Converting Reports

About Converting Reports

A primary enhancement of SAS IT Resource Management 3.2 is the incorporation of world-class data management, reporting, and report distribution capabilities that are available from SAS. In previous releases, SAS IT Resource Management relied upon a custom reporting interface to perform the following tasks:

Summarize data by time periods that were specified at report generation time.
Define and set report options.
Generate a specific set of report types.

SAS Enterprise Guide has long been available to SAS IT Resource Management customers as a reporting tool option, but the primary reporting capability was the IT Resource Management report macros. Beginning with SAS IT Resource Management 3.1.1, SAS Enterprise Guide became the primary reporting tool for the SAS IT Resource Management solution. Legacy report macros for SAS IT Resource Management are no longer delivered.

This document provides a guideline for converting reports that are generated by the SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 reporting tools (the report macros) to new and enhanced reports using SAS IT Resource Management 3.2 and the SAS Enterprise Guide reporting tool. Here are some similarities between reporting with SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 and reporting with SAS IT Resource Management 3.2 using SAS Enterprise Guide:

Both reporting tools provide an interface that enables you to generate reports quickly and easily without requiring SAS programming skills.
Both reporting tools enable you to write and submit SAS code to generate reports.
Both reporting tools support a variety of SAS graph types and options.
Both reporting tools generate the SAS code that is necessary to create the desired reports.
Both reporting tools support the creation of report definitions that can be run in batch mode.

However, there are differences between using the SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 reporting tool and using SAS Enterprise Guide to generate reports in SAS IT Resource Management 3.2:

The SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 reporting tools performed data manipulation tasks that were sometimes time consuming. Whenever possible, data manipulation tasks are now accomplished while data is staged and aggregated by SAS IT Resource Management. This results in information map data sources that are report ready and can serve as input to SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Web Report Studio.
SAS Enterprise Guide delivers a user-friendly interface from which a significant set of report tasks and task options are selected. The user interface for SAS Enterprise Guide is far superior to the SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 user interface for report generation.
SAS Enterprise Guide supports a much larger set of report types and options than those that are available in the SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 report macros. It also offers many data management and analytical procedures that are not available in SAS IT Resource Management 2.7.

SAS Enterprise Guide supports reporting from report-ready data that is accessible through information maps. Using information maps is the recommended method for accessing data in SAS IT Resource Management 3.2.

The following table shows the SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 macros and the SAS Enterprise Guide tasks that can be used to generate equivalent reports in SAS IT Resource Management 3.2. Much of the existing functionality that is available through SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 reporting macros is provided by SAS Enterprise Guide. The data manipulation capabilities are now handled by staging and aggregation processes of SAS IT Resource Management.

SAS Enterprise Guide Report Tasks for SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 Report Macros

SAS IT Resource Management 2.7 Report Macro	SAS Enterprise Guide Report Task or Feature That Is Used to Re-create the Report for SAS IT Resource Management 3.2
%CPCHART	Bar chart and pie chart tasks
%CPCCHRT	Bar chart and pie chart tasks
%CPPLOT1	Line plot, scatter plot, area plot, and box plot tasks
%CPPLOT2	Line plot task
%CPTABRPT	Summary tables task
%CPPRINT	List data task
%CPSRCRPT	Program Node task
%CPG3D	3-D Scatter plot task
%CPGTPLT	Document builder feature
%CPSETHAX	SAS Enterprise Guide report option for selected reports
%CPIDTOPN	Information map filter or Query task
%CPRUNRPT	Stored process feature
%CPSPEC	Tile chart task
%CPEXCEPT	Information map filter or Query task
%CPHTREE	Gallery Task
%CPMANRPT	Gallery Task
%CPWEBINI	Gallery Task
%CPXHTML	Gallery Task
%CPENTCPY	Obsolete

For detailed information about creating specific reports and setting report task options using SAS Enterprise Guide, see the following sections.

Global and Individual Report Tasks and Options

About Report Tasks and Options

To create reports with SAS Enterprise Guide, use the report task that is associated with the report that you want to create. You can set the options for the report in one of the following three ways:

Set global options in the Options window. These options apply to all tasks in the SAS Enterprise Guide project.
Set options in each individual report task.
Set options in the ITRM Gallery task when working with report definitions that will run in batch mode.

The report options and their respective functions are labeled clearly and are described in the Help for SAS Enterprise Guide. Report tasks with similar options use similar Options windows.

Global Report Task Options

In SAS Enterprise Guide, there are a few report task options that can be set for all report tasks in your project. To set one of these options, select Tools

Options from the menu bar. Then, on the left pane of the Options window, select the category of report options that you want to configure. The following list shows some of the global options that you can set.

Graph enables you to specify the graph format (such as ActiveX or PNG) and graph dimensions (such as height and width).
Tasks General enables you to specify the report title and footnote.
Viewer enables you to specify how you want to view report output (such as SAS Enterprise Guide or your local browser).
Custom Code enables you to specify options related to using custom code.

