Report general settings
  • 05 Jul 2023
  • 4 minutes to read

Report general settings


Article Summary

The following settings are available when configuring the general report settings

SettingsDescription
Notes

Format export options

You can decide which formats you wish to enable for exporting results from reports. See more in Report export options.

-

Export to file system

Exporting to the file system allows reports to be saved to a directory on the web server's file system, instead of only emailing the report to the user scheduling the report. This can be useful when the report needs to be accessed by external system automation, and the report directory might have SFTP access enabled.

Reports saved to the file system are saved as Export file system root path/username/report.ext where username is an internal username of a user who owns the scheduled report, the report is the name of the scheduled report with non-alpha-numeric characters removed, and ext is the appropriate export file name extension.

File export path

Absolute file system path to a writeable directory where reports can be exported and stored.

Setting executable and local paths need to be enabled first in config.php. Ensure that $CFG->preventexecpath is set to false in config.php.

Make sure to configure a correct system path if you are going to export reports to a file system.

Financial year start

This setting allows you to set the start date of the financial year which is used in the report's content controls.

-

Global restriction behaviour for users with no active restrictions

Specifies what users will see when viewing a report with global restrictions enabled when they don't have any restrictions applied to them.

-

Enable global restrictions in new user reports

If enabled, all newly created user reports will have global report restrictions enabled.

-

Global report restrictions number of records per page

Number of records per page allows you to define how many records display on a report page.

-

Allow reports to show total count

When enabled, report builder reports can be configured to show a total count of records, before filters have been applied. Please be aware that getting this count can be an expensive operation, and for performance reasons, we recommend you leave this setting off.

-

Set a default audience-based content restriction for all new user reports

The audience selected from the dropdown list will appear as the default audience-based content restriction setting for all new user reports. It can be overridden on individual reports by report creators.

-

Restrict initial display in all report builder reports

This setting controls how the report is initially displayed and is recommended for larger reports where you will be filtering the results (e.g. site logs). It increases the speed of the report by allowing you to apply filters and display only the results instead of initially trying to display all the data.

When enabled, any embedded reports will not generate results until a filter is applied or an empty search is run. If it is disabled or there are no filters, results will display immediately. 

-

Minimum scheduled report frequency

When this is set to Weekly you will see another option Scheduled Reports appear.

-

Schedule reports

Allows you to set the minimum period a report can be run in, this is useful to prevent reports being run too frequently on larger sites and thus causing slowness for your system. If Minimum scheduled report frequency setting is set to:

  • Every X minutes: No changes, all options are available.
  • Every X hours: All options are available except Every X minutes option.
  • Daily: The Daily, Weekly, and Monthly options are available, Every X minutes and Every X hours are not available.
  • Weekly: Both the Weekly and Monthly options are available, Daily, Every X minutes, and Every X hours are not available.
  • Monthly: If this is set then the Monthly option is available, the other options are not available.

All options are available for users with the totara_reportbuilder:overridescheduledfrequency capability.

-

Scheduled report recipients

You can decide which recipient options will be available when scheduling reports:

  • Audience: Choose an audience to send report(s) to
  • System users: Browse or search a list of users
  • External users email: Enter external email address
  • Send to self: Tick the box to send a copy to yourself

-

Default result fetch method

An advanced option that allows you to fine-tune how results for the report are fetched from the database when displaying a single page of the table.

By default, the recommended approach for your database engine will be used. This is determined by the database engine itself.

In situations where you are experiencing poor performance for a report changing this setting may result in improved performance.

Setting this to use a standard recordset will result in report pages executing two distinct queries. The first is to get a single page of results, and the second is to get the total count of results for the report.

Setting this to use counted recordset will result in a single query being made against the database that will return both a single page of results and the total count of results.

Graph library

Choose the graphical library you wish to use for graphs:

When exporting to PDF Totara will always use SVGGraph. This may result in some visual differences when exporting a chart created with ChartJS.

Default graph colours

Select the default colours to be used in report graphs using hex codes in a comma-separated list.

You can override the default graph colours at the report level using the Custom settings when creating the graph.

The default list of colours is:
 #3869B1,#DA7E31,#3F9852,#CC2428,#958C3D,#6B4C9A,#8C8C8C

Next steps

C003 - Reports(1)Get involved in the conversation about Reporting on the Totara Community. 

The Totara Academy has a whole course dedicated to using Reports in Totara. Here you can learn more on how to use reports, see best practice, and give it a go yourself.

© Copyright 2024 Totara Learning Solutions. All rights reserved.


Was this article helpful?

Changing your password will log you out immediately. Use the new password to log back in.
First name must have atleast 2 characters. Numbers and special characters are not allowed.
Last name must have atleast 1 characters. Numbers and special characters are not allowed.
Enter a valid email
Enter a valid password
Your profile has been successfully updated.