FEATURE REQUEST - Used Ports Historical Report

This is a popular topic, and various insufficient suggestions & kluges have been offered over time.

LEM, or NPM's built-in Syslog solution, can track port-up / port-down via syslog messages received from switches.  If you had a talented DBA or an "Excel Rainman", they could generate reports for you from these syslog messages.

You might use Splunk to do the same thing, automatically, with some tweaking.

For a non-Global solution, I regularly use this type of report to enable me to find switchports that can be reused for new devices, based on how long a patched port has been inactive:  How to create a report displaying the Last Time Data was Transmitted or Received on a Switch Port

The Report that UDT offers for ports' status is a start, but it's not the solution it could be.  That information IS within UDT and NPM's syslog database.  If only we had a resource who thoroughly understood the Solarwinds Orion database, and who could quickly and easily create SDK SWQL queries to make the information visible.  Better still, use Solarwinds Reports to take that SWQL query and run it automatically as often as you'd need.  And then aggregate it into a single report or spreadsheet over time.

I'm overflowing with "if only" ideas on this.  I can see a need for an easy and intuitive SWQL Report generator.  Drag & drop, WYSIWYG output, (there's a phrase I have seen in a while!), complete with an easy pallet of formats & backgrounds from which to choose.  Top it all off with the ability to automatically insert graphs of the queried data, and correlated with selected (and suggested?) displayed charts and tables from NPM, UDT, NCM, etc.

Ideas are easy.  Finding someone with the skill set up implement them remains the challenge.