Hi everyone, I am excited to announce some improvements to Apptio BI that will add allow for greater interactivity and collaboration! There are quite a few releases here so let me break each one down a bit and how to use it - although I encourage everyone to give it a shot themselves in-product. Let's jump in.
This tri-part release includes the following enhancements: (1) the ability to share reports with various levels of edit permissions and design enhancements for the report sharing functionality; (2) administrators can manually hide or unhide out-of-the-box Apptio BI Reports that are not hidden by default from non-administrator users; (3) a new library view of out-of-the-box Apptio BI Reports that includes search functionality by name, description, or product as well as design enhancements for individual reports.
As you read along, let us know your thoughts on the value of these releases!
The first is the ability to share reports with view / edit permissions and an improved sharing experience
To enhance collaboration and flexibility, report creators can now share reports with various edit permissions with an improved UI. This release is designed to make the BI experience better for all users, but particularly those with teams who want to do collaborative report and visualization design or analysis, as well as administrators looking for greater control over report accessibility. Report creators can choose who to share a report with, what kind of permissions/functionality that user can have within the context of the report, and can also change any of these permissions for users or user groups as needed. Included enhancements to the layout and appearance of the report sharing experience improves usability and centralizes the viewing and management of users with access to reports.
How: To share a report with view or edit permissions, users simply can find the applicable report in the report table, and select Share from the More Options (3 dots) menu, or select the Share icon at the upper-right corner of the page. In the dialog that appears, select the users with whom you want to share the report. You can select from the following groups: Entire Organization, Specific User Roles, Individual Users. You can use the search box to find a user by name, email address, or role. Then select the permission type. The available options are: Can View and Can Edit. The report editors, report viewers, report owners, and administrators will have access to several functions, including enabling view and management permissions, sharing view/edit permissions, report renaming, report modification, filter management, and more.
Extending from the measure-based filtering functionality, administrators can now manually hide or unhide out-of-the-box Apptio BI Reports that are not hidden by default from non-administrator users
Building upon measure-based filtering of Apptio BI Reports, this release adds the ability for administrators to hide and unhide Apptio BI Reports that were not hidden by default from the non-administrator users. Administrators can hide inapplicable reports from the non-administrators as needed. Hidden Apptio BI Reports can then also be unhidden if the administrator chooses to do so. All hidden reports are populated in the report table, which allows administrators to easily unhide, duplicate, and share these reports. With our previous measure-based filtering functionality release, out-of-the-box Apptio BI Reports that contain measures which do not exist in your organization's cost model are no longer visible to non-administrator users and a filter is automatically applied to hide such reports. This extends that functionality, allowing administrators to manually hide or unhide out-of-the-box Apptio BI Reports that are not hidden by default.
How: To hide or unhide out-of-the-box Apptio BI Reports from non-administrator users, select the the More menu on the Apptio BI Report in the content carousel or the table view or when viewing the Apptio BI Report, then select Hide (or) Unhide. Alternatively, open the applicable report. You can open the report from the report table, the Apptio BI Reports carousel, or the modal that appears when you select the See All option. Then, from the More Options (3 dots) menu at the upper-right corner of the page, select Hide (or) Unhide. To display only hidden out-of-the-box Apptio BI Reports in the report table, open the Apptio BI Reports tab in the report table, and select the Show hidden reports check box.
Apptio BI Report Experience Enhancements
As a part of making or reporting experience as easy-to-navigate, useful, and functional as possible, we have released enhancements to the layout and appearance of the report dashboard, display, and sharing functionality. This in turn improves usability and centralizes viewing and management of shared reports. As a user, you can more easily browse all out-of-the-box Apptio BI Reports by selecting the See All option at the upper-right corner of the Apptio BI Reports carousel. The modal that appears will show all available out-of-the box Apptio BI Reports for your Apptio products.
On the left-hand side of the modal, you can select All, Newest, or a specific Apptio product to view the applicable Apptio BI Reports.
You can use the search box to find reports by name, description, and product - with more options coming as our menu continues to expand!
We would love to know your thoughts on these releases, which were a direct result not only of the hard work of our product teams but from YOUR feedback and testing which helped fuel this development. We would love to know:
- An important piece of strong collaboration and interactivity with reporting is how you can configure permissions between report viewers and users. Do you think the ability to alter View / Edit permissions for users, roles or your entire organization will significantly impact (or at least, impact) you experience within Apptio BI? Please let us know why
- We want to make sure administrators feel like they had control over their user's BI experience while also limiting error messages and confusion. Will hiding / unhiding reports be valuable for your administration in reducing inaccuracies and questions from your teams to administrators? If so, how?
- Our release of the new UI provides search and filtering capability to out-of-the-box Apptio BI Reports and an improvement to the overall design. To that end, we are continuing to expand our library of reports with many new pre-populated templates coming in the next few weeks. Do you feel like you will be more motivated to use the out-of-the-box reporting experience as it continues to be enhanced and the library expands?
- What reports are you looking for that are not yet present in the out-of-the-box menu? Have you been able to use the reports so far, or have you started / stopped using them - and why?
Thank you all and have a wonderful rest of your week and we greatly appreciate your responses! Please reach out to myself @Connor Kinkead, @Curtis Michael , @Matt Wroblewski and @Matt Gerow with any questions.
#ApptioBI