When creating your first report, you will discover that the AIMS Analytics module consists of a wide range of possibilities.
AIMS allows users to create reports with any data available for your environment.
You can create public or private reports, set a report as a dashboard and define which users will receive dashboard reports.
A report can be created to display:
- Overall BizTalk Performance Health,
- BizTalk Business Process Health,
- Component Performance Bottleneck,
- Business Process behavior reports & trends,
- Overall BizTalk Scalability & forecasting.
AIMS never deletes any performance data, making it a valuable data source.
A report can be created by selecting ‘Analytics’, ‘create new’ from the upper menu, or by following these steps:
Creating a report
To start a new report;
- Navigate to the environment for which you want to create a report.
- Go to ‘Topology’ in the top menu, and select the node for which you want to create a report (e.g. a BizTalk Host Instance).
3. On the different nodes, one or more links will be presented as a shortcut to Analytics. Select the block with data from which you want to create the report, and click the ‘See in Analytics’ link.
4.A popup will appear, supplying you with statistic types you can select to create a report with. Multiple or all static types can be selected.
- Select all: Selects all static types.
- Multiple Charts: Will create a report with a separate chart for each selected static types.
- Corridors: Displayed as a bleu area that reveals the normal behavior pattern. The Corridors can only be displayed with ‘Multiple Chart’ selected.
The figure below shows a report with three different static types, ‘Multiple chart’ and ‘Corridors’ selected.
Naming your report
Now that a report has been created, you can start configuring it.
Start by changing the name to a meaningful name stating the purpose or content of the report. The name can be changed by clicking on the current name. Type in the new name en click on the check mark to save it.
Adding a new block
By clicking the ‘+ block’ button on the upper left corner of the screen, a new block can be added to the report.
There are different block types:
- Chart,
- Daily apdex, which will display the daily application performance index as a double,
- BizTalk performance,
- Unhealty components,
- Top messaging patterns changes,
- Top messaging patterns,
- Activity and changes,
- Errors and anomalies,
- Top error changes,
- Table,
- Stopped components,
- Image,
- Node details,
- Memo, and
- Top components statistics.
After selecting a block type (in this example a chart), a configuration screen will appear. The name of the block can be edited, as well as the following;
- Block type (‘Current versus Previous period’, ‘Custom’, ‘Current month / last month / last year’ and ‘Custom Pie Chart’)
- Specify period (‘Calendar’s’, ‘Last N’ or ‘Specific’
- Resolution (‘day’, ‘hour’, ’10 minutes’ and ‘1 minute’)
- Select node type (presenting you with a list of all node types available)
- Select system (presenting you with a list of all systems available)
- You can try to merge the value axis by statistic types. The merge option is enabled by default, so that when you keep adding parameters to chart, AIMS will try to re-use existing y-axis’s as much as possible to avoid clutter.
- Custom merge the data, for override of the auto-merge. Custom merge allows you to individually change the parameters y-axis, and manually merge these. Again, to avoid y- axis’s taking up too much real-estate
After selecting a system, more (formatting) configuration options appear.
- Statistics type,
- Node types,
- Chart type,
- Color.
Other statistics can be added to the current block, so related data can be compared to each other.
Report configuration
After having added one or more new blocks to your report, new options appear in the menu bar underneath your report name.
On the left side;
- Restore: undoing the last adjustment made to the report, a box will appear asking confirmation: “Please confirm that you want to restore the report Demo Report”
- Save: You can create a report for a one-time usage, but it is most common to create and save a report to be used by different people multiple times.
- Delete: To delete the report entirely, a box will appear asking confirmation: “Please confirm that you want to delete the report Demo Report from the system”.
On the right side:
- PDF: Creates a PDF from the report immediately, enabling you to share it with others whom may not have access to AIMS.
- Refresh: Refreshing the page with the newest data available.
- Copy: Creating an exact copy of your dashboard, called (report name) new.
- Subscribe: With a saved report you can choose to subscribe to it, by entering an email address. Choose to receive the report by email once, daily, weekly or monthly.
- Add dashboard: To use the report as your personal dashboard, or as an environment dashboard.
- Private: Making the report private.
