Create Your Own Orion Report Now

Or everything you always wanted to know about Orion reports but were afraid to ask.

This post is meant for everyone who would like to create his/her own Orion report but is not sure how to start. We have collected a few useful resources that can help you start creating basic reports and also provide technical reference for future enhancements.

The Big Picture

A predefined set of reports is available in the Orion Web Console (HOME -> Reports).

Although the predefined reports are useful and easily accessible, you may sometimes find yourself in need of customization. In that case, there is the Orion Report Writer application that can be found on your Orion server under Start -> All Programs -> SolarWinds Orion -> Alerting, Reporting, and Mapping -> Report Writer.

Using the Report Writer, you can easily create your own Orion reports either from scratch or by editing an existing report. If you want, you can even directly enter the SQL commands implementing the desired report functionality.

And there is more. You can use the Orion Report Scheduler (Start -> All Programs -> SolarWinds Orion -> Alerting, Reporting, and Mapping -> Orion Report Scheduler) to schedule report-related actions. For example, you could create a job that would automatically e-mail you a report every Monday morning that included any significant network events that occurred over the weekend.

Do You Have a Tutorial?

Yes!

As a quick start guide, you can use Video Tutorial: Using Report Writer within Orion NPM.

Outline:

Report Writer overview
Report creation and customization
Exporting reports

Advanced topics on reports from SolarWinds’ NPM network monitor are included in Video Tutorial: Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) v10 Customer Training - Level II.

Outline:

Orion reporting overview
Reporting architecture
Report types and customization
Report delivery options
A lot of hands-on examples

An exhaustive source of information is Customer Training: NPM Level 2 - Reporting - A Webcast from SolarWinds.

Outline:

Introductions and Housekeeping
Top Report Features
Working with Existing Reports
Examining the Resulting SQL Queries
Filtering and Date Formats
A bit About SQL
Report Scheduler
Including Charts

I Want to Know More!

Then please refer to SolarWinds Technical Reference: Understanding Orion Report Writer.

Other Useful Links

Reports on Orion NPM thwack Content Exchange – what you need may already exist here

Video Tutorial: Managing Custom Properties in Orion NPM.

Orion Administrator's Guide

SolarWinds Knowledge Base

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Comments

jeffnorton

I for one would like to see the report writer moved to the web interface. As part of that a web driven report writer should have the ability to allow users other than admin to write reports.

cvachovecj

Moving the report writer to web is definitely an intention.

roger_that

This blog post is now 4 years old - has anything changed with the report writer with the release of NPM 12? Do we need a new blog entry, with new instructions?

cvachovecj

The reporting system was moved to the web console long time ago. I would say this blog post is no longer relevant.

enderaz

If that's the case, then they didn't do a very good job. I struggled for the good part of the day to make a custom report yesterday. I posted up on the forums several times to see if others could help. Finally I logged into the server, and was easily able to create the report I wanted using the report writer.

prawij

There seems to be many components that I can access/sort by in the Report Writer tool that I cannot do with the web console. Specifically any custom properties I've defined. It's not so much a problem for me as I always use the Report Writer tool, however it's a pain because I can't give that capability to some of our account holders without also giving them admin access to the poller itself. Are there any thoughts on perhaps allowing the Report Writer tool to authenticate to Orion like the Network Atlas tool does, so the Report Writer app can be deployed to the account holder's PC and they can login and use it to create new reports (assuming they have the report permission enabled in their account)?

Edited to add: the report scheduling function has been successfully moved to the web console since the original post and I haven't had any issues with that part of it.

mehmoodakhan

i am frequently used report writer.. its too awesome and cool. i like this too much.

john.hartman

Keep both!

tallyrich

I would like to see something beyond report writer.

I'm not a SQL guy and would like to be able to extract data in more comprehensive ways than just line reports. The primary thing that I need is to pull all of the hardware asset information. I love the way it is displayed on the screen, but would really appreciate being able to easily extract all of that information for each device into a file, or spreadsheet or document.

sonic9t9

The new GUI reporting tool is awful!!! It's a nightmare to get what you want. The old way on the server itself was so much better.