lombardi Process Portal User Guide. |
| Reports generated in third-party tools | You can query the Lombardi Performance Data Warehouse and extract data using another tool such as Microsoft Access. |
The reports covered in this document take advantage of the historical data stored in the Performance Data Warehouse database. Customized reports that require in-flight process data from the Process Server database are not covered in this document.
How reporting works in Lombardi
You interact with Lombardi as follows to create customized reports:
-
In the Designer in Lombardi Authoring Environment, define the variables that you want to track and then send tracking definitions to the Performance Data Warehouse.
The Performance Data Warehouse creates a database table to hold the tracked data.
-
Run instances of your processes on the Process Center Server or a Process Server in a runtime environment.
-
The Performance Data Warehouse retrieves tracked data for each variable from the Process Center Server or Process Server at regular intervals.
-
Create reports in the Designer that query the Performance Data Warehouse to retrieve the required data.
-
Reports that you define in the Designer display as scoreboards in Lombardi Process Portal or a customized portal.
You can also query the Performance Data Warehouse from third-party tools like Microsoft Access to generate reports.
The following image illustrates the preceding interaction:
How Lombardi transfers tracked data
After you send tracking definitions to the Performance Data Warehouse from Lombardi Authoring Environment and then start to run instances of your process, the Performance Data Warehouse retrieves tracked data from the Process Center Server or Process Server at regular intervals.
Lombardi generates and transfers tracked data as follows:
- When a process participant accesses a task that is part of the process or a system involved in the process generates an event, the Process Server creates the tracked data. The tracked data can include run-time values for the fields in a Tracking Group, values for a Timing Interval, or variables whose values are autotracked.
- The Process Server writes the tracked data to the Process Server database.
- The Performance Data Warehouse polls the Process Server database at configurable intervals, checking for a batch of data that is ready to be transferred.
- In a single transaction, the Performance Data Warehouse marks the data in the Process Server database as transferred (locking it to prevent any further updates), loads the data from the Process Server database to the Performance Data Warehouse database, and then deletes the transfer records from the Process Server database.
Determining which reporting option meets your needs
The following table describes the types of questions that Lombardi reports can help you answer:
| Question | Data Tracking Configuration | Report |
|---|---|---|
| How many tasks are currently overdue? | None required | Out of the box scoreboards show overdue tasks by user, team, and process. |
| How many tasks are currently open for an activity? | None required | Out of the box scoreboards show on-track, overdue, and at-risk tasks by activity. |
| How many tasks are currently at risk for my team? | None required | Out of the box scoreboards show at-risk tasks by user, team, and process. |
| What is the average duration for each activity in a process? | Use autotracking for the process | Customized or third-party report |
| What is the total revenue per customer? | Define the business variables to track in the process | Customized or third-party report |
| Which geographical region generates the most sales leads? | Define the business variables to track in the process | Customized or third-party report |
| What is the trend of SLA violations by activity per quarter? | Configure KPIs and SLAs for the activities in question and use autotracking for the processes | Customized or third-party report |
| What is the average time it takes our organization to service deals for a specific customer? | Define the business variables to track in the process and add a timing interval to encompass the process steps involved in servicing deals | Customized or third-party report |
The data-tracking options that are available with Lombardi are discussed in Tracking Lombardi performance data.
Keep the following in mind when deciding which reporting option to
use:
- The standard out of the box scoreboards provide answers quickly with minimal configuration. For configuration requirements,
- Custom reports that you can create using autotracked data and the ad-hoc wizard are quick and easy.
- More advanced custom reports that analyze data specific to a process or set of processes can be created by using tracking groups and by creating the required components in the Designer in Lombardi Authoring Environment. For step-by-step instructions, see Create a basic custom report and Create a more advanced custom report.
- Use out of the box scoreboards
- Tracking Lombardi performance data
- Create a quick custom report
- Create a basic custom report
- Create a more advanced custom report
- Create a third-party report
- Performance Data Warehouse database architecture