Glad you asked! As an organization that relies heavily on really great reports, we have some personal favorite enhancements to highlight. Of course, you can read all about the Rational solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management Highlights of 6.0.3 and also review the complete set of “New & Noteworthy” updates to Jazz Reporting Service (JRS) by visiting Jazz Reporting Service 6.0.3.

Enhanced user experience

Who doesn’t want a better user experience? I know, Report Builder is pretty easy to use. But, the more you use it, the more you want it to do for you… am I right? If you’re already using Report Builder to create reports in earlier versions of JRS, you will really appreciate my personal favorite enhancement — the ability to re-order columns using drag-and-drop. How can anything that seems so trivial be so awesome? Just write a few reports yourself, then a few more. Previously, you had to use the up and down arrows to move columns position-by-position. Tedious to say the least! Now, just grab a column and move it where you want it in the tabular results:

Golden! Another great enhancement provides you with the ability to learn while doing. There is truly no other (or better) way. While you’re in Report Builder, just click the Learn button:

There’s more, but let’s move on to the enhanced capabilities – which indirectly make for a better user experience.

Enhanced report writing capabilities

There are all sorts of new capabilities to develop great reports, but a few in particular just make my day!

Building the traceability tree

Like me, I’m sure those of you experienced with Report Builder have been waiting for the ability to develop multiple levels of traceability from a single starting point. It’s here now, along with the ability to include more complex data in the traceability tree:

Combining results in the Table view

Why do you care about this? Let’s say you want to report across multiple projects and each uses its own attribute to reflect similar information. Yes, you have to add all of the attributes into the Report, but the results can be combined into a single column:

More, better graphics!

I admit it, I can spend hours tweaking my report graphics. It’s just plain fun! I could probably also spend hours telling you about the great new graphical renderings you can create in 6.0.3, but the “New & Noteworthy” article does a good job of that. More control over content and colors, combining bars and lines, more control over the rendering and the ability to label the results are all now possible in 6.0.3.

Please do visit the Jazz Reporting Service 6.0.3 and don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have questions or need any help as you begin (or continue) your report writing journey.

Amy Silberbauer (asilber@us.ibm.com)
Moshe Cohen (mcohen@us.ibm.com)

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