i-net Clear Reports is widely used as a central point of report generation throughout companies. Report designers need to have direct access to the servers' report file locations to create new reports or modify existing ones. Administrators have to set up scheduling tasks or distribute URLs to the resulting reports for the recipients. In addition, they have to make sure that security measures are taken to separate certain groups from each other or make sure that they do not accidentally modify their co-workers' report template files.

Since those approaches are difficult to handle manually, and a lot technical skills are required by each affected party - report designer, system administrators and report file recipients - we have come up with a convenient and easy-to-use solution that takes everyone's requirements into account.

The Repository is a unified report template file store that can be accessed in many ways. Designers will only need the i-net Designer to create, access and modify their report template files - without any network shared file systems. This enables report modification from virtually any location with a network connection to the report server.

Administrators will not have to provide network file shares to the report locations (e.g. smb, nfs or afp) - just one URL to the report servers' repository.

Report recipients can still receive their reports on a regular base using the Task Planner. But in addition they will not need a specialized link list to their reports for calling them directly. They can just open the Repository Browser in the Remote Interface or i-net Designer and render or export the report files from there. One URL beats the many.

Note that the name "Repository" might remind you of code repositories such as CVS, SVN, or Git. Unlike code repositories, however, at this point, the Report Repository does not offer versioning of report files.

The Report Repository is simply a unified store where users can put and access all their report files with just one URL, suffixed by their report's file name.

The Repository Browser allows to access a Repository. In case of access via the Remote-Interface it is located on the current server. In the i-net Designer the favored repository can be configured. The repository is a unified store where users can, dependent on their rights, place, execute and share their reports within the i-net Clear Reports server.

The Repository Browser consists of the following parts:

• Directory tree - In the directory tree on the left, all accessible folders of the repository are listed. A toolbar or context menu allows the renaming, copying, moving and deleting of folders. Sufficient rights for the file in the selected folder and its sub folders are required.
  • Permission settings
    The folder specific permissions can be administrated right in this GUI. The button is active for users that have write access for the selected folder and are allowed to change the configuration, using the Remote-Interface.

• File view - The file view can be switched into a detailed table view and a preview mode. It lists all visible files for the current user. The selected files are modifiable per toolbar or context menu - meaning they can be copied, moved, deleted and so forth. The open dialog in the i-net Designer has multi selection enabled to open several report files at once.
  • Tagging
    User can assign keywords to their report files to create categories. In the i-net Designer the dialog provides an input field with autocompletion for keywords that are already used in the repository.
  • Search
    This dialog provides a search function for the repository. It finds report files in either the current folder or in the overall repository. The various options help restricting the search to certain content in the report files like fields, dates and/or elements. The search does not find elements that are generated, e.g. title of charts.

• File properties - The properties of the currently selected file can be found at the right side. In addition to a preview, file properties and the current rights, the assigned tags are listed. A number shows how many files have the tags assigned in case of multi selection.

• Extended file properties - The extended file properties are being displayed in an additional window showing detailed document information. The values given there will be found by the search function.