When using Predictor Plus, there are various ways to export data for further analysis or reporting. At a high level, these are divided into ‘Adhoc exports’ and ‘Routine Reports.’

You can use Adhoc exports to export data as and when required. This includes spreadsheet exports from panels, and tabular and cross-tabular CSV exports from either the Top Menu or the Tree Menu. For more information on Adhoc exports, refer to our article Pivot Forecasting - Reporting and Exporting.

In this article, we will discuss the Routine Reports. With this, you can:

There are two methods for creating reports in Predictor Plus, the first being ‘Builder’ and the other being ‘Template.’

Report builder is easier to define, but it is limited in what one can do. Here, one simply chooses available attributes and measures from an intuitive front-end. These reports can be scheduled to be generated and distributed on a regular basis, or it can be made available to a list of users to be generated as and when required. There are some types of reports, particularly ones with calculations in them, that cannot be produced with the Report Builder.

To access either Report Builder or Report Template:

Once Definitions has been selected, the Report Definitions pop-up will appear. First, enter a meaningful Report Name. This must easily and uniquely identify the report. Once allocated to a user, the user will see the report name under a Report menu item. Since the user may have access to a long list of reports, the name should alert its purpose to the user.

Next is Report Type, where you can choose between Report Builder and Report Template. In this article, we will cover Report Builder.

You are also able to choose the appropriate Model. Note that the fields you can choose from will depend on the Model selected. You will only be able to use Attributes and Measures that are available in the model you have chosen.

The Users selection controls which users will be able to see the report from the Report menu item, so they can run the report at any point in time. Note that reports in the users’ menu will automatically be alphabetized. The users that are available for selection, will be all users that have access to the selected model.

Let’s go through some of the fields seen in the Report Definitions pop-up that will be important as you build your report.

The Conversion selection allows you to choose any units of measure that are available in your model. For example, if your model has Pallets available as a unit of measure, then you can choose to generate your report in Pallets as the unit of measure. Then all the units populated in your report will be as Pallets.

Note that when using Financial measures (such as Revenue, Cost or Contribution), you must always select Base Units because those measures are already converted to the appropriate currency.

The From and To Period will determine the time period for which the data will be generated. Your entries will be saved as references, so if you select the next three periods, the report will always generate for the next three periods even as time progresses. For example, if it's June and you select June, July and August, then in January, for example, the report will be generated forJanuary, February and March.

Show Rows allows you to specify that you only want to see non-zero rows or all rows. If “Only non-zero rows” are selected, then items with zero values will not show in the generated report.

Attribute/Measure Column Width is specified in pixels. We recommend that you begin with the defaults, and then increase or decrease depending on size of values if it’s necessary.

In Date Format, you can choose how dates will be represented. For example you want months to be shown first, or years to be shown first, you can change this.

Number of Decimals is a formatting option, as numbers will be exported with their actual values, but they will be presented with the desired number of decimal places.

Measure Column Order determines how time phased data is presented in your report. See example of what each option would look like below.

When Period Then Measures is selected, the first “row” of column data will be the period, and the second row will be the measure.

In the table, the start and end period covers 3 months’ worth of data. Three measures have been selected, which are Sales Forecast, Final Forecast and Sales History. Each of the months contain information for each measure. The data is grouped by month, and then by measures. For example, Month 1 has data for Sales Forecast, Final Forecast and Actual History. The next three columns show that Month 2 has data for Sales Forecast, Final Forecast and Actual History. The same goes for Month 3.

When Measure Then Periods is selected, the first “row” of column data will be the measure, and the second row will be the time period.

With this option, the grouping is first done by measure, then by periods.

If you want the data in your report to be filtered according to customized criteria, you can use a Custom Filter. For example your report definition could be that you want to see the Final Forecast and the Actual history for the last 6 months, but you only want to see it for a defined list of Customers. You can then use Custom Filter to filter out the appropriate list of customers.

There is a predefined list of filters available. These can be used to filter the items populated in your hierarchy. In this list, there is an option called Custom Filter.

If you click on Custom Filter, you can capture a Name (which will make your filter uniquely identifiable) and Add as many conditions as you need in order to customize the items that are returned. You can use any combination of Attributes and Measures.

Once this Custom Filter is saved, you will be able to select it in the Custom Filter drop-down in the Report Definitions page.

If a Custom Filter has been made Public, it will appear in the Custom Filter drop-down. This will enable the filtering of data, as defined in the Custom Filter, in the report output.

At the bottom of the Report Definitions page, you can Add as many Attributes and Measures as required. These will be attributes and measures that are already available in your model. When you select an item, you can click on Remove to remove it. Once selected, you can also drag that item up or down to amend the sequence of the parameters in your final report.

Once you’ve chosen all the different options for your report, click on save and it’s ready to be used!

Once your report definition is done and saved, you can generate and use the report in two different ways. One way is generating and downloading it on an adhoc basis, and the other is by scheduling the report to be generated and distributed to a predefined list of people.

For Adhoc use, click on the Reports menu item on the top left corner of your screen. Here you will see all the reports that you have access to. You can then click on the report you want to generate and it will be available to be downloaded immediately. A pop-up window will appear which shows a Download button which, when clicked, will immediately start downloading the defined report to your downloads folder. The report can be opened and manipulated with most commercial spreadsheet applications.

It is also possible to schedule a report, to be generated and distributed automatically at a predefined time. To do this, click on Admin → Reports → Schedule.

Once you have selected the report that you want to create a schedule for, you first choose the Minute of the day at which you want the report to be generated at. This can be any value between 0 and 59.

You can choose the Hour, which can be any value between 0 and 23. Note that you can also add multiple values in this box to generate the report at multiple times in the day. You can do this by listing the hours of the day at which the report must be generated, separated by commas. The values listed in the image will generate a report at 8am, 12pm and 4pm.

Next is the Day of Month, which can be a number between 1 and 31. You can also specify a “L” to indicate the last day of the month. Or L-1 to indicate the 2nd last day of the month. You can input a “?” to indicate that you want to ignore this parameter.

Next is Day of Week, which can be any value between 1 and 7, which indicates Sunday to Saturday. You can input a “?” to indicate that you want to ignore this parameter and that you want the report to generate every day of the week. You can also indicate a range by using a hyphen. For example 2 - 6 will generate the report on a Monday to Friday and every day in between.

Note: You can only specify a value (other than “?”) for either Day of Week or Day of Month, but not for both.

In Email List you can specify where the generated report will be sent to, by capturing email addresses and using a comma to separate more than one email address.

Click Save when you’re done, and you’ve successfully defined and scheduled your first report!