Reports Best Practices

Keep the following set of best practice recommendations in mind when creating and planning charts and reports:

Consider Project and Data Security - Remember, reports respect the security features such as access groups and security lists that Administrators have defined within the system. For example, users who select to receive an HTML report through email receive a report that contains only information for projects to which they have access. However, reports contained in emails, including those added as attachments, can contain private information that should not be shared internally or externally. Use the Report Privacy Warning Text system parameter to add a line of warning text to Accolade Online reports, HTML reports, and reports created using Accolade Office Extensions, to indicate the private or confidential nature of the report contents. The parameter provides 500 characters for the message.

In addition, all reports created using Accolade Online Reporting and Accolade Office Extensions contain a custom property that identifies the generated file as a file with Accolade data. To help ensure sensitive data is not forwarded, use the filter options on your email server to prevent files that contain the custom property from being forwarded using email.

Choose the Best Report Format and Creation Method - The report type you choose to build depends on where the report needs to display within Accolade, the means you want to use to build the report, and the amount of formatting required to make the data within the report useful when viewing.

Method	Advantages
Accolade Online Reporting	Accolade Online reports use a reporting interface similar to that provided with the Accolade Office Extensions, but without having to leave Accolade and without having to access Excel. Accolade Online reports provide an on-demand, in-application way to generate a report and ensure that the report always displays the real-time data from Accolade.
Accolade Office Extensions	Accolade supports .xlsx, .xlsm, .xltx, and. xltm file types for MS Excel reports. Accolade Office Extensions provides an interface to create a data report. Creating reports in Excel also allows for Excel formatting, as necessary. You can use reports created with Accolade Office Extensions in your process documents, add them to related documents, email them, use them for your own research, or (if you are an Administrator or Process Designer) you can activate them on the Configuration > Charts & Reports tab or on the Reports List pod in projects.
SQL Queries	Complicated tables may require the use of SQL queries, for example, tables that require aggregations other than sum, average, minimum, maximum, or standard deviation, or in tables with filters joined with "or". SQL queries leverage the reporting views to gather data from the Accolade database and require some knowledge about writing a successful query to gather the information you want. You can also write your own custom reporting views to retrieve information from the database. See Reporting Views Overview for more information. When you create charts and reports based on SQL queries, you can include them on the Charts & Reports page or on the Reports List pod in projects, but you cannot add these reports to documents or use them in the other ways that are available to Excel reports.

Method

Advantages

Accolade Online Reporting

Accolade Online reports use a reporting interface similar to that provided with the Accolade Office Extensions, but without having to leave Accolade and without having to access Excel.

Accolade Online reports provide an on-demand, in-application way to generate a report and ensure that the report always displays the real-time data from Accolade.

Accolade Office Extensions

Accolade supports .xlsx, .xlsm, .xltx, and. xltm file types for MS Excel reports. Accolade Office Extensions provides an interface to create a data report. Creating reports in Excel also allows for Excel formatting, as necessary.

You can use reports created with Accolade Office Extensions in your process documents, add them to related documents, email them, use them for your own research, or (if you are an Administrator or Process Designer) you can activate them on the Configuration > Charts & Reports tab or on the Reports List pod in projects.

SQL Queries

Complicated tables may require the use of SQL queries, for example, tables that require aggregations other than sum, average, minimum, maximum, or standard deviation, or in tables with filters joined with "or".

SQL queries leverage the reporting views to gather data from the Accolade database and require some knowledge about writing a successful query to gather the information you want. You can also write your own custom reporting views to retrieve information from the database. See Reporting Views Overview for more information.

When you create charts and reports based on SQL queries, you can include them on the Charts & Reports page or on the Reports List pod in projects, but you cannot add these reports to documents or use them in the other ways that are available to Excel reports.

Learn More: