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PPM Insights: Surviving-to-Thriving, Jaspersoft Report and Dashboard Techniques to Enable Business Value (part 2)

By Anon Anon posted Sep 21, 2016 05:17 PM

  

To follow up on my previous reporting blog, which focused on purpose and process, I will delve into system “Advanced Reporting” as it pertains to your organizations now and as you continue to follow your roadmap.

 

Insightful reports are essential to gain desired outcomes from CA PPM. While meeting with practitioners, customers and fellow consultants, I’ve seen increased buzz around the CA PPM’s built-in Jaspersoft interactive reports and dashboards engine. Much of this excitement is justifiably centered on the user-friendly, powerful features.

 

Many organizations are upgrading or planning their roadmaps to leverage CA PPM’s latest release (15.1), including recreating and enhancing existing reports and dashboards to align with the updated tool. In this blog, I’ll discuss my experiences as a road warrior using CA PPM 15.1 and Jaspersoft 6.2.x, and if you’ve followed my previous posts, you know that I often focus on the features’ process and system usability aspects.

 

This blog is not meant to be a demo, but I have included a few images of the Jaspersoft interface from within CA PPM. When you’re in the application, you’ll find brief overviews with links to formal tutorials at each title: “Ad Hoc Views,” “Reports” and “Dashboards.” Please note that access to functionality is managed through the security model:

 


 

It’s important to highlight that going forward  (starting 14.4), CA will support only Jaspersoft as CA PPM’s internal advanced reporting engine. This means that customers who want to stay on the latest version(s) of CA PPM, whether it’s SaaS or on-premises, need to convert to Jaspersoft or externally manage non-Jaspersoft reports and dashboards. This investment in system maturity will enable PPM practitioners to deliver key benefits to their organizations.

  

So . . . if you have not yet cut over to Jaspersoft or you’re interested in expanding its capabilities, below are some compelling features that I’ve seen in the field:

 

Ad Hoc data analysis, similar to a pivot table, enables simple reports to be created on the fly by users, system admins and reporting teams. This gives you the power to build views and insights around data, as you need it. In addition, these can be saved for future use, with the ability to convert to reports for full exporting, scheduling and dashboarding functionality:

 


 

Scheduling and Exporting delivery of reports sent in a number of formats via email or output to repository (saved online in Jaspersoft for future reference) is also key. This expands the opportunity to leverage reports via a “push” model, often times benefitting those who are mainly outside of CA PPM, but still rely on the reporting, like executives. This is a strategic component to be considered when building your cadence and context requirements, as discussed in the previous reporting blog:

 

 

Dashboards built from groups of simple to sophisticated reports that tell an impactful and concise story in a single view is also available. Here users can display charts, tables, text and other content that gives a rounded understanding of the data, with the intent to gain further insights:

 

 

Data Warehouse for reporting improves performance by reducing strain on the system and lends itself to trending, benchmarking and analytics. Technically, this is a big win and I want to identify it, as we have discussed reporting roadmaps and the ability to mature.

 

With these new features, users have access to a simple yet powerful experience. As we all know, usability is imperative to user adoption, which in turn drives an organization’s desired outcomes. As PPM system and process practitioners, we can greatly improve a solution’s value by enabling the people who use the tool. I hope the information I provide here and in my previous blogs helps you do just that.

 

For readers interested in more detail, CA World is the perfect time and place to see presentations and demos. If you haven’t registered yet, you can do so here. I also encourage you to participate in the best-in-class CA Communities site, where you have access to communications, events and support. In addition, you can reach out to CA for individualized business outcomes, references and analysis. Feel free to post in the comments section of this blog or contact me directly via email and Twitter @PPMWarrior.

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