Guess what? It's now easy to walk into a conference room and pull up a Jaspersoft dashboard on your phone or tablet. We'll show you how to get started today and some things to watch out for. (If you're having trouble viewing the images in this post, check it out here: JasperMobile | On the Go Reporting in CA PPM | Camille Pack | LinkedIn ).
In recent Jaspersoft posts, we’ve walked through each step you can take to make a report or dashboard in CA PPM: start your ad hoc report, create a table for an active project report, add status indicators to a Jaspersoft report, create a crosstab report for allocations and assignments by project, make a Jaspersoft chart with project count, stage, and status, pull your reports into a masterful 5-minute Jaspersoft dashboard, and email Jaspersoft reports to anyone.
Today we'll look at the new mobile dashboard capabilities with guidance from Darren Greer, who shared this feature in Part 1 of our Free Jaspersoft 6.1 Webinar series.
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Step 1 | Download the JasperMobile App
The same reports and dashboards you see on your desktop are available for mobile. To prep, download the TIBCO JasperMobile app.
Step 2 | Connect
When you first install the TIBCO Jaspermobile Application from Jaspersoft Corp., you’re prompted to enter your Username, Password, and Server. You'll have to connect it to one of your CA PPM instances. The app does require at least a CA PPM 14.3 instance. This does not work on prior versions, including 14.2. Once you have an instance to connect to, you can pass it the normal credentials.
This will require you have access to the environment. So if your CA PPM environment is within a firewall, you won’t be able to access these reports outside of your local network. But if you’re inside of your corporate network and you have access to CA PPM from your iPad or iPhone or Android device, then you should be able to get connected.
Tip | Having Trouble with JasperMobile Server Profile?
If you’re having trouble with the server profile, and it tells you “the specified hostname could not be found,” try using the first part of the URL as your Profile name and leaving the Organization ID blank.
Rego’s New Server Profile Login credentials are "xyz" in the profile name for a server called http://xyz.dev.rego.net:xyz/ppm/mobile.
Step 3 | Navigate JasperMobile
When you first login, JasperMobile will take you to a library view showing every single report that’s available to the authenticated user account you used to login. Click on the list hamburger icon in the top left to see several views.
The Library view and Repository view are very similar to what you’d see inside Advanced Reporting. Switch over to the repository view to drill down by folder.
You can browse and traverse the reports, just like you would normally. Outside the Repository view, another nice way to navigate is with Recently Viewed Items.
Save Items
One of the really cool features of Jaspermobile is that as you run the reports on your device, you can actually save it back to the device itself and look at the report at a later date, or export it as a PDF to your iPad.
Add Favorites
You can go through a ton of reports, so another appreciated feature in JasperMobile is Favorites. Favorite any report or dashboard by clicking on the "star" icon at the top of an open item.
Missing Ad Hoc Views?
The Wiki we read on CA’s site says it supports Ad Hoc views, but we haven’t been able to use that feature directly from the application unless it’s been exported as a report. It's probably a feature we can expect in future versions.
Step 4 | Report Filters and Run Times
Let's try running a report, like KPIs by Project Type.
Similar to what you've seen in Advanced Reporting web views, if the report requires filters to be applied before running, which is a setting chosen when the report is built, the JasperMobile App will show a filter view first.
In this case we'll go ahead and filter on one specific project; it provides a list. Push the back arrow to return to Filters, and select Run Report. You'll notice that the speed the report runs increases when you're running just one report or project. So you're incentivized to be specific.
Step 5 | Dashboards
Let’s look at a Dashboard, like the KPIs by Project Type (Dashboard). Now this is one that CA created, so this is a report versus a traditional dashboard. We'll filter this time on a specific project manager, push the back arrow to return to Filters, and click Run Report.
Long Report Run Times?
From what we’ve seen, reports that use a significant amount of data will take anywhere from 10-20 seconds to run. There is a timeout setting that defaults to two minutes, so depending on the size of your report, it can take quite a long time for the output to come back to your device. Try to avoid filtering on huge data blocks.
Project Status Dashboard
Like the website, when we load the Project Status Dashboard, if the dashboard has multiple views on the screen, each report will load individually.
Once the reports have loaded, we have the same drill down capabilities within this application as you'd see within Advanced Reporting in CA PPM. Just select the top left report to start filtering down.
To select On Track projects, all we have to do is tap on the section we want to to look at (in this case the red area in the Professional Services bar), go back to the dashboard, and the lower right hand view will refresh to include the On Track Professional Services we requested.
Likewise, we can go up into the top right pie view and select one. This happens to be the Project Count.
When we return to the dashboard, it will similarly refresh that lower right quadrant. It’s a great feature, especially if you’re building dashboards with the new dashboarding capabilities in 14.3.
Step 6 | Refresh, Print, Info, Troubleshoot
To save or print, select the send document icon on the top right.
The Info option is probably not useful for most people, but if you're having problems in your environment, you can use the Info view to find out report details.
Creating these dashboards doesn’t take much time. It’s not rocket science. And it’s a lot easier with CA PPM 14.3 to create reports, add a dashboard, and put a couple filters on it. These can become very powerful tools, especially for our executive leaders.
Stay tuned for some deeper Jaspersoft dives, and check out regoUniversity for onsite CA PPM training at a price you can afford, April 25-29. The registration deadline is approaching fast!
*This article was first published at Rego Consulting's blog. Subscribe for free training today.