No Report Parameters in a Number of Reports

Hello,

I have exactly the same problem at a client at the moment.
I can't get reports to run, from the burndown to the Open vs Closed work items reports, none of them are giving us results...

When we try to set parameters for reports, it is all very random: we can either get nothing or half of the values populated...We reused a process template we were using before and the Data Collection Jobs are successful every day.

This is becoming a very annoying restriction :/ Can you please help? Any ideas welcome!

Claire

With respect to: "it is all very random: we can either get nothing or half of the values populated", this is a known design limitation of many of our out-of-the-box reports. That is to say, the values you see in the parameter lists are only those values for which work items exist. For example, you only see the iterations which actually have work items planned for them; you only see the severities for which there are actually work items with those severities. Add to this the fact that many parameters are cascading, which means they act as filters on the subsequent parameters in the cascade, and I can understand why this is confusing. We are working to alleviate this limitation in 4.0.

However, I am also interested that none of these are giving you results. My first question is usually whether the data collection jobs are working, and it looks like they are for you. Then it would be good to get a very specific example that is failing for you, where you are expecting to see data. For example:

1. Name of report (e.g. Open vs. Closed Work Items)
2. List of parameter values that appear for you to select from
3. Which values you select prior to running the report
4. What the report shows when you run it

If you'd like to open a defect with that information, that would be a good way to track the issue.

james
RTC Reports Team Lead

Hello,

I have exactly the same problem at a client at the moment.
I can't get reports to run, from the burndown to the Open vs Closed work items reports, none of them are giving us results...

When we try to set parameters for reports, it is all very random: we can either get nothing or half of the values populated...We reused a process template we were using before and the Data Collection Jobs are successful every day.

This is becoming a very annoying restriction :/ Can you please help? Any ideas welcome!

Claire

A bunch of reports won't work out of the box. Also be sure that your DataWarehouse jobs are running. The RTC needs to run these datawarehouse jobs to collect data to feed the reports. I should also note that these jobs have to collect data over time. Which means if you turn it on tonight that they still might not have any data to report. Since just turning on the data collection jobs isn't enough make sure you have turned them on for that project. Also do you have any 'Info not available' listed in your conditions? If so when you configue the parameters make sure that that listing isn't selected or it will mess up the results in the reports.

We had to go in and confure all reports manually cause most/none of them worked out of the box.

I resolved this for my project area.

Steps I had to perform

1) Make sure the reporting data warehouse user is a member of your project area and team area
2) Close a story or two for testing purposes
3) Check something into source control. I was using the RTC for SCRUM planning only and decided to check something in as a test
4) Have the data warehouse jobs run in all the apps

Hi James

1. Name of report (e.g. Open vs. Closed Work Items)
Open vs closed work items, and seeing similar problems with a Burndown/up charts

2. List of parameter values that appear for you to select from
On both cases, none except the last field which has All and another value I don't recall.

3. Which values you select prior to running the report
Project area in open vs closed

4. What the report shows when you run it
Blank

There is also a PMR for the burndown problem - 15388 033 866

thanks

anthony

I find that if you manually add the reporting datawarehouse user to your projects you will start getting some result.

How ever my team Ara filter say no informationa available. This causes the Team velicity chart to fail

Anyone have steps to solve this?

Hello,

Thanks for your responses :) Trying to go through them one byone this morning and see what I don't have in my environment...got a few question then!

- "Make sure the reporting data warehouse user is a member of your project area and team area" --> the user assigned to run the data collection jobs is dw_user and was not assigned to the project. Added it to the project nothing seems to have changed for now.

- We have the "Data Collection Jobs successful" message everyday. Is there a way of querying the DW database in DB2 to view the captured data? Just to make sur we actually have data to report on in there.

- Most reports I went through the morning and tried to run are not listng any parameters, even if Team Areas and Iteraion are clearly 2 properties that are always assigned to something and so should appear as a choice. It appears to be random as for example, standard burndow chart has no Team Area or Iteration (Details is Medium (Remaining Work) and High (All)). Standard Burnup gather the Timeline, Team Area values appear in the listbox but Iteration is still empty. Details are filled in (Low (Completed Work), Medium (Adds Planned Work) and High (All))

- The only report that seems to give us some sot of results so far is the Actual as Percentage of Estimated Work. Here again not sure how accurate this result is.

- We are not using Source Control - only RTC here.

My gutfeeling tells me something is going wrong, whether it is in setup or related to a bug. some of the reports show no parameters but you can see the arrow poining to an empty line as the chosen one automatically.

many thanks for your help!
Claire

Claire,

If you'd like to verify for certain whether there is data in the data warehouse, you can run some queries on the data warehouse. First find the name of the database (we recommend "RIDW" in the setup guide, not sure if you used that or not). Look in the REQUEST table in the RIODS schema; this should contain one record for each work item in the system. If it does, that's a good indication that the data collection jobs are working for work items.

