Reporting

In this lab, you will explore the reports that are available in Shopping.

Exploring Shopping reports

Open the Shopping portal as a Report Viewer

1ETRNW72 



Log on to 1ETRNW72 as manager1 and open the Shopping portal


Note the Reports tab is present on the navigation panel, as manager1 is a member of the Shopping_ReportViewers group specified during the Shopping Central installation.


Select the Reports tab then click Reports in the navigation panel to open the Reports page


Reports are grouped according to their function, these being Licensing, Pending Orders, Completed Orders and Applications.


Exploring Licensing reports

1ETRNW72



On the Reports page, click the Licensing group to view the list of available licensing reports


Click the Licensed ConfigMgr Applications report


This report lists all ConfigMgr Applications that have licensing information supplied. It provides details of how many licenses are currently installed, the threshold (%) at which the license manager will be notified and the maximum number of licenses available for the Application. In this lab, the only Application that has licensing defined is XML Notepad.


Go back in the browser and click the Licensed ConfigMgr Applications Pending Uninstallation report


This report shows pending uninstallations for licensed Applications and indicates how many days remain before the Application will be removed. This would be useful for a license manager to see when they receive notifications that an Application's license threshold has been exceeded and it is getting short on licenses. If the license manager knows that there are uninstalls pending, they may decide not to order any more.


Go back in the browser and click the Maximum Count Reached report


This report gives the license manager a view of all the Applications for which no more licenses are available. It may also be useful to helpdesk staff investigating a failed user request (if an Application is listed in this report, it will not be installed on any workstations through Shopping requests).


Go back in the browser and click the Threshold Exceeded report


This report shows all Applications where the license count threshold has been exceeded, indicating that the Application is getting low on licenses. Note that this report also includes Applications which have reached their maximum count of installed licenses (by definition these have exceeded their license count threshold).


Exploring Pending Orders reports

1ETRNW72



Return to the Reports page and click the Pending Orders group to view the list of Pending Order reports


Note the first three reports present Pending Orders grouped by Approver, Machine and Shopper respectively. Each report indicates whom the order is waiting on and how many days it has been pending with that approver


Click the Pending OSD Requests report


This report provides details of OSD migrations scheduled between the dates specified in the Start Date and End Date fields. This is great for administrators and project managers who need to monitor a Windows migration, or perhaps prepare for support cover to handle any post-migration issues.


Go back in the browser and click the Top 20 Orders Pending Approval report


This report is useful for periodic review of service levels. As it presents the worst cases (the longest periods that approvals have been pending) it can highlight issues with the approval process (the approval configuration may need adjusting) or specific approvers.


Exploring Completed Orders reports

1ETRNW72



Return to the Reports page and click the Completed Orders group to view the list of Completed Order reports


Click the All Approved Orders between Specified Dates report


This report shows the date and time of request, approval and installation (where applicable) for all orders approved between the specified dates.


Go back in the browser and click the Applications Shopped Per Machine report


In the Machine Name drop-down, select 1ETRNW73 and click generate


This report lists all the Applications that have been requested for the selected computer. Note that in this case, a number of the applications occur twice – this is because 1ETRMW73 was rebuilt and the applications were 'reshopped' as part of that migration. If 1ETRNW73 has not been rebuilt yet, there will not be any duplicates.


Where an environment comprises several thousand computers, it may be more useful to start typing the computer name in the drop-down to get to the intended target user faster than browsing a huge list.


Go back in the browser and click the Applications Shopped Per User report


In the User Name drop-down, select 1ETRN\User and click generate


This report shows Applications that have been requested by an individual, indicating the computer used when the Application was requested. A user that requests applications for a number of different computers may be a Branch Administrator.


Go back in the browser and click the Approved Applications report


This report shows all orders that were requested and completed between the specified dates, required approval and were approved. The results provide a summary of the total software cost for each user. You would hope that the users who spend the most on software make a proportionate contribution to the revenue of the company!


Go back in the browser and click the Approved Order History per Shopper report


Note that this report is actually filtered by Application, and by default, the page loads filtered by the first Application ordered alphabetically. It also lists the same order multiple times (one row per stage of the workflow).


Select WinZip and change the Completed Date to tomorrow. Click Generate


Go back in the browser and click the Completed OSD Requests report


This report lists all completed OSD migrations, indicating the Installed date and time for those that installed successfully. An overall percentage of successful installation is presented at the bottom of the report, along with the total number of users and computers associated with the requests.


Go back in the browser and click the Daily Chart of Approved orders report


This report generates a chart showing approval activity per day between the dates specified.


Go back in the browser and click the Rejected Applications report


This report lists all requests that have been requested and completed between the specified dates but were rejected. This report does not indicate who rejected the request or the reason given (if any).


Go back in the browser and click Savings report


This report includes values that define the cost of processing an order and installing an application without Shopping (e.g. calling the service desk, seeking approval, advertising manually in ConfigMgr) and multiplies this up by the number of requests to indicate the costs that Shopping has saved between the dates specified.


This Savings Report uses a default cost of 46 defined in the report definition file on the Shopping Central server (Shopping\WebSite\ShoppingAPI\GlobalResources\Reports\savings.rdlx). The Savings to Date shown on the Shopping Home page are calculated based on the Help Desk Cost setting (default 40) defined in the Shopping Administration Console. Unless you manually correct these values, this report will show greater savings than shown in the Savings to Date on the home page.


Go back in the browser and click the User and Machine per Application report


Select an Application in the Application Name drop-down


This report shows all users that have requested the selected Application, and the computer from/for which it was requested.


Exploring Application reports

Most of the reports in this group provide read-only information about Applications that would normally require access to the Shopping Admin console.

1ETRNW72



Return to the Reports page and click the Applications group to view the list of Application reports on the REPORT – APPLICATIONS page


Click the Applications Pending Uninstallation report


This differs from the Licensed ConfigMgr Applications Pending Uninstallation seen previously, as this report shows all Applications pending uninstall, not just licensed Applications. Note that our rental application is listed here.


Go back in the browser and open the Applications per Computer Category report


This report lists all Applications associated with each Computer Category and provides details that would otherwise require the Shopping Admin console to view.


Go back in the browser and open the Applications per User Category report. This is similar to the previous Computer Category report, providing a view of Application details grouped by User Category


Go back in the browser and open the Non SMSApplications report


This provides a list of all basic Applications that will not result in the automatic installation of software on the requestor's computer. For a list of all Applications that will result in the automatic installation of software on successful completion of the approval workflow, see the SMS Applications report.


Go back in the browser and click the Re-Shoppable SMS Applications


This report shows all ConfigMgr Applications that can be 'reshopped'. If a ConfigMgr Application does not appear on this list, it will not be available to a user who has already requested it from the computer from which the portal is being viewed.


Go back in the browser and open the SMS Applications for Package/Program report


This report is useful for determining if a Shopping Application exists for a given ConfigMgr Package and Program combination.


Exporting reports to Excel

In this task, you will export a report to Excel, so that further analysis can be performed.

1ETRNW72



Return to the Reports page and click the Completed Orders group to view the list of Completed Order reports


Click the All Approved Orders between Specified Dates report





Select Word from the 'Select a format' drop-down list as shown below





Click Save at the bottom of the browser. Once the security scan finishes, click Open


We do not have Excel installed on these machines, so viewing it with WordPad is our next best option.



Lab Summary

In this lab, you have explored all the reports that Shopping provides and identified ways these can be used to assist with administration and process refinement. You have also seen that reports can be exported to Excel for further analysis and manipulation of the data.

Next Page
Ex 11 - Shopping 5.6 - Customizing Shopping