Report Output Formats

To meet diverse user preferences and enable the best possible analysis, WebFOCUS delivers enterprise information in a wider variety of formats than any other business intelligence solution on the market. With all of its output options, including HTML, Microsoft Excel™, Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF)™, Microsoft PowerPoint™ and Active Reports, its own new "thin" interactive format, WebFOCUS satisfies the broadest range of user needs, delivering data in whichever format is best suited for the task at hand. All report elements – including field names, headers, subtotals, sort breaks, styling, conditional styling, drill-downs, and images - are preserved within the report in the desired format.

Examples of WebFOCUS Report Output

HTML		Microsoft Excel
Adobe PDF		Microsoft PowerPoint

HTML

WebFOCUS HTML reports offer:

• Multiple proactive report drill-down options - including automatic, conditional, or cross-contextual - to any other report, program, or location, as well as multiple locations within enterprise reports
• On-demand paging that simplifies navigation through large reports by dividing them into multiple HTML pages, which can then be downloaded and/or printed individually
• Ad hoc report creation, including simple tabular reports or OLAP-enabled reports, for advanced analytical functionality such as automatic filtering on all data categories, as well as drill-down, -up, -across, and -through and one-click resorting on measures
• Active Reports for analysis of data from any location, connected or disconnected from the enterprise

Excel

Many people spend hours each week re-keying data from paper documents, or copying and pasting information into spreadsheets. But, recent audits of Excel spreadsheets found that 91 percent contained errors.* WebFOCUS eliminates this problem by providing seamless integration with Excel 2000 and XP that's unmatched by other leading business intelligence solutions.

Clicking on embedded hyperlinks in Excel produces the same drill-downs as those created in HTML. Additionally, WebFOCUS automatically generates native Excel formulas, and translates numeric values and dates into supported Excel formats. Once displayed, Excel reports can then be saved on local PCs, or e-mailed for further viewing and analysis.

These integration capabilities provide the following features and benefits:

• " The ability to save a complex WebFOCUS report as an Excel 2000 or higher spreadsheet, while preserving formatting and drill-downs to detail data via active hyperlinks
• Simple, automatic generation of Excel PivotTables from WebFOCUS reports - an easier way to create PivotTables than using the native Microsoft interface
• Creation of compound Excel reports that include data from different sources as multiple, tabbed spreadsheets contained within a single Microsoft Excel workbook
• Streaming of data to existing Excel templates
• Bursting of data to multiple Excel worksheets

PDF

PDF is the preferred format for printing and distributing outward-facing materials, such as annual reports, brochures, invoices, and billing statements. WebFOCUS reports can be outputted as PDF files that include drill-downs for exploring summary and detail data. Users can save graphical dashboards to PDF, or create compound PDF reports with drill-through and table-of-contents capabilities to automate the process of quickly navigating from general to specific information.

WebFOCUS enables the creation of graphs in a scalable vector graphic (SVG) format, which is fundamentally different from image formats, such as GIF or JPEG, because it is not pixel-based and therefore allows for perfectly smooth curves and angular image elements. As a result, reports include clean, crisp illustrative charts and graphs for printing and distribution.

In addition to SVG, graphs in WebFOCUS can be produced in portable network graphics (PNG) format. This pixel-based format supports much greater color depth than GIF.

PowerPoint

Organizations use business intelligence to illustrate how corporate goals are being set and achieved. Often, the most effective way to display this information is through Microsoft PowerPoint. WebFOCUS' visual business intelligence features include the ability to create any dashboard as a PowerPoint slide, making it easier for users to present critical performance data. Additionally, WebFOCUS can publish entire PowerPoint presentations with just a "click" of a mouse.

* Dr. Raymond R. Panko, Professor of Decision Sciences, College of Business Administration, University of Hawaii, What We Know About Spreadsheet Errors (Also published in the Journal of End User Computing's Special Issue on Scaling Up End User Development, Volume 10, No 2., Spring 1998, pp. 15-21).

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* PDF file. (Download Adobe Acrobat Reader.)