Universal Report Server released

New Web Reports server application schedules, distributes, and archives reports created with popular reporting packages.

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Viewing a list of archived reports generated by various packages.

VersaReports Universal Report Server is a report server that hosts reports created with many reporting packages (SAP Crystal Reports, DevExpress XtraReports, Telerik Reporting, Grape City/Data Dynamics ActiveReports, etc). With VersaReports URS you can work with any reporting package you want, schedule reports to run at any frequency, pass parameters to reports, integrate with your security configuration, store reports in any format, including the native format of the report designer package and maintain old runs of your reports for as long as you want. VersaReports URS has the flexibility to integrate into your existing infrastructure and provides an easy-to-use, AJAX-based Web interface so that your users can see and do what they need to do without a lot of hand-holding.

Features

Work With Any Designer You Want

• Do you want to use Crystal Reports, but don't want to pay per-user fees for their web server? VersaReports Universal Report Server provides more features and per-server pricing.
• Do you want to use a reporting package without a packaged web server, like DevExpress XtraReports, Telerik Reporting, or Grape City/Data Dynamics ActiveReports? URS is already programmed to handle them.
• Want to use another report designer? If it works with .NET and has a way for a programmer to run the report from .NET code, you can easily integrate it into VersaReports URS. You'll get all the same features for your integrated package — including scheduling, security, archival, and distribution — that are included with VersaReports URS.

Define Once, Schedule Lots of Times

• With VersaReports URS, each report is defined once and can be scheduled multiple times. The report definition includes where the report is located (uploaded into the database or stored on the web server's disk), the basic parameter information that the report accepts, and which users can schedule the report to run.
• Users who are selected to be able to schedule this report can then define when the report will be run and the specific parameter values to supply for each scheduled run. So if you want a production report to be scheduled at different times for different production lines, you would define the production report once, but schedule it multiple times with a parameter value specifying the production line for the report.

Schedule a Report to Run When You Want

• Run your report once a day, once an hour, even once a minute. Whatever makes sense for your report, VersaReports URS can handle it. When you define a report's schedule, you can specify:
• When the report should first run;
• How often you want the report to repeat (by months, days, hours, or minutes);
• Which days of the week or month you want the report to run, and which hours of the day you want the report to run.
• In other words, if you want to run a report once a month on the first of the month or every hour during the first shift of every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, VersaReports URS can do it!

Pass Parameters to the Report

Many reporting packages support the idea that you can pass parameters directly into the report before you run it. With VersaReports URS, you can specify parameters as part of any scheduled report. Parameter types include:

• Integer and/or floating point numbers, limited by high and low values specified by the person defining the report that can be scheduled
• Any string of characters
• A date/time value, which can either be a specific date/time OR a relative date/time, like beginning of the hour, beginning of the day, beginning of the week, beginning of the month, beginning of the quarter, and beginning of the year.
• A string based on a set of choices (e.g., A, B, C, D) that are specified when the report is defined to VersaReports URS.

Integrate With Your Security

Authentication and authorization for VersaReports URS can come from any authentication/authorization scheme defined for your network.VersaReports URS includes authentication/authorization for the primary Windows security schemes: Windows, Active Directory, and Forms Authentication. In addition, a special "no security" scheme is provided for sites that only need to allow any user to be able to view any report without requiring authentication.

Store Reports in Any Format

Most report designers support exporting a completed report to a variety of formats including PDF, Excel, RTF, Microsoft Word, and TIFF images. Additionally, some report designers have their own "native" format that supports more complex report features — like table of contents and drill-down — and a native viewer. VersaReports URS allows you to schedule a report to produce output in any format supported by the report designer package you select. For the native report formats, the site administrator can set up a special viewing page (examples for many common report designers are included in the base package); for other formats, the user is required to have the appropriate viewer — e.g., Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, etc. — already loaded on their workstation.

Maintain Old Runs of Your Reports for as Long as You Want

When a report is scheduled, it is provided with a default retention policy, specifying the number of days before an old report expires or the number of successful runs that are retained for the user's viewing.

Additionally, every user that is permitted to view a scheduled report can also customize the default retention policy to create a personal retention policy for that scheduled report. In other words, if the report's scheduler defines the default retention policy to be 5 days and a user wants it to be only the last 10 copies of the report, you can make that adjustment and it only affects how the number of copies of this report that user will see. Other users can adjust their retention policy to best meet their business needs.

And More

• VersaReports URS has many other features that make it truly world-class:
• Multi-threaded report runner, so that more than one report can be scheduled to run at any moment (within the limits of your server's abilities)
• Time zone "normalization", so that the timestamps are displayed using the time zone in the user's location.
• A professional AJAX-driven web interface for all features.
• Easy integration of the VersaReports URS pages into an existing corporate portal via Master Pages (a default Master Page is provided and you can change that page and the "skin" on the controls within the main page to better integrate the look of VersaReports URS to match your corporate portal look).
• Store completed reports in the database for security or on disk for faster access and easier backup.
• Excellent customer service and technical support.

About VersaReports

VersaReports, an Atlanta, GA software company, was formed to create software products that help businesses achieve their reporting goals without breaking their budget. Its flagship product, Universal Report Server (URS), is designed with developers in mind to replace the time-consuming grind of creating an enterprise-class Web report server for any of the report designers products that are currently offered by other vendors.