Deploy Report and Dashboard Objects

This page applies to developers. It provides detailed information on how to manage and deploy report and dashboard objects.

Overview

Developers often know your enterprise data best. To help business users analyze that data more effectively, developers can deploy reports and dashboards created using the accelerated design experience in Process HQ.

Deployment is simple. Just create report or dashboard objects and add them to the appropriate application, then follow the familiar deployment workflow.

Once a report or dashboard object is successfully deployed, business users in the target environment can access the report or dashboard in either the Process HQ workspace or from a site, and use the objects as templates to design their own reports and dashboards.

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When to deploy reports and dashboards

You can deploy reports or dashboards when you want to:

• Share a report or dashboard from one source environment to another.
• Include key business metrics and reports as part of a standard application delivery.

How to deploy reports and dashboards

Any report or dashboard created in Process HQ is automatically available as an object in Appian Designer.

To deploy a report or dashboard object:

1. Create the report or dashboard.
2. Review the object security.
3. Add the object to the appropriate application(s).
4. Deploy the object.

Security

Object security for design objects is configured through role maps.

The role map for a report or dashboard object allows the following permission levels:

• No Access: The object is not visible to the user or group.
• Viewer: The object is visible to the user or group, but the actions they can take on it are limited.
• Editor: The object is visible to the user or group, and they can take all actions except editing the object role map and deleting the object.
• Administrator: The object is visible to the user or group, and they can take all actions including editing the object role map and deleting the object. This permission level becomes Owner access in Process HQ.

By default, when you create a report or dashboard, the object's role map reflects the following permission levels:

• The creator of the report or dashboard is assigned Administrator permission level in the report or dashboard object.
• The Process HQ Users system group is assigned No Access.

The following table further describes the actions users can take based on permission level:

Action
	Administrator	Editor	Viewer	No Access
See a report or dashboard object in the Objects view.	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Add a report or dashboard object to an application.	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
View security for a report or dashboard object.	Yes	Yes	No	No
Edit security for a report or dashboard object.	Yes	No	No	No
View dependencies and precedents for a report or dashboard object.	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Deploy a report or dashboard object.	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Delete a report or dashboard object.	Yes	No	No	No

Manage these objects

This section explains how to create, edit, and delete report and dashboard objects, as well as add these objects to applications.

Common object options

There are a few common options available across different design objects. The following options are available in report and dashboard objects.

Option	Available?
Versioning	Yes
Renaming	Process HQ
Viewing Appian Design Guidance	No
Duplicating	Process HQ
Viewing Performance Details	No
Object overwrite protection	No

Create these objects

Users must be a member of the Data Fabric Report Creators group in order to create reports and dashboards.

Create a report

To create a report in Appian Designer:

1. In the Build view, click NEW > Report.

2. Configure the following properties:

   Property	Description
   Name	Enter a name for the report.
   Description	(Optional) Enter a brief description of the report.
   Object Type	Select the type of object you want to use as the data source for the report.
   Record Type or Business Process	Select a record type or a business process to use as the data source for the report.

3. Click CREATE.
4. Configure security for the report.
5. Click SAVE. A new tab opens where you can continue configuring your report in Process HQ.

Create a dashboard

To create a dashboard in Appian Designer:

1. In the Build view, click NEW > Dashboard.

2. Configure the following properties:

   Property	Description
   Name	Enter a name for the dashboard.
   Description	(Optional) Enter a brief description of the dashboard.

3. Click CREATE.
4. Configure security for the dashboard.
5. Click SAVE. A new tab opens where you can continue configuring your dashboard in Process HQ.

Add these objects to an application

To add report and dashboard objects to an application, you must have:

• Editor permissions for the application.
• Viewer permissions for the report and dashboard objects.

To add a report or dashboard object to an application from Appian Designer:

1. Go to the Build view of the application.
2. Go to the ALL OBJECTS tab, if it's not already active.
3. In the toolbar, click ADD EXISTING.
4. Select Existing Objects.
5. In the Other box, select one or more reports and dashboards.
6. (Optional) To check the added objects for missing precedents, select Check for missing precedents after adding objects to this application.
7. Click ADD TO APPLICATION.

To add a report or dashboard to an application from the Process HQ home page:

1. From the navigation menu, select Process HQ.
2. In the RECENTLY OPENED or LIBRARY section, click the three-dot menu next to the report or dashboard you want to add, then click Add to App.
3. In the Add to App dialog:
   • For Application, type the name of the application you want to add the report or dashboard to.
4. Click ADD.

Edit the object properties

You must have Editor permissions to edit properties for a report or dashboard object.

To edit properties for a report or dashboard object:

1. In the Build view of your application, click the object in the objects grid. The report or dashboard opens in Process HQ in another tab.

2. Click the edit icon next to the report or dashboard name.

   For example:

   

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3. In the Edit Report Properties or Edit Dashboard Properties dialog:
   • For Name, enter a name for the report or dashboard.
   • For Description, enter a brief description of the report or dashboard.
4. Click UPDATE. The dialog closes.
5. In the report header, click SAVE.

Delete these objects

You must have Administrator permissions to delete a report or dashboard object.

To delete a report or dashboard object:

1. In the Build view, select the check box next to the object's name.
2. Click DELETE in the toolbar.
3. Review the list of dependent objects. See Object Relationships for more information about the impact of deleting objects that rely on each other.
4. Click DELETE to confirm.

See also

• Manage Reports and Dashboards: Learn how to create, design, and manage reports, then assemble those reports into dashboards and share them with colleagues.
• Deploy to Process HQ: Learn how to deploy report and dashboard objects to Process HQ.

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