8.1 Executing and Leveraging Reports

Executing and Leveraging Reports

Objective 3.5 is execute and leverage reporting. Reports give auditors, managers, and administrators an at-a-glance view of IdentityIQ data, such as uncorrelated accounts, certification decisions, policy violations, and provisioning transactions. They can run on demand or on a schedule.

The Reports UI

Go to Intelligence > Reports:

Three Kinds of Report

• Report templates are the out-of-the-box reports on the Reports tab. You can run them directly or use them as a base.
• Custom reports are customer-specific reports built as a new TaskDefinition specification. Once imported, they also appear on the Reports tab.
• Customized report instances are your saved copies with preset parameters, shown on My Reports. If you add filters to a standard report and save it, you create an instance and the template does not change.

The documentation also groups output styles: Detailed reports (grid data you can export to CSV), and Archived and Summary reports (end-of-period audit information, best exported to PDF).

Running, Scheduling, and Distributing

• Run: right-click and choose Execute (progress window, then results) or Execute in background (check the Report Results tab later). Save and Preview lets you adjust the layout, including column order, sort order, and hiding the summary or detail section.
• Schedule: right-click and choose Schedule. Give the schedule a unique name and description so a scheduled run is not overwritten by someone running the same report ad hoc. Frequencies are once, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually.
• Export: export the results to a file. Exported reports do not appear on the Report Results page.
• Delete: deleting a report also deletes its results.

Standard Report Properties

Searches from Advanced Analytics can also be saved as reports (section 8.2). They appear in the Search category on My Reports.

Reports Under the Hood

A report runs as a specialized task:

<TaskDefinition executor="sailpoint.reporting.LiveReportExecutor"
  name="Uncorrelated Accounts Report" progressMode="Percentage"
  resultAction="Rename" subType="Identity and User Reports"
  template="true" type="LiveReport">

• type="LiveReport" for all reports, including custom ones, and executor="sailpoint.reporting.LiveReportExecutor".
• template="true" puts the report on the Reports tab. Instances saved from it appear on My Reports.
• resultAction is the Previous Result Action: Rename, RenameNew, Cancel, or Delete.
• Results are stored as TaskResult objects.

The report body, <LiveReport>, defines a DataSource, Columns made of ReportColumnConfig entries, and optional forms, charts, and scripts. Data sources come in three types:

1. Filter – the simplest. It runs a projection query on an objectType, such as sailpoint.object.Link, using query parameters, and returns only the properties the columns need.
2. Java – a Java data source class for complex logic.
3. HQL – a Hibernate query.

For example, the Uncorrelated Accounts Report queries Link objects where identity.correlated is false, and shows columns such as nativeIdentity and application.name. To study the real definitions, export them from the console with export taskDefs.xml TaskDefinition, or open them in the Debug pages.

Designing a Custom Report

When no template fits, copy the closest standard report's TaskDefinition and change it, instead of starting from nothing. A custom report has these parts:

1. Report form – the parameters users fill in, built with the Forms API, such as applications or date ranges.
2. DataSource – where the data comes from (Filter, Java, or HQL), with query parameters bound to the form inputs.
3. Columns – ReportColumnConfig entries with a field, a header message key, the property to read, and sort settings.
4. Optional scripts or rules – for validation, initialization, extended columns, and charts.

Import the XML (section 3.1) with template="true" and a subType that places it in the right category.

Choosing Reports for Common Needs