Reporting Canvas beta: overview

The Reporting Canvas beta

A complete reimagination of reporting in Workfront, the new Reporting Canvas tool is nearing completion and will soon be available for public testing. In developing Reporting Canvas, we have worked hard to provide an experience that offers maximal flexibility coupled with an intuitive, modular design—so that users like you can most effectively leverage your own data in making and sharing reports. Through a new, unified report type that allows you to drag-and-drop nearly every element onto a limitless canvas, creating a visual data masterpiece will soon be easier than ever before.

This article contains information about how the beta will function and how your organization can help us improve Reporting Canvas before its official launch.

Release schedule

  • Public beta launch: Starting Q3 2022

    NOTE

    We are excited to begin our roll-out of the Reporting Canvas beta. Over the past few weeks, we have had tremendous interest from customers to join the beta. Due to the volume of customers joining the beta, we are limiting the ability of any additional customers to join at this time. Starting July 19, 2022, any customers who have not already joined the Reporting Canvas beta by accepting the terms will have the beta icon removed from their Workfront production instance. We will ensure more customers can join this beta later in 2022 and will announce updates as the beta becomes available to more customers.

  • Official release: TBD

Features

In developing Reporting Canvas, we have radically redesigned some features—and created some new ones from the ground up—for the purpose of streamlining report making. The following table outlines major features of Reporting Canvas in comparison to existing reporting tools, as well as their current release status:

NOTE

For a chronological list of added features and resolved issues, see Reporting Canvas beta: release activity.

Feature Description Legacy Terminology Reporting Canvas Terminology Status
Reports Report Reporting canvas Released
Dashboards Dashboard Reporting canvas Released
Tables Details tab Table block Released
Charts Chart tab Visualization block Released
Subtotals Summary tab KPI visualization Released
Drill path Report viewer modal Report viewer overlay Released
Columns View tab Table editing Released
Filters Filter tab Table editing Released
Groups Group tab Table editing Released
Field configuration
(aggregations and conditional formatting)		 View tab Table editing (column selected) Released
Resizing columns Text mode Table editing (column selected) Released
External content External page Web content block Released
Exporting Report actions More menu in viewer Partially Released
Sharing columns Text mode Field builder Partially Released
Calculated columns Text mode Field builder Partially Released
Chart styling Chart tab Visualization block (Style tab) Planned
Scheduled delivery Report actions More menu in viewer Planned
Granting report access Report actions More menu in viewer Planned
Unauthenticated dashboard access Dashboard actions More menu in viewer Planned
Editing report data In-line editing Summary pane Planned
Page filtering N/A Canvas filter Planned
NOTE

The features listed here will be released as part of a tiered product release scheme. Features you have access to in this beta may not be available in the full release, based on your organization’s plan.

Participate in the beta

Availability

The Reporting Canvas beta will be available to all organizations that are on AWS, regardless of region.

Join the beta

The Reporting Canvas beta is completely optional, but may only be opted into by a Workfront administrator. To opt in as a System Administrator:

  1. Select the Reporting (beta) icon in the Main menu of your Workfront instance.
  2. Click Accept to accept the terms and conditions.
  3. Allow your organization’s data to be added to Reporting Canvas (this may take up to a few hours).
  4. Start using Reporting Canvas.

After your organization’s data is added to Reporting Canvas, other system administrators can choose to join on an individual basis in the same way (without waiting for data to be added again).

To opt in other users that are not Workfront administrators:

  1. Select the Reporting (beta) icon in the Main menu of your Workfront instance.

  2. Click on Reporting Canvas permissions.

  3. Search for and select the specific users you want to participate.

    IMPORTANT

    Users that you grant access to Reporting Canvas will have access to all data in the system in a read-only capacity, regardless of their standard permissions to view this data.

  4. Click Save.

  5. Add the Reporting (beta) icon into the main layout template of each user that was selected. For more information, see Customize the Main Menu using a layout template.

  6. Each user must then individually navigate to the Reporting (beta) icon in their main menu and accept the terms and conditions.

Submit feedback

To submit feedback about the beta:

  1. While in Reporting Canvas in Workfront, click the Send Feedback button.
  2. Fill out the form, then click Submit.

Beta FAQ

 Can I migrate my legacy reports to Reporting Canvas?

In short, migrating legacy reports won’t be available during the beta. However, it is a planned feature (with some caveats described below) for the official launch.

While the barrier to building new reports has been significantly lowered with Reporting Canvas, we understand that bringing over some of your existing reports and dashboards will help accelerate the adoption process. As such, we want to provide the tools and resources necessary to make sure you can bring over any relevant legacy items to ensure you start off on the right foot in Reporting Canvas. Since Reporting Canvas is such a radical change to the way current reporting works, however, it would be impossible to migrate every report or dashboard exactly as it is today.

Our current strategy for migration in the official releaseis to enable you to do the following:

  1. Identify the reports and dashboards that are relevant

    1. Give you the ability to export a CSV of all the reports and dashboards in the system along with any relevant tracking information (number of views, when, and by whom).
    2. Provide an export of reports that are set up with scheduled deliveries along with the recipients.

  2. Select the reports and dashboards that you want to migrate, then click Migrate

    This is a one-way migration. It creates a copy of the selected reports and dashboards to Reporting Canvas, leaving the legacy report or dashboard intact in the current reporting tool.

    You can migrate the same report or dashboard as many times as you want.

  3. In Reporting Canvas, make sure that all of the reports and dashboards you selected were migrated.

 Why can't I see all the objects I normally do?

In order to provide the beta to our customers as early as possible, we have released it with only a subset of the many object types available in Workfront today. Below are the object types currently supported in the beta:

  • Assignment
  • Document
  • Document Approval
  • Expense
  • Hour
  • Issue
  • Note
  • Portfolio
  • Project
  • Program
  • Task
  • Timesheet
  • Work Item
 If something goes wrong in Reporting Canvas during the beta, will my organization's data be impacted?

No. The beta uses a copy of your organization’s data that is populated into Reporting Canvas. While this means that you are safe to experiment during the beta without risk of impacting important data, it also means that in-line editing of data in Reporting Canvas will be unavailable until the official launch.

 Can I opt out of the beta once I've joined?

A Workfront administrator cannot opt out of the beta; however, non-system administrators can be removed by doing the following:

  1. Log in as a System administrator.
  2. Navigate to Reporting Canvas.
  3. Click Reporting Canvas permissions.
  4. Remove the users you want to opt out of the beta from the list that have been opted in.
  5. Click Save.

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