Create a simple report

Reports are the windows into your data. With custom reports, you’ll be able to answer questions like, How are my projects progressing? Which tasks are completed? Which tasks are in trouble? And are we staying within budget? Start by taking a look at this Project List report on the Projects page. The filter is set to My Projects. It’s using the standard view, and it’s grouped by completion date by month. You can easily change this report by changing the filter, view, or grouping. You can even move the columns around or sort on a particular column. But these changes are temporary, and selecting the filter, view, and grouping you want every time you need to see the information just isn’t practical. That’s an advantage of creating a custom report. Just select the report to see the information you want. Get started with custom report building by creating a custom project report that uses existing filters, views, and groupings, namely the My Projects filter, the standard view, and the completion date by month grouping. Start by clicking the main menu icon and choosing Reports. The Reports page is where you can access all sorts of custom reports. We’ll get into those later, but right now, you just want to create a simple custom report. Click New Report. These are work front object types. The five most common object types are listed here. Here is an alphabetized list of all other project types for which you can create reports. You need to choose the object type that corresponds with the type of report you want to create. So for example, if the report is meant to look at project information, you want to pick a project report. If you pick a user report, you won’t be able to see the project information you want. You want to pick a project report, so choose Project. Workfront recommends starting out by naming the report. This will help you focus on what you’re building. To give the report a name, click on Report Settings and put the name in Report Title. The filter and the grouping usually do a good job of suggesting a report title. You’re creating a simple project report using the My Projects filter and the completion date by month grouping. So this report is My Projects by Due Date. Use the description to provide more details about the report. You can explain that My Projects means current projects where the logged in user is on the project team and Due Date means it’s grouping by planned completion date by month. That’s all you need to do in the Report Settings for now, so click Dub. The Columns, or View tab, looks very much like the Customize View screen when you’re making a new view. In the Report Builder window, you have the option to apply an existing view, which is what you want to do for this report. The list of views contains all your project views, including the ones you’ve created. Now that you’ve selected the Standard view, you can make a few other changes if you want. Move the columns around with a drag and drop. You can sort on a particular column. You can sort on up to three columns, so indicate the order of the sorts. Don’t forget to select if the sort should be ascending or descending. Next, go to Groupings tab. Again, you can select an existing grouping, Completion Date by Month. Nothing more is needed here, so finally, go to Filters. Select My Projects from Apply an Existing Filter. Now you’re done. Click Save and Close. Every time you open a report, you’ll see the same filter, view, and grouping. They’re listed here as Report Defaults. Anyone viewing the report can change them, but this is temporary. The next time you choose the report, it will run the way that it was written. Reports live in the Reports area. The reports you create are in My Reports. When someone shares a report with you, click the Shared With Me section. And to see all reports in the system, including built-in reports, click here. If there’s a specific report that you’re using a lot, you might want to pin it or make it a favorite.