Understanding the Report Mode Tasks Pane
Network Director has built-in reporting features to create standardized reports from your network data. You can schedule these reports to run either in real time or in batch to gain insight into the network for ensuring compliance, performing maintenance, or troubleshooting.
The Report mode analyzes data from different perspectives and filters the data based on the node selected in the network tree.
From the Reports Tasks pane, you can:
Set up a new report or change how an existing report is run by clicking Report Definition. From this page, you can launch a wizard that guide you through the process of defining a report or changing a report definition file. The report definition file is based on the report content on the view and the node you select in the network tree. The Filter option in the View pane does not affect the report content.
View the summary details of the last run of a report, export a report, or to delete a report output by clicking Manage Generated Reports. This page is also the default Reports page. After a report definition is created and a report is generated from that definition, it is shown in the Generated Reports page.
Reports are stored on the application server on which Network Director is running. However, because reports can be large, the report is delivered in a compressed or zipped format. and can be stored offline or on a Secure Copy Protocol (SCP) server.
Set or change the path to an SCP server for report storage. You can also test the connectivity to the server by clicking Test Connection on the Manage SCP Servers page.
Set or change the path to an SMTP server for e-mail notifications of alerts or for mailing reports to administrators. You can test the connectivity to the server by clicking Test Connection on the Manage SMTP Servers page.
Create or change a schedule that is used by one or more reports by clicking Manage Schedules. Unless you want to run the report immediately, you need to create a schedule and associate it with the report definition file. Create the schedule before you create the report definition file.
For example, you might want to run several reports that run on the weekend and are available first thing on Monday morning. You could create a single schedule that runs at midnight on Saturday and is delivered to you through e-mail.
Add frequently performed tasks to Key tasks list. You can add any task from the Tasks pane to the Key Tasks list by selecting a task and clicking the plus (+) sign that appears adjacent to the task. For some modes, you can see that Network Director has predefined some key tasks for you. You can modify this set of tasks to suit your requirements. This feature is available in Task pane irrespective of your current mode, scope, or view.