For the work items data collection jobs, having the data collection user as a member of the project should have no effect.

james

Hello,

Thanks for your responses :) Trying to go through them one byone this morning and see what I don't have in my environment...got a few question then!

- "Make sure the reporting data warehouse user is a member of your project area and team area" --> the user assigned to run the data collection jobs is dw_user and was not assigned to the project. Added it to the project nothing seems to have changed for now.

- We have the "Data Collection Jobs successful" message everyday. Is there a way of querying the DW database in DB2 to view the captured data? Just to make sur we actually have data to report on in there.

- Most reports I went through the morning and tried to run are not listng any parameters, even if Team Areas and Iteraion are clearly 2 properties that are always assigned to something and so should appear as a choice. It appears to be random as for example, standard burndow chart has no Team Area or Iteration (Details is Medium (Remaining Work) and High (All)). Standard Burnup gather the Timeline, Team Area values appear in the listbox but Iteration is still empty. Details are filled in (Low (Completed Work), Medium (Adds Planned Work) and High (All))

- The only report that seems to give us some sot of results so far is the Actual as Percentage of Estimated Work. Here again not sure how accurate this result is.

- We are not using Source Control - only RTC here.

My gutfeeling tells me something is going wrong, whether it is in setup or related to a bug. some of the reports show no parameters but you can see the arrow poining to an empty line as the chosen one automatically.

many thanks for your help!
Claire

Thanks James! I ran the query you mention below and seem to have data in the data warehouse. Not all work items seem to appear in this table. All items have a REC_DateTime of today as I ran it today apart from the Information is unavailable who is from the 7th of October. Is there a way I can view history of a work item for instance?

I don't think adding the dw_user as project member changed anything but I added it in case. I may be a coincidence but I get some sort of results on story points by Iteration chart: it find the story point number but not the iteration...It says Information is not available on the X-axis. Burnup & down haven't changed.

Not sure what to do now...!

Many thanks
Claire

Claire,

If you'd like to verify for certain whether there is data in the data warehouse, you can run some queries on the data warehouse. First find the name of the database (we recommend "RIDW" in the setup guide, not sure if you used that or not). Look in the REQUEST table in the RIODS schema; this should contain one record for each work item in the system. If it does, that's a good indication that the data collection jobs are working for work items.

For the work items data collection jobs, having the data collection user as a member of the project should have no effect.

james

Hello,

Thanks for your responses :) Trying to go through them one byone this morning and see what I don't have in my environment...got a few question then!

- "Make sure the reporting data warehouse user is a member of your project area and team area" --> the user assigned to run the data collection jobs is dw_user and was not assigned to the project. Added it to the project nothing seems to have changed for now.

- We have the "Data Collection Jobs successful" message everyday. Is there a way of querying the DW database in DB2 to view the captured data? Just to make sur we actually have data to report on in there.

- Most reports I went through the morning and tried to run are not listng any parameters, even if Team Areas and Iteraion are clearly 2 properties that are always assigned to something and so should appear as a choice. It appears to be random as for example, standard burndow chart has no Team Area or Iteration (Details is Medium (Remaining Work) and High (All)). Standard Burnup gather the Timeline, Team Area values appear in the listbox but Iteration is still empty. Details are filled in (Low (Completed Work), Medium (Adds Planned Work) and High (All))

- The only report that seems to give us some sot of results so far is the Actual as Percentage of Estimated Work. Here again not sure how accurate this result is.

- We are not using Source Control - only RTC here.

My gutfeeling tells me something is going wrong, whether it is in setup or related to a bug. some of the reports show no parameters but you can see the arrow poining to an empty line as the chosen one automatically.

many thanks for your help!
Claire

Hi,

When you say "We had to go in and confure all reports manually cause most/none of them worked out of the box" Does it mean you had to show Parameters and choose your own? Or does it mean you had to update the source file?

Many thanks
Claire

A bunch of reports won't work out of the box. Also be sure that your DataWarehouse jobs are running. The RTC needs to run these datawarehouse jobs to collect data to feed the reports. I should also note that these jobs have to collect data over time. Which means if you turn it on tonight that they still might not have any data to report. Since just turning on the data collection jobs isn't enough make sure you have turned them on for that project. Also do you have any 'Info not available' listed in your conditions? If so when you configue the parameters make sure that that listing isn't selected or it will mess up the results in the reports.

We had to go in and confure all reports manually cause most/none of them worked out of the box.