Report job design

A report is a job type. You use reports to update data into multiple catalogs.

A report job shares many characteristics as the import and export jobs. The unique characteristic about the report job is that it can be setup with "input parameters" to the job and it does not maintain data versioning; while import job and export job would mark a new data version on the container.

Types of reports

While planning the type of report, you must consider many factors:

For example, you can design a report to analyze online sales activity of office furniture for Europe.

Type of the report: A user-defined script defines the type of the report.
Name of the report: You can define valid characters and values that the user can provide as the report name.
A distribution method: You can design the distribution method for the report, such as e-mail, FTP, post, or XML to connect.

Design considerations

While designing the type of report, you must consider many factors:

batch updates: Batch updates are supported in imports only, therefore, reports might not provide optimal performance as compared to imports for updating and importing large volumes of data.
workflow: A workflow is a set of steps. For example, you can prepare reports for item life cycle (item status, duration per step, # of items setup weekly, overdue tasks, and item assignments by role, and others).
item master data: For example, you can prepare reports for item assortment (which products belong to category XYZ), item setup between a date range, items setup by a particular user, item relationships, and others.
import data analytics: Supplier scorecard is a typical example of Import data analytics. Based on the report jobs from the supplier, this type of report includes the statistics in terms of number of items having error, missing main attributes, number of times it was sent to and from the supplier, and the turnaround time. Depending on the business some of these reports might be scheduled daily, weekly, monthly, or adhoc. They might also be set up with an e-mail distribution list to circulate the report to others after it runs.