Global Color, Pattern, and Symbol Options Using SAS Templates

In SAS Enterprise Guide, pattern and symbol options can be set at the individual report task level. However, you can set these options once for the entire project using SAS templates and style sheets. Global options can be set using this method and can still be overridden in an individual report task for a specific task. To set these global graph options, perform the following steps:

Use SAS to create your custom SAS template.
Use SAS Enterprise Guide to create your custom style sheet with the same name as your custom SAS template.
Set the custom style sheet as the default style.
Run your report tasks.

Reports that do not have these graph options set for the report task will use the colors, patterns, and symbols that are set in your SAS template. For details about how to create a custom SAS Template and style sheet, see About Templates and Style Sheets.

Individual Report Task Options

Most report task options are set individually by specifying values for each report task. To set values for the report task options in an individual report task, perform the following steps:

Right-click a report task and select Modify <report task name>.
Select from the various menu options in the left pane, and specify values for the corresponding parameters.

Click Help to view the Help on any specific option in the current window.

Top N and Bottom N Reporting

In SAS IT Resource Management 2.7, some report types support the Top N and Bottom N reporting option. For other report types, using the macro %CPIDTOPN is required.

You can use SAS Enterprise Guide to report on the top or bottom contributors for a specific column in SAS IT Resource Management 3.2. To do so, you can use a filter to select the top or bottom contributors for a specific rank column that is created when data is aggregated by SAS IT Resource Management. Information map filters can be defined (using Information Map transformations in SAS IT Resource Management or using SAS Information Map Studio) and selected (using the Filter tab of the Information Map window) in SAS Enterprise Guide. Filters can also be specified within SAS Enterprise Guide Query tasks.

Report Output

In SAS Enterprise Guide, you can generate graph output to the SAS Enterprise Guide window or to a local browser. You can specify your preference by selecting Tools

Options from the menu bar. You can also generate graph output by publishing to a Web server or to a file system.

You can use the ITRM Gallery task to create report definitions that are submitted in report jobs. The report jobs generate reports in the SAS content server and are displayed with the Gallery Manager.

You can also use SAS Management Console to define channels and then select a channel when publishing from SAS Enterprise Guide. In addition, if you use the SAS Report format, a report can be published to a repository and SAS Web Report Studio. For more information about publishing SAS Enterprise Guide reports, see SAS Enterprise Guide Help.

Print a Report

To print a report from the SAS Enterprise Guide window select File

Print or right-click on the SAS Enterprise Guide report window and select Print. You can also use your Web browser print capabilities to print reports when viewing them from a browser in SAS Enterprise Guide, SAS Information Delivery Portal, and Gallery Manager.

Stack Columns Task (Reference 1)

The Stack Columns task in SAS Enterprise Guide enables you to stack your data so that multiple columns of data can become multiple rows of data. This step is required for recreating certain charts and plots that are available in SAS IT Resource Management 2.7.

The following example shows where two analysis variables are stacked. Assign the variables from the Variables to assign box to the appropriate role in the Task roles box.

Next, select Column Naming to open the Column Naming window and change the default column names and labels for the new columns that are created. This step is optional. However, changing the default column labels is recommended because they are very long and can cause unexpected errors for some graph types.

For more information about working with the Stack Columns task, see the SAS Enterprise Guide Help.

Custom User Code to Accumulate Stacked Data (Reference 2)

The Stack Columns task in SAS Enterprise Guide enables you to reshape your data so that multiple columns of data can become multiple rows of data. This step is required for re-creating certain charts and plots that are available in SAS IT Resource Management 2.7.

However, custom user code is required if you also want to accumulate the data. This step is required for re-creating stacked plots that are available in SAS IT Resource Management 2.7.

You can add custom user code to the Stack Columns task by selecting Preview code

Insert Code. Your custom code must follow the RUN statement that follows the TRANSPOSE procedure code that is generated by SAS Enterprise Guide.

The following image shows the User Code window. You can insert custom user code wherever an “insert code” icon appears. The “insert code” icon at the bottom of the image shows where you should insert your custom user code to accumulate your data.

The custom user code that is required to accumulate your data is a DATA step that accumulates the output from PROC TRANSPOSE. The next display shows a code fragment that includes PROC TRANSPOSE and a DATA step for accumulating your stacked data.

Note that when writing the DATA step, some information is derived from PROC TRANSPOSE. The following information is derived from PROC TRANSPOSE:

The list of BY variables must equal the list of BY variables of PROC TRANSPOSE.
The required variable for the FIRST function will be derived from the BY variable list of PROC TRANSPOSE. The variable that is selected determines how your data is accumulated. Use the following rules to determine which variable to select for the FIRST function:
- If you want to accumulate analysis variables (as shown in Example 16), then select the last BY variable from PROC TRANSPOSE for the FIRST function of your DATA step.
- If you want to accumulate a class variable (as shown in Example 18), then use the next to last BY variable from PROC TRANSPOSE for the FIRST function of your DATA step.

The following example shows how to accumulate an analysis variable.