Dream Report Overview 2015 - Easy automated Reports and Dashboards

Editor's Notes

• #2: This presentation is intended as a detailed WebEx, to bring potential customers to an understanding of Dream Report capabilities. This presentation focuses on the “What” dream report can do. A follow on WebEx demonstration will show much of the “How” to configure Dream Report. In the end, this presentation should provide enough overview to enable potential customers to download the trial version from www.DreamReport.net, and begin exploring the powerful features on their own.
• #3: Welcome to the Dream Report overview and follow-on presentation.
• #4: Plainly put, if you’re using BI (Business Intelligence) products in Industrial Applications, then you are spending too much time with technology configuration and integration and not enough time on delivering end user value. We’ve analyzed the competition. We’ve talked with users of them all. We’ve interviewed them after they’ve switched. There is no comparison. Dream Report is in a category of its own. Business Intelligence tools include SAP Crystal Reports, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and Microsoft Excel with all sorts of plugins. Dream Report is purpose built for this industry and is a perfect fit. It delivers connectivity, statistics, presentation, delivery and management in one complete solution. Dream Report is a better way. Read our whitepaper on the benefits of purpose built solutions for automation and industrial oriented report generation and performance dashboards.
• #5: It’s about Taming your Ocean of Data. We are Ocean Data Systems, and we’ve created a very special product, Dream Report, that enables you to quickly and easily select from your raw data; analyze it, format it and deliver it. You decide how the data is analyzed and presented. You set up the schedules or the interactive web portal to access your information and you decide how to deliver it - email, ftp files, Excel, CSV, PDF or through an interactive Web Portal. The bottom line? Dream Report delivers data access, analysis, formatting and delivery so easily, we’re putting the ability to drive performance in the hands of those that can make it happen. Your process engineers can create all the reports they want, not just the few reports they absolutely need. Dream Report is changing the report and dashboard paradigm. Dream Report is setting the new standards for information delivery. That’s why Dream Report is becoming the automation industry standard.
• #6: One benefit of being an international company is that you immediately tackle on of the world’s toughest problems, localization and support. With Headquarters in France, Ocean Data Systems has developed Dream Report as a solution, available in 14 languages. Our support team is scattered across time zones. Our company does one thing, and we do it extremely well. That’s information management. We acquire data, analyze it, format it, deliver it and manage it. We’re quickly becoming the industry standard for information delivery by reports and web portals. We’re proud to have excellent OEMs that deliver and support Dream Report as their own solution. We’re also proud to have a network of “Proven Partners”, companies that stand by us in testing Dream Report and recommending it as a solution with their products.
• #7: Dream Report differentiates itself by offering connectivity to the all the data sources you want to report from, providing the statistics you need, the formatting and presentation you want and the delivery, interaction and long term management you must have. Dream Report does all this without programming or scripting, simply and easily learned, all in one comprehensive solution.
• #8: This is the Dream Report Studio, the one place to configure and build your reports. It is a typical Windows App, easy to learn and logical. In fact, we are proud to highlight that Dream Report has been recognized in the Control Engineering “Engineers’ Award” program. Dream Report is for those that need reports - process engineers and managers. Specialized knowledge and IT support is not required. That is ease of use that you will not find in other reporting solutions.
• #9: In addition to generating reports in the form of files, Dream Report will organize them, manage then and provide access to them through an optional Web Portal. This is the perfect environment for viewing reports and triggering new reports. It is also an environment for performing data selections for reports - date and time selections, and performing manual data entry. Yes, dream report can collect data like lab samples and operator logs for future analytics and reporting. Press one button in the Dream Report Studio and you will automatically build the Dream Report Portal making use of the free IIS, delivered on every Windows based computer.
• #10: The Web Portal is a very interactive environment. Dream Report delivers the ability to display reports, in a full browser experience on IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari, and will display the same capabilities optimized for a mobile form factor on iOS and Android devices. Special easy to use Web Objects will give you access to SQL Queries, Tag Lists, Source Lists, Data and Time Pickers, Batch Pickers and more, delivering an interactive user experience.
• #11: Configuring Dream Report is easy. There are 4 basic steps. Set up connections to data sources. These can be proprietary and product specific, they can be industry standards and they can be business standards. Design your reports in the Studio WYSIWYG environment Set up triggers, time – event – manual – remote, and generate your reports. Deliver those reports in various forms and over various pipes. Excel, CSV, PDF, WEB, Directories, FTP, Email, Print…
• #12: Setting up communications is the easiest part. Select your connection to a product or a standard Configure that connector and test the connection Name the connection and add it to your list Start Building Reports That’s it. After that, as you are building reports, you’re browsing tags and making connections to tables, pie charts, trends, bar charts and calculations. Dream Report normalizes all your data sources (making them easy to work with) and all you need to do is select tags.
• #13: The result, beautiful reports. This first report example shows a building efficiency reporting to meet European EPBD standards. It’s an example of a compliance report built out of our standard objects to address the building efficiency marketplace. The second report highlights the flexibility delivered in our bar graph object. You have control over colors, stack formats, flat or 3d display and more. The same goes for the chart object. You can add lots of traces to a chart, and define color bands to highlight data out of range. Of course Dream Report delivers automated scaling if you can’t define that ahead of time. That is especially useful when you are doing ad-hoc reporting, selecting tags and times and feeding them into a template report. You can let Dream Report pick the best scales for your display. The Setpoint Analysis report is a nice example of a very specialized report for Thermal Uniformity Surveys (TUS) reporting. In this case, Dream Report delivers a specialized function for monitoring a group of sensors, detecting the sensor last into a range, and that which is first out of a range and then calculates the statistics over that control period. Dream Report then formats the data for output. Often times, Dream Report is set up to generate reports for human consumption, typically a PDF or Web Portal format, and is also set up to export data to Excel or CSV files for further analysis by other applications. Never a problem, those are also standard features.
