Creating a Report Services document

A MicroStrategy Report Services document contains datasets from one or more reports. This data is positioned and formatted, resulting in a single display of presentation quality. (A dataset is a set of data that can be displayed on a document or dashboard. A dataset can be a MicroStrategy report, a MicroStrategy Intelligent Cube, or data imported directly from an external data source.)

When you create a document, you can specify the data that appears; control the layout, formatting, grouping, and subtotaling of data; and specify the position of page breaks. In addition, you can insert pictures and draw borders in the document. All of these capabilities allow you to create reports that are suitable for presentation to management and for printing boardroom quality material.

The image above shows a sample production and operational report document. It lists all sales opportunities in the pipeline, and it groups those opportunities based on sales region, sales district, and sales representative. This document also provides a snapshot of each opportunity's current status and measures key metrics such as unweighted and weighted sales forecasts.

Sales managers can use this document to see a general overview of the sales pipeline and to identify key opportunities and opportunity statuses. The data in this document can help you evaluate sales opportunities for each sales representative and to prioritize those opportunities that have a greater probability of being closed.

You must have MicroStrategy Report Services to be able to design and work with Report Services documents. Detailed information to create and modify documents can be found in the Document Creation Help.

The document types that can be created in MicroStrategy include the following:

• Scorecards and dashboards: designed for visual impact, these documents provide a distilled view of the business, organized in adaptive sections or zones.
• Managed metrics reports: with a quantitative focus, these documents present lists of metrics or process-driven tabular views of the business.
• Production and operational reports: designed for production operations management, these documents present data in hierarchical categories or bands and can span hundreds of printed pages.
• Invoices and statements: these documents use transaction and sub-transaction level data necessary for billing, collection, and customer service.
• Business reports: designed for financial and other statutory business reporting, these documents present comprehensive data in print and electronic forms.