Reports

A report is a document of pages that XataWorks lays out for you: a cover, a table of contents, key figures, charts, tables and a written commentary, with running headers and page numbers. You ask for one in a chat, the agent describes what goes in it, and the application does the layout in a ready-made theme — the agent writes no styling at all. The report opens in a window of its own, ready to read or export.

This article is for anyone who has numbers in a database, on a website they use or in a file, and wants a document they can send — and wants it again next month with the new numbers.

Asking for a report

Reports start from a chat. Ask for a report, a review or a summary of some data, in your own words — what it should cover, which figures matter, which charts you want. There is no menu item for a new report; the conversation is where you say what it is for.

The finished report opens in its own window, separate from the main one, titled with the report’s title. It is also kept on the chat’s links bar, under Reports, so you can open it again later. Asking for a report with the same title as one the chat already has replaces it; the agent can also rename a report and keep its history.

What a report holds

A report is built from blocks, in the order the agent gives them:

• A cover with a short summary, if wanted.
• Key figures — a handful of headline numbers, each with a label, a value and, if wanted, a change beside it.
• Charts — line, area, bar, stacked bar, donut, scatter or heat map, adding up, counting or averaging the data by day, week, month, quarter or year.
• Tables, sorted and cut to the rows that matter.
• Commentary, written text with lists, links and footnotes. The agent is told to keep it factual and tied to the figures.
• Callouts — a highlighted note marked as information, success, warning or critical.
• Page breaks.

Each heading starts a section in the table of contents. Numbers can show as whole numbers, decimals, percentages, dates, or currency in your own locale’s format. There are three themes — executive, which is used unless you ask otherwise, minimal and dark — and the pages are US Letter where your country uses it and A4 everywhere else.

Where the numbers come from

A report’s data never passes through the conversation. The agent saves the rows it fetches under a name in the chat, and the report reads them from there. The rows can come from:

• A database in XataWorks — the agent runs a query and keeps the rows. See Databases.
• A website you use, through the tools the site publishes. See Page tools.
• A file you attach to the chat.
• A few rows the agent writes in — for a small table, no more than a few hundred rows.

A report uses only data its own chat holds. If that data has gone, the section says so on the page: “The data for this section (…) is no longer available in this chat.” Sources… on the report window’s File menu lists, for each set of rows, the site and the action it came from, the details it was called with in plain words, and whether the agent’s own code reduced it.

Refreshing and versions

File ▸ Refresh in the report window, or asking the agent to refresh the report, fetches the data again the way it was first fetched, moves dates written relative to today forward to today, and rebuilds the report and every format it was exported to as a new version. Any question a fetch needs is asked in the report’s chat, and the window’s title says so while it runs. A refresh is all or nothing: if any step fails, no new version is made and the current one is unchanged. When it finishes you read “Refreshed: version” and its number.

A report cannot be refreshed when its data came from an attached file or rows written in by hand, when its database has been deleted, when the website has not marked the action as safe to call again, or when the site is not open and signed in — then it asks you to open the site, sign in and refresh again. When Refresh is unavailable, its tooltip gives the reason.

File ▸ Versions… lists every version, with Open, Rename…, Delete and a button for each format that version was exported to. The current version cannot be deleted.

The six export formats

The report window’s File menu exports the report, and you can ask the agent for any of these instead.

Every export goes into the chat’s files and is kept beside the report on the links bar. Once a format exists, the window’s menu offers to open it — Open PDF, Open Spreadsheet, Open Word Document, Open Slides — and the report’s row on the links bar carries a button for each, along with Website… and Video…. A website export appears on the links bar under Sites.

Templates and schedules

A report you want again for another period can become a template. In the report window choose File ▸ Save as Template…, give it a Name: and, if you like, a Description (optional):, or ask the agent to save it. Templates belong to the application, not to one chat. Only a report whose data XataWorks can fetch again — from a database query or a website’s tools — can become one; a report with data supplied by hand is refused with “A template needs data it can fetch again.”

File ▸ Report Templates… in the report window, or Report templates on the chat header’s ⋮ menu, opens the Report templates library. Select a template and use:

• Run… — pick the period to cover: the previous one, the current one, or another you type, such as a named month or quarter or a range of dates. Each run makes a new chat, fetches the data again for that period and makes the report and its formats there. You can ask the agent to run a template too.
• Schedule… — make it run by itself (below).
• Rename…, Delete and Reload.

Running a template on a schedule

Schedule… opens a short form:

• Runs — Off, Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Quarterly. A quarterly run falls on the first day of each quarter.
• On (weekly) — the day of the week.
• On day (monthly) — a day from 1 to 28.
• At (HH:MM) — the time, 08:00 unless you change it.
• Covering — The previous period or The current period.
• Approvals while unattended — Ask (refused after 5 minutes) or Skip anything needing approval.

When a scheduled run finishes you get a notice that the report “is ready”, or that it “could not run” and why. Schedules run while XataWorks is open: a run that falls due while the application is closed is skipped, and the template runs again at its next time.

What is asked

• Never asked: making a report, exporting it in any format, showing its sources, and saving or listing templates.
• Asked as usual: fetching the data. A website or a database asks the way it always does — for a new database of your own, the main answer is Allow changes to “…” in this chat, and deleting anything still asks. See The office and Approvals and permissions.
• Asked again on a refresh or a template run: each fetch is repeated through the same questions, in the chat the refresh or the run belongs to. A template run makes a new chat, so its questions are asked there.

Good to know

• A report belongs to its chat. It can use only data that chat holds, and it is kept with that chat.
• Data supplied by hand is fixed. A report built from an attached file or rows written in cannot be refreshed or made into a template; ask for it to be made again instead.
• Close the file before exporting again. While an exported spreadsheet, Word document or slide deck is open in another program, exporting that format again fails until you close it.
• Some content does not travel to every format. A heat map cannot be drawn in a spreadsheet, so its sheet says “It is in the report’s PDF.” A Word table holds up to 200 rows, with the rest in the spreadsheet export. The video shows the first six charts and lists the rest as left out.
• A large report can take a while to lay out. If layout runs past half a minute, the report is still saved and its window still opens.