About Report Book About Report BookReport book is a collection of design sheets. You can perform several functions in these report books through IFS Business Analytics. You can use report books to compute and generate statistical information. The report book feature currently allows you to toggle among Getting Started, Parameters, Filter Criteria, Publish Report, Save to Database and Options .
Customize Data Access TypeThe Customized Data Access Type field is used to select Online or Data Mart as the data access type for each information source used to design the report. For example, if GL Balance and GL Period budget are used in a report, you can select Online as the customized data access type for GL Balance and Data Mart for GL Period Budget. As a result, online data will be extracted for GL Balance information source and data from materialized views will be extracted for GL Budget period information source when the report is executed.
Getting StartedGetting Started in IFS Business Analytics allows
you to get access to 
online help
guides for both end user mode and designer mode. It also holds general information about the application under 
About IFS Business Analytics . You can also view information about
the current IFS Business Analytics session including the logged in username
and the environment.
ParametersParameters can be used to create/edit and save parameters which can be used as filter criteria in report books, design sheets, design rows, design columns and/or design cells. For example, a parameter can be defined to only show transactions relating to a particular year when applied to a report.
Filter CriteriaA filter criteria is used to obtain only the required information at the point of execution. Parameters can be used as filter criteria as well. See Filter Criteria.
Publish ReportOnce the design is complete you can make the report public and accessible to an end user by using Publish Report. The report published can be viewed in IFS Business Analytics End User mode or in IFS Applications. See Publicize a Report
Save to DatabaseYou can save a design to the database as a template using Save to Database in report books. When the report is saved as a template it can be retrieved by another report designer or even by the same designer and worked on it at a later time.
Validate ReportYou can validate a BA report published, saved or locally saved by using Validate Report in report book. In order to use this option, you need to have the report saved locally and opened. When the report is saved, you can fix all the metadata related errors in the report by using this option.
You can select a data access type for a business analytics report by selecting either Online or Data Mart from the dropdown list. If you select Online, it will retrieve data directly from source tables whereas if you select Data Mart it will retrieve data from materialized views. Materialized views contain data from source tables which have been retrieved at an earlier time. If you want to retrieve most recent data these materialized views need to be refreshed.
Note: The enabled data access type under source details in IFS Solution Manager determines which data access type (Online, Data Mart, All) is available for respective information sources. The enabled data access type for each information source used in the BA report is compared against the selected data access type for the report. If the selected data access type does not match with the enabled data access type then a warning message will appear at execution. If the enabled data access type is All, then the information will be based on the selected data access type in IFS Business Analytics client.