• #14: But that is just the start. Once you’ve defined data sources, it’s time to generate a new report page and explore Dream Report objects. There are currently 17 report objects consisting of three single data objects, meaning that their result is a single number, six table objects that will deliver a simple data dump, an alarm display, a sophisticated SQL table query through a visual query builder, a Step Table that can query a wide range of data and analyze it over a step interval – for example – a Monthly report of daily averages. There is also a summary statistic table (quickly grab a period of data and calculate max, min, average, times, totals, etc.) and there is a freeform table that can be made up of our single data value objects, or any other data you wish to enter. There is a chart object for trend displays. A Bar Graph object, a Pie-chart, an Efficiency Indicator, date-time, page number, dynamic text for variables like report name and there is an Electronic Signature Object for report approvals. That’s it. That is the hardest part of Dream Report (not really to hard, is learning the flexibility of those various objects that combine both statistics and presentation all in one. Using them is simple, and common across all objects.
• #15: First you pick an object, like a single data object. Then you browse the data sources you set up previously, and pick the tag (the data) you want to access. Next, you specify the statistic you want to perform, in this case, an average calculation. Dream Report has over 50 standard statistics, applicable to both business and industry needs. And yes, Dream Report delivers the ability to do a complete set of free-form math and logic, and includes the ability to leverage a powerful script language called LUA. But that’s getting into the 1% of power users… We’ll stay focused on the 99% of you. In Step 4, you pick a time span that you want to analyze, an absolute time, relative time like the last hour, or a batch event. Dream Report is batch aware and has the ability to query batch lists for start and end times, then query data sources for those times. Dream Report even have the ability to recognize events, define them as batches with automatically generated names, so that in the future you can report against them easily. For example, suppose you wanted to report on the operation of a backup generator. You can let Dream Report sense the generator operation, name the run instances automatically (storing the start and stop times), and then you can simply generate reports against the last runs, selecting them from a list. Step 5, you define what the output looks like. It can be a number. It can be a dial, a bar graph or a panel meter. The latter three are widgets. But it can also be displayed as barcode, (one of 16 different types), or as scientific notation. Add dynamic fonts, and colors based on ranges and you have a lot of flexibility. That’s how it goes with each object single data object, and all other objects offer equal levels of presentation flexibility. It is really that easy.
• #16: Statistics, the calculations you want to perform are part of Dream Report objects. You drop an object onto a report page, double click on it and begin configuring your query, statistics and ultimate display format. There are a total of 17 objects you’ll need to learn to master Dream Report. These objects deliver data values, tables, trends, Pie Charts, Bar Graphs, etc. Each object offers a great deal of flexibility. The good news is that these objects all tent to work in a similar manner. When you’ve mastered one, you’re on your way to mastering them all! There are plenty of demonstration reports in Dream Report that will show you how these objects work and the flexibility of their configuration.
• #17: You might ask, how do we define the overall operations of a report. It’s quite simple and straight forward. Just right click on your to access report settings. Under the General tab, you can set the file name and storage characteristics. Where are files stored, how are directories named, etc. Under the Report name tab, you define the instance names, the convention used when reports are generated. Naming is very flexible and can include static text, dates and times, and even data from Tag sources, possibly representing batch IDs for example. Under time definition, you get to pick when a report is generated. That can be any combination of dates and times and day of the week. Or, reports can be triggered by events. If a runtime goes over x number of hours. If an alarm is generated. You can even delay the report generation to make sure your data propagates through your data systems prior to reporting. Under file format, you can have a lot of fun. You can define your report as PDF format, and you have secure data files. If you pick Web format, you get HTML5 format documents for interactive use in the Dream Report Web Portal. If you select email, you can define the automatic email distribution of reports. Under printer, you can specify primary and backup printers. Dream Report will automatically deliver reports to the printers that are available. Finally, under Excel, you can map report objects to areas of a spreadsheet, and generate Excel and CSV files for post processing in other systems. Under Report Preprocessor, you have the opportunity to trigger Relational Database stored procedures, and then use the results in your report. Under Macros, you can specify Batch files, shell commands to run before or after a report, typically handy for housekeeping functions and integration with other systems. And under the authorization tab, you can specify who has access to this report, either by name or by role. If a user logs into the Dream Report portal, they will only have access to the reports that have been assigned to them. Again, no programming and no scripting to have this awesome level of flexibility.
• #18: Dream Report delivers everything you need for automated report generation for both business and industry, in a single One and Done solution. From an integration perspective, you are focused on the end result, delivering the best compliance and performance reports for your end user, in the format they want to see it in. There is no other solution like Dream Report. We are Taming that Ocean of Data.
• #19: Next Steps? Please visit our website and download Dream Report. Our demo mode runs for 30 minutes at a time and supports applications up to 100 tags. It will also let you set up and use the interactive Dream Report web portal. If you would like to test it longer, visit the website contact tab and send us a message, we would be happy to discuss your application and give you an extended trial license. You can also join Linked-In groups that we manage for multiple purposes. Please don’t forget to tell your friends about Dream Report and we hope to hear from you soon. Thank you
• #20: Thank You