Introduction to Reporting on Civis Platform for Publishers

The resources on this page are designed to be an introduction to the reporting methods, and related process, commonly used by Platform users who are publishing reports (this page is not designed for report viewers). These can help you to choose a reporting method or find some additional resources to help you as you begin building a reporting process of your own.The reporting process can often tie in many different aspects of Platform: user management, data access management, scheduling and automation, and of course building the report itself. 

 

In each section below you will find notes about the content covered in the corresponding section of the video, as well as links to documentation that is referenced or voiced over.

Video Presentation

 

To download a PDF copy of the slide deck used in this video, please see the attachment at the bottom of this page

 

Basic Best Practices Before Getting Started

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Report Viewer Accounts

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Report Viewer accounts are a special role in Platform with limited access only to Projects and Reports. See Platform Roles for more information on Platform Roles. If you are an Admin looking to make a new Report Viewer account see the Create a New User section of the Admin Center: Users and Groups page.

The Reporting Process

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This guide shows you an overview of a simplified reporting process. If you’re not sure where to get started, consider following this model.

 

To automate jobs in your reporting pipeline use the Automation feature of Platform or a Workflow.

 

Reports on Civis Platform

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See Reports on Civis Platform for more information or see the type of report you would like to use below.

 

Tableau

See Publishing Reports in Tableau for an overview of using Tableau with Civis Platform.

Prerequisites and Connecting to Data

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If you need access to the Civis VPN or a Tableau Server account reach out to Client Success at support@civisanalytics.com for help getting that set up. See VPN Support for help with the VPN and Granting Permissions on Database Objects for help granting access to the data you are using in your reports.

Tableau Basics

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Make sure to enabel the “Show sheets as Tabs'' setting in your Tableau Workbook before publishing it. Refer to the Publishing Reports in Tableau documentation for an overview and Troubleshooting Common Errors with Tableau Usage/Setup for some basic troubleshooting steps.

 

To keep your reports up to date see Refreshing Tableau Reports with the Civis API.

 

If your Organization does not need to meet FedRamp compliance you can contact Support@civisanalytics.com to obtain a Public Link for your Tableau report that can be shared with anyone and set to expire as requested.

HTML 

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HTML reports are flexible and powerful. To make the most out of these reports we recommend using libraries such as D3. You can see more at the official website for D# orthis D3 Turorial Repository for helpful information on getting started building reports with HTML and D3.

 

HTML reports also allow you to publish an R markdown file. Please see Publish an R markdown File to Platform Report for more.

Services

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Services are a powerful and flexible way of deploying your own custom web apps. Generally these are for advanced users.  You can see Civis Service Deployment for more information to get started.

 

R Shiny Apps are a common framework deployed as Services and Civis maintains a custom Docker image from R Shiny deployments. See Shiny Apps in Civis Platform and Shiny App Deployments for an example or refer to Civis Services Deployments.

 

For more advanced configurations of Civis Services please see Advanced Services.

Other Reporting Methods with Civis Platform

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This section contains some other methods for sharing information using Civis Platform that are not Report Objects.

Google Sheets

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See Export To Google Sheets for information on how to get your data into Sheets from Platform and Creating Google Sheet Exports via Civis API for information on how to create these exports programmatically

 

Google Data Studio

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The Civis Platform Google Data Studio Community Connector allows you to use Civis Platform as a data source and build reports in Google Data Studio with data stored in Platform. See Working with Google Data Studio in Platform for more.

 

You will need a Civis Platform API key to connect from Google Data Studio. See Generating an API Key for more.

 

You can refer to the Google Data Studio Documentation on Data Freshness for more information about refresh cadences of Community Connectors.

Job Email Notifications

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Job Success and Failure Notifications are markdown compatible and can be customized with information from the run outputs of your script. This can be a powerful way of sharing information and action items directly into your users email inboxes. See the Notifications section of Civis Platform Key Features for more.

 

See Tips for Markdown if you’re not familiar with markdown or want to learn more.

 

To utilize information from the run of the script see the Run Outputs section of Welcome to Scripts. See the Civis Github for examples on how to create and post run outputs in Python and Javascript.

Slide Deck

To download a PDF copy of the slide deck used for this presentation please see the attachment below: