FINtastic Tip: How to Create Automated, Customized Reports

The FIN Framework is not only a comprehensive suite of applications out of the box, but also a powerful development environment that can be extended to meet specific needs. A common request made by users is additional reporting functionality to meet varied customer requirements. This week’s FINtastic Tip is about the Reports app, a special pod that is typically not included in the build, but can be requested by both OEMs and Distribution partners. 

Once the pod is uploaded and enabled, it can be used to help automate a variety of reporting capabilities. Through the use of simple wizards, customized reports can be generated and automatically be emailed. The four most common customization include history reports, override/alarm reports, capacity alerts, and tenant billing reports.

History reports

The Create History Report tool allows the user to query for points and create a job that will email a CSV file containing the points' history on a one-time, daily, weekly, or monthly basis. You can choose to specify roll up settings for points, if and how you want to fold the history (for example, calculate the minimum, maximum, or sum), and specify the interval at which you would like to collect the history for the report.

Override/Alarm reports 

You can create a report that allows the user to be able to generate reports regarding alarms and overrides and email them to any user with a valid email. Your override report can include information like who made the override and its duration, along with any alarms that occurred during the specified time.

Example of an Override Report

Capacity alerts (called heap alerts)

Capacity, or heap alerts are useful when a user wants to monitor their memory heap usage. The Java heap is the amount of memory allocated to applications running in the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). In the event that a large FIN project’s heap memory exceeds a certain threshold, the app can alert them via email so that they can then increase their heap to prevent any issues with performance.

Tenant reports

Finally, Tenant reports are for tracking tenant use of equipment and automating the billing process. Users can create reports for selected tenants and their related equipment to display detailed usage and billing information. Emailed reports can be sent right away or automatically scheduled at the frequency you desire (such as a monthly tenant invoice).

These functions can be explored further in our documentation here.