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With release 10.1, TeamQuest Performance Software has been designed using rich web-based applications and a federated database architecture. TeamQuest software now gathers information from any database within the enterprise without the capacity planner or administrator having to know which database the resources relate to or where those resources are physically located.

IT Service Reporter offers enhanced enterprise-wide performance reporting, providing the ability to conveniently group enterprise IT resources and report on those groupings. In addition, it shows and reports on relationships within the enterprise.

This is all made possible by TeamQuest’s use of an IT Resource. An IT Resource identifies a physical or logical component or group of components within a data center or IT organization. Resources are typically computer and related equipment, software, facilities, or organizational.

For example, The Reporter Template definer can group all AIX servers and provide reports and analysis on that specific grouping. Similarly, an Oracle database administrator could create an Oracle grouping that spans Windows, Sun and Linux servers running Oracle applications. Alternatively, the Oracle DBA might want to build a report highlighting a very specific business relationship within the Oracle environment.

IT Resources, then, are a way to identify physical and logical components, and group components together for fast, convenient reporting. They form the building blocks to achieving reporting objectives. These IT Resources can also be in used conjunction with or as part of the ITIL Configuration Management Database (CMDB). This allows users to report on the availability and status of pre-defined Configuration Items (CIs).

Additionally, IT Resources provide a mechanism to show up/down stream relationships. This aids in the understanding of cause/effect relationships and can provide higher or lower levels of detail as desired. Such flexibility offers the ability to adapt to any environment, framework or architecture e.g. SOA, grids, multi-tier J2EE and ITIL.

Click here for a definition of terms associated with this paper.

Building a Report
TeamQuest IT Service Reporter is used to produce regular reports which include current usage of resources and trends. It provides “status at a glance” for performance review and identification of risk areas for the entire enterprise. The intended users of Reporter are IT executives, IT managers, and business area customers. Reporting is administered only by authorized Reporter administrators.

IT Service Analyzer provides a number of pre-defined content reports and is far more than just a collection of useful charts. After viewing monitored data in the IT Service Analyzer, the template can be saved as a Reporter Template which then allows the user to add additional content to reports such as supporting text, graphics, logos or copyright/legal notices. Reporter can be used to schedule reports that need time to generate such as risk reports in the form of top/bottom for large numbers of IT Resources. It is excellent at producing daily, weekly and monthly risk reports.

TeamQuest IT Service Reporter also has a historical reporting emphasis. Multiple systems can be shown on the same chart, or multiple charts grouped together for comparison/correlation purposes.

Six major elements are involved in gathering report requirements and building a report.

IT Resources: This is all about the perspective desired in a specific report. They can be generated based on the system, the application, the business unit, and the job (Unix, DBA, Oracle), for example.

IT Resources and Tables: This requirement deals with metrics for the various tables and charts. Some possible metrics include CPU busy, memory and disk usage.

Time Periods: What is the time frame or time span of the report? This might be yesterday from 8 am - 6 pm, across the previous week’s 1st shift, and countless other time periods that might be considered.

Report Template: What type of report is required? They can be published in text, tabular, chart or graphical formats, or any combination of these. Report Publisher: This deals with how often the report should be published. This might be daily, weekly or monthly, for example.

Access Control: While it is the final element listed here, it is a vital one in today’s world. Access control answers vital questions. Who is allowed to see the report(s)? Should they be allowed to annotate these reports? Should these users be permitted to build their own reports?

Let’s take a look at access control in more detail.

Access control gives users the ability to separate report viewers by security needs or easy-of-use. The federated database has controls giving administrator’s the ability to segregate users based on business requirements. Groups are assigned a unique group name, as well as one or more privileges. These privileges define access rights to Reporter such as read-only (can read but not print, analyze or build reports), Reporter-annotate (can make annotations to existing reports), Reporter-publisher, IT Resource-administrator (ability to create IT Resources) and Time Period-administrator. Thus some users and groups may only be allowed to view reports, some can make notations on them, and others have the right to publish their own reports.

In addition, some users may have access to TeamQuest IT Service Analyzer while others do not. Databases are also controlled within TeamQuest IT Service Reporter. As each database is related to one or more groups, the software controls which systems are available for reporting and which are not. It is a simple matter requiring a few mouse clicks to assign access privileges across the entire organization. Once done, users can only access authorized functions. Everything else on their screens appears grayed out.

Report Template Definer
Out of the box, TeamQuest automatically defines a large number of IT Resources upon installation. As these encompass every system and component within the enterprise, most users prefer to organize them so they are easy to read. This takes only a few minutes. In addition, users can group resources into specific business units, for example.

When defining reports, it is best to begin from the IT Resource list that is displayed on the left of the screen in an Explorer-like arrangement. By doing so, the user knows which platforms are involved. This helps report compilers to avoid mixing metrics within one report – Windows and AIX systems, for example, may have differing metrics and this can lead to conflicts. TeamQuest provides over a dozen predefined and commonly used time periods that can be applied automatically to the Report Template. Alternatively, the user can create customized time periods. For example, a time period might be desired which covers Monday to Friday, omitting weekend and/or evening time slots. Once created, this time period option stored and made available for reselection at a later date.

Note that Reporter will only go down to 10 minute intervals for reporting purposes. Anyone wishing to more to a narrower time period can move to TeamQuest IT Service Analyzer which offers 1 minute time intervals. If the user cannot locate an appropriate Report Template, all it takes is to click on new report template icon to begin the creation of a custom template. As mentioned earlier, TeamQuest IT Service Reporter makes it easy to add some report objects to better describe the report and make it more company and/or business specific. Images can be dragged and dropped onto the report template area. Similarly, chart and text can be imported and saved. Additionally, a wide range of charts, tables and graphics are available within the application for use in report building.

Report Publisher
Once a report template is built, it can then be scheduled to be published. All that is needed is to drag and drop the report template onto the folder that is going to manage the schedule. Reports will be published thereafter based upon that schedule.

If scheduled daily, for instance, they automatically appear each day at a preset time without the need of further input from the user. Some administrators, for example, compile a report template that contains all the key metrics and systems of their area. When they arrive to work each day, they log on and can see at a glance the state of the enterprise. Further, the administrator can access previous day’s (or week’s or month’s) reports by clicking the date displayed on the left of the screen. From a published report, those users with access rights into TeamQuest IT Service Analyzer can also drill into problem areas to rapidly isolate the source. Other reports can, of course, be created for and published for management. Report Templates can be created that define key metrics and contain text explaining important graphs, trends and statistics. Thus it is possible to use TeamQuest IT Service Reporter to visually highlight IT issues without bogging a non-technical audience down in complexity. Such reports can also be exported to Excel or PDF files.

A good grasp of basic definitions is crucial to any discussion of TeamQuest IT Service Reporter.

A report is a series of one or more charts complete with the chart data. A report may also include other text and graphics.

A report template is a pattern used to form a report. A report template may contain IT Resource references, table references, time period selections, and chart attributes. It contains no actual data.

A report object is a graphic or text element that can be included in a report.

Report publishing is the automatic process of turning report templates into reports.

A time period is a predefined time selection. A time period can contain either specific or relative date ranges. It also contains the duration of each point in a chart or table. This might be defined as the 9 till 5 period, yesterday, week-to-date, year-to-date, etc. It is possible to change TeamQuest reports and publish various reports with different data ranges.

A chart is a graph or table.

A graph is a diagram (as a series of one or more points, lines, line segments, curves, or areas) that represents the variation of a variable in comparison with that of one or more other variables.

A table is a systematic arrangement of data usually in rows and columns for ready reference.