{"id":41,"date":"2018-03-14T14:15:27","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T22:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lightsondata.com\/?p=41"},"modified":"2020-09-06T20:57:05","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T03:57:05","slug":"tools-for-managing-your-report-inventory-part-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lightsondata.com\/tools-for-managing-your-report-inventory-part-2-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Tools for managing your report inventory (Part 2 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Part 2: <\/strong>This is the second and final article on <strong>tools\u00a0for managing your report inventory<\/strong>. For the first article, please read\u00a0&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lightsondata.com\/tools-for-managing-your-report-inventory-part-1-of-2\/\">Tools for managing your report inventory (Part 1 of 2)<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>4. Data governance tool<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Dedicated <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lightsondata.com\/what-is-data-governance\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">data governance<\/a> tools can track information about reports as individual elements in a data dictionary or business glossary, but these tools don&#8217;t offer the benefit of compiling these reports into an overall inventory.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pros:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Integration with other data governance services, such as a business glossary or metadata repository<\/li>\n<li>Ability to trace data lineage for each data element in a report<\/li>\n<li>Workflow configuration for adding and maintaining entries for each report<\/li>\n<li>User management support (excluding end user)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Cons:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Inability to compile a\u00a0 report inventory out of the box<\/li>\n<li>Higher cost entry barrier<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>5. SharePoint list<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Next to the Spreadsheet solution, this one is most common for any organization using SharePoint.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pros:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Workflow configuration for adding and maintaining entries for each term<\/li>\n<li>Easy to implement. You can find our\u00a0<strong>free template <\/strong>below<\/li>\n<li>Custom views depending on the audience (ex: you can create one for your technical staff, another for the end user)<\/li>\n<li>Integration with other SharePoint materials and functionalities (ex: integration with a custom report request form)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Cons:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>End users would need to login unless cross-authentication is implemented to use the log-in credentials from your machine<\/li>\n<li>Limited possibilities customizing the look and feel of the report item details<\/li>\n<li>Search functionality parses every report item detail &#8211; it will make it easy to search, but not very easy to find<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\">Here&#8217;s a <strong>free<\/strong> SharePoint <strong>template<\/strong> you can download:<\/h4>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\"><div class=\"tve_content_lock tve_lock_hide tve_lead_lock\">\n                <div class=\"tve_lead_lock_shortcode\"><span style=\"--tl-form-height-m:602.543px;--tl-form-height-t:397.87px;--tl-form-height-d:397.87px;\" class=\"tl-placeholder-f-type-shortcode_186 tl-preload-form\"><span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n                <div class=\"tve_lead_locked_content\"><div class=\"tve_lead_locked_overlay\"><\/div>\n<a  data-e-Disable-Page-Transition=\"true\" class=\"download-link download-button aligncenter\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightsondata.com\/download\/123\/?tmstv=1765269747\" rel=\"nofollow\" id=\"download-link-123\" data-redirect=\"false\">\n\tDownload &ldquo;SharePoint Custom List Template for a Report Inventory&rdquo;\t<small>Report-Inventory-Template.zip\t\t&ndash; Downloaded 1485 times\t\t&ndash; 11.37 KB<\/small>\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n            <\/div><\/h4>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>6.\u00a0 Custom<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Of course, you can always create your own custom web-based or local application, but the effort required to maintain the app would probably outweigh its benefits. I&#8217;m not going to provide more details about this option as the pros and cons can be limitless.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Final recommendation<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>For any of the above solutions, you should try to streamline the data entry and visualization of your report inventory by:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Creating web forms capturing your report requests from end users\u00a0that feed data straight into your inventory.<\/li>\n<li>Creating a dashboard of your list of reports with a dedicated visualization tool which would allow you to pull data from other sources besides your inventory, such as server status and access metrics. A lot of insights will be found by\u00a0tracking:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Report usage<\/li>\n<li>Load time, average time spent on a report, time of day\/week\/month a report is accessed the most<\/li>\n<li>Number of simultaneous\u00a0server calls, server latency and bandwidth<\/li>\n<li>Overall time needed from request to production<\/li>\n<li>Assignment of technical resources<\/li>\n<li>The business users mostly serviced by a specific report<\/li>\n<li>and many others<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\">What tool are you using to maintain your report inventory and what advice can you share?<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Part 2: This is the second and final article on tools\u00a0for managing your report inventory. For the first article, please read\u00a0&#8220;Tools for managing your report inventory (Part 1 of 2)&#8220;. 4. Data governance tool Dedicated data governance tools can track information about reports as individual elements in a data dictionary or business glossary, but these [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,16,32,60],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-intelligence","tag-bi","tag-free-download","tag-report","tag-tool","post-wrapper","thrv_wrapper"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Tools for managing your report inventory (Part 2 of 2) | LightsOnData<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightsondata.com\/tools-for-managing-your-report-inventory-part-2-of-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tools for managing your report inventory (Part 2 of 2) | LightsOnData\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Part 2: This is the second and final article on tools\u00a0for managing your report inventory. For the first article, please read\u00a0&#8220;Tools for managing your report inventory (Part 1 of 2)&#8220;. 4. Data governance tool Dedicated data governance tools can track information about reports as individual elements in a data dictionary or business glossary, but these [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightsondata.com\/tools-for-managing-your-report-inventory-part-2-of-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"LightsOnData\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-03-14T22:15:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-09-07T03:57:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lightsondata.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/report-inventory-tools-2-e1517613643220.png?fit=500%2C327&ssl=1\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"327\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"George Firican\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" 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