View - Reports

View - Reports Overview

What

In many ways, Smart Groups and Reports are the same thing.  In both cases the concept is to programmatically identify devices.  The difference between the two objects has to do with intent...Smart Groups are created so that you can DO something to the devices in questions, whereas Reports are used to simply "report" on things, such as software rollout progression.

When/Why

We are going to use a reports to help us identify problem areas (proactive management), and to track progress of ongoing projects.  The contents of reports can additionally be used to feed the FileWave customizable dashboard for aggregate reporting.

How

We'll go into depth on creating reports in the below links, but here is a quick preview of creating a report to look at Firefox across the environment.

Note that reports have several available actions:

You can Open the Report (view the contents of the report), Edit the Report (see and then change the conditions of the report), Remove a Report (delete it), or Move to Group (move the report to a group for organizational purposes).

Report Creation/Editing

What

Creation of a new report is used for the intent of reporting on some condition, like the version of an application or how much free space devices have.

When/Why

We will typically use reports both for ourselves (to get a feel for the state of the environment), and they are also very useful for communicating "status" to senior management.

How

We'll go into the details of building reports in the articles linked below, but we'll simply start with creation of the report and giving it a name.

Each report we create has the ability to report on one of the following:

Fields in Reports (Preview)

What

When we are building smart groups and reports, it is very helpful to have a live representation of what our query is returning.  This data preview (the bottom half of the smart group/report definition window) gives us this data live as we edit the query.  Frequently though, we want different fields in this preview than what are given to us by default.

When/Why

Let's assume for a moment that we want a smart group or report that contains information on FileWave clients that have not been upgraded to version 14.  Now, we can edit our conditions to say "FileWave Client Version" ≠ 14.0, and we can just trust that this works and we have the proper results.  Yeah, we wouldn't trust that either!  Much better to actually put the FileWave Client Version field into our preview so that we can "eyeball" the data to make sure it is right.

How

Watch below as we remove some of the default provided fields and add FileWave Client Version:

Note that in Version 14, smart groups do not have preview fields, but this will be added shortly.

Report Condition Groups

What

Condition Groups within Reports and Smart Groups are a method of isolating specific logic for data queries.

When/Why

Condition groups are always used when you need to combine AND with OR logic within the same report.  If you are familiar with SQL, Condition Groups in FileWave are the equivalent of parentheses in SQL.  If you wanted a report that looked at all Windows or macOS devices, you wouldn't need a condition group, but as soon as we look for something like macOS or Windows AND Office is installed, then we need a condition group, because we need to combine AND with OR.

How

Following our example from above, watch below as we create the more complex smart group/report using condition groups:

Digging Deeper

Note that you'll find some quite complex examples of advanced condition groups in the Reports view under Sample Queries:

Report Conditions

What

Conditions are used to define what devices or other elements will show in the results of our smart group or report.

When/Why

We will almost always use at least one condition in a smart group or report (unless we wanted to see literally every device).  The conditions allow us to refine the list down from "everything" to just specific devices, such as "Windows devices that have an older FileWave client".

How

Watch below as we specify criteria (conditions) to match our example above:

Report Groups

What

Report Groups are used for basic report organization.

When/Why

Over time, you'll find that hundreds of reports will clutter up your Reports view.  Report groups give you a way to organize reports into logical groups and enable us to navigate the user interface more easily.  Report groups server no purpose other than organization, unlike payload groups which have dual purpose.  Report groups can not be nested, and must all have a unique name.

How

Creation of a report group is quite simple as you'll see below, where we both create a group and then Move a report into it:

Viewing Reports

What

Viewing (Opening) a Report is simply done to see the contents of the report. 

When/Why

From this view, we can see our detailed line items and make conclusions based on what we see.  For instance, in the below we might review this report and say to ourselves "We need to update our payloads for Firefox for both Windows and macOS devices:

How

Actually viewing a report is as simple as clicking on the report name in the list.  Alternatively, you can click on "Open Report" from the action menu.  Note that when you are viewing a report, you can get to the report definition (and edit from there) by clicking on the Details button highlighted below: