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Ask Slashdot: Is Reporting Still Relevant?
New submitter MrWHO (68268) writes A while ago we switched for monitoring our systems to the ELK (ElasticSearch, LogStash and Kibana) stack. Our management wanted to keep the reports they got — and possibly never read — flowing in at the beginning of every week with statistics like sites traffic, servers downtime, security alerts and the works. As we migrated some of our clients to the same stack they kept all asking for the same thing: reporting.
There was no way for us to create and schedule reports from ElasticSearch — searches for ElasticSearch and Jasper Reports returned nothing apart from people asking how to do it — so we created our own Jasper Reports plugin to create reports from ElasticSearch data, which we released on GitHub a while ago, and we promptly moved along.
None of our clients were easily convinced that a dashboard — Kibana — was a substitute for mail delivered PDFs, even if all the information was there, with custom created panels and selectable date ranges. On the other hand, on the ElasticSearch mailing list when questions were asked about "how do I do reports?" the answer was, and I sum it up here, "Why would you want reports when you have a dashboard?" Are reports still relevant — the PDF, templated, straight in to your mail kind — or the subset of my clients — we operate mainly in Italy — is a skewed sample of what's the actual reality of access to summary data? Are dashboards — management targeted ones — the current accepted solution or — in your experience — reports are still a hot item for management?
None of our clients were easily convinced that a dashboard — Kibana — was a substitute for mail delivered PDFs, even if all the information was there, with custom created panels and selectable date ranges. On the other hand, on the ElasticSearch mailing list when questions were asked about "how do I do reports?" the answer was, and I sum it up here, "Why would you want reports when you have a dashboard?" Are reports still relevant — the PDF, templated, straight in to your mail kind — or the subset of my clients — we operate mainly in Italy — is a skewed sample of what's the actual reality of access to summary data? Are dashboards — management targeted ones — the current accepted solution or — in your experience — reports are still a hot item for management?
Just as there are courts where faxes are permitted, but emails are not, reports will still linger around, strutting proud its cloak of obsolescence.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
People who have to read reports don't want to have to run them. They want them already done in PDF format so they just have to open and read them. The process of creating/searching/saving search in a dashboard is more work than people want to do (especially since they barely read the PDF's).
Because a dashboard is a transient thing, which is a snapshot in time and which you can't look back for historical records.
Corporations want things they can file and hold onto, and a PDF can do that much better than a dashboard. You can submit a report to an external entity ... a snapshot of your dashboard? Give me a break.
This is stupid, because it sounds like "why would you need your paystub when you can look at your bank balance". They're different things, and you can glean more information from looking at a series of reports, than an instantaneous dashboard.
If you think a dashboard does the same thing, then maybe your understanding of what they get used for is lacking?
There is a reason why management is asking for it. And your inability/unwillingness to deliver it means that you're either acting thick, or thinking that you are the most important aspect of your business.
God, it's like IT in the 90s all over again ... we don't care what you want, this is what we're giving you because we think it's cool.
This whole article reads like "we in IT are too uninterested in giving management what they want, so I need someone to help me phrase it better".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Most everywhere I work, reporting is still the top most requirement. Even more so at publically traded companies.
I've had former colleguges make a good living working in the dedicated report-generation area. (Developing reporting tools, creating reports using existing client tools, etc)
But, the use is primarily that of communication, and more so, consistency, of the data generated so that you can see the trends as they happen; and easily share them in email; slides; presentations; and -- more reports to Regulatory agencies.
Dashboards are nice, but they aren't reports.
Reports are normally more complex data manipulation and correlation that are composites and manipulations of the data that dashboards provide.
There are also many one-offs that are needed to be drawn up, for specific documents, endeavours, and studies.
All of which require good reporting tools.
And these reporting tools are lacking in most developers systems.
But, thankfully, many developers can expose all the raw data streams, processed into something usable; to which, they take all these numbers, plug them into a proper reporting / modelling toolset, and generate the reports required using the proper tool.
Many places don't have a proper reporting/analysis tool; and expect the software to deliver that. This is a failure of either knownig the tools exist, or unwillingness to accept the costs involved in the additional licenses. (and thus leading to just importing the data into Excel, and massaging it there)
Application
1. generates Metrics
2. exports Data
3. imported into Reporting Application
4. worked by Analysts
5. automatically Generate Reports as new data is imported.
Steps 1 and 2 often exist. ... which then usually leads them to complain that their applications don't export data in clean, discrete, normalized data sets to which other tools can ingest.
Many places want the Application to do steps 2-5, which is fundamentally not the domain.
And thus led to the development of dashboards and other simple visualizations, which are not proper reports.
Introducing companies to dedicated modelling and reporting tools (Quantrix is one used a lot) tend to get them to realize how much better things could be.
It all comes down to movie psychology: A 'dashboard' is basically just a boring web based equivalent to the rows of screens and blinking lights and things that the jumpsuited minions hunch over, monitoring feverishly. A 'report' is the thing (piece of paper, datapad, etc. depending on era) that an obsequious yoeman hands to The Leader while he stands in a super-decisive Master and Commander pose in a suitably dramatic part of the set. The Leader then glances at the report and, thanks to the powers of decisive leadership, immediately gleans the relevant information and issues an order to rally his underlings.
'Dashboard' (while more useful) is basically a giant blinking signal that you are a peon, a cog in the machine. 'Report' is the executive summary with all the tedious detail drained out so that you can focus on being a big picture thinker and indispensable idea guy. It's like the difference between the giant bundle of keys that the janitor has (which can get you anywhere in the building; but show you to be a blue collar lackey) and the single RFID card that opens the suites on the top floor.
Dashboards & online reports are great when you have access to them. But what if the dashboard isn't available, or you need to provide the data to someone who doesn't have access to the dashboard?
Open the dashboard in a web browser, take a screenshot, export it to JPEG, and send it as an e-mail attachment.
As per title...
I am a report writer and dashboard manager. I'm also the main developer of analyses and dashboards (Business Intelligence) for a sizable LoB within my company.
Based on my experience, management is lazy. As in "fucking lazy". They want to sit on their asses, get the reports in their Inbox and never look at them.
I currently manage over 350 items in our main Business Intelligence analytics instance and about 100 more in a secondary instance. There are other environments which we're currently merging, and those contain a few hundred more items (analyses, dashboards, etc). Management asked for most of them. They looked at them once, maybe twice. They only look at about 15-20 of them on a regular basis and that's only because they're forced to do so in order to prepare for mandatory monthly operation reviews.
As for acting based on the data in there, that almost never happens. Some analyses, KPIs and scorecards have been "in the red" for months, years even with no reaction from management. Ironically, requestors come and ask me to build analyses which they already had requested and were published for them months ago, tha means "asking for stuff they already have".
We have a saying in my country: "fish starts rotting from the head". So if you ask yourself what's wrong with them, look at their managers, and their managers' managers and you'll find out. I'm yet to find one single person who gives a shit about data in a report rather than the shade of green the bars are colored.
Amazingly, I still like what I'm doing, but I'm not doing it for them, rather I'm doing it for myself because it keeps me in touch with new technology and allows me to gain a shitload of experience by pushing the environment's capabilities and limits to the maximum. But if you're not really into reporting, just run as far away from it as possible, because it's very likely things won't get better. Soon enough, you'll be asked to provide powerpoint slides. Mark my words! I've been there (but haven't done that).
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Nailed it.
Submitter is trying to solve a different problem than what management needs.
Granted, it may be primarily of a bureaucratic bent that many geeks - professional or otherwise - may not be terribly keen on, nor interested in, however reports - especially those of the "mailed-daily-to-your-inbox" variety fulfill a number of functions within a business ecosystem.
Reports of the "traditional" variety provide an accountability chain and historical record that a dashboard cannot. They can be accessed locally, outside of any other application or access requirements - including email - meaning a connection to said dashboard is not required when someone must review those reports for whatever reason.
Reports can be printed off readily, and due to their very nature, are often formatted to present data to the viewer in such a way that they retain their usefulness after being printed to hardcopy, whereas a screen-cap and printout of a dashboard is quite often one of the least efficient ways to consume the type of data these more traditional reports display.
Last but certainly not least, they make it possible for data to be shared easily with other interested parties, on demand, at any time, without having to carve out user accounts or VPN tunnels to internal networks or mission-critical systems, with no requirement greater than being able to read whatever format the report is stored in - again, unlike dashboards, no few of which also require Java or some other extension to be installed on the user's computer, often necessitating IT support for non-Administrative end-users, which is itself a special and often painful consideration when this data needs to be provided to customers or vendors with their own IT processes, procedures and issues to deal with.
Dashboards have their uses and purposes, especially for live, changing data, things that need to be regularly and closely monitored, or even things that just need occasional monitoring, however for many other purposes, such as those involving accounting or other applications where historical data is of a concern, they fall dramatically short of being able to adequately - much less completely - supplant reports as they have traditionally been used.
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
I'm in no way a dashboard hater, but reports are great because:
* I can see them everywhere I can access my email. This is not always the case when a dashboard runs off an internal server.
* Getting an email in the morning is a reminder to check the data. If I have to remember to go to a dashboard I'll forget if I'm busy and could miss something important.
* Reports in my email are easily searchable without fiddling with date ranges in a console - assuming adequate history even exists since the latest time someone thought it would be a great idea to rebuild the dashboard.
Dashboards are great for sharing a realtime view but they aren't a replacement for reports. If you think they are, you probably seriously misunderstand your users.
The middle manager's job is to prove to his boss that all of his employees are actually doing something. The Emailed pdf serves as a daily reminder that "we are doing stuff."
Emailed PDF: "Just a quick reminder from the server that your employees are busy working hard, feel free to not read this."
vs
Dashboard: "Do my employees even do anything?? I guess I will go look that up."
strip everything down to "why do I still get a paycheck" and you will get to the answer, you never want to allow the big boss to think "do they even do anything?" Email is a preemptive strike against your boss's boss having to seek out that answer
Dashboards & online reports are great when you have access to them. But what if the dashboard isn't available, or you need to provide the data to someone who doesn't have access to the dashboard?
Open the dashboard in a web browser, take a screenshot, export it to JPEG, and send it as an e-mail attachment.
A screenshot of a report is a poor substitute for an Excel or PDF report where you can copy and paste the data.
A screenshot of a report is a poor substitute for an Excel or PDF report where you can copy and paste the data.
This is where picatext or other OCR software comes in handy.
Also... in principle, you could make or use screenshot software which also captures the text from the window shown.
I can't think of a worse use for OCR software than for reporting. "Hey, why are all of the category zero items showing up under category O? And why were all of the accent marks turned into apostrophes?"
Reports validate a manager's existence in an organization and shiny charts make them feel warm and fuzzy inside.
It's a manager's job to manage. It's IT's job to present the information he needs to manage things well in a form with which he is comfortable.