Product Tip of the Month - Proliance^®

Using External Report Links
By Steve Spagnoli, Proliance Application Specialist

While in Proliance have you ever wanted to access a report created with a third-party tool or a URL outside of Proliance?

The Proliance External Report document enables you to access reports created with third-party tools. These reports consist of static reports, such as PDF^® files and Excel^® spreadsheets, or dynamic reports based on report definitions that you created with report-generating tools, such as Cognos^®. These reports should be located on a report web server that can be accessed from Proliance.

Proliance External Report documents contain a unique web address (or URL) that Proliance can use to access your reports or another URL outside of Proliance, such as an internal SharePoint page or web portal.

External Report documents can be created within all three Proliance workspaces. To create and view them simply enter a workspace and navigate to Reports and then select External Reports.

To create a new document, use the "New" button in the External Reports register. Next you will enter a Title, Document Number, Description, Comments, and Report Link. The Report Link is where you will need to enter the URL to the report or external site of your choice.

After you save the document, you can either exit the edit mode to test the URL by clicking on the ‘View Report' link or return to the register to do so. In the register, you will need to select the check box next to the External Reports document and then click on the "Tools" menu and select "View Report" to launch the URL entered in the document.

External reports can be used to centralize the URL links that your users may need within Proliance. While it primary purpose is for external report linking, any valid Web address that the user has access to can be used in an External Report document. You also have the ability to send the URL link to other Proliance users by using the forward button within the document.