From data to report, explained

Every order you ship, every part you receive, every hour you log leaves a record in Workcell. Analytics is where those records become answers. This primer explains the model behind reporting: what a report is made of, where reports come from, and why the numbers always match the rest of the app. The how-to docs cover the clicks.

One source, not a copy

The most important idea comes first. Analytics does not keep its own copy of your data. A report reads the same live records the rest of Workcell writes, across sales, inventory, production, workforce, and finance. Run the same report an hour later and it reflects whatever changed in the meantime. There is no nightly extract to wait on and nothing to reconcile, because there is only ever one set of records.

What a report is made of

Every report answers a question by combining two kinds of thing.

Dimensions: how you slice

A dimension is the angle you look from: by customer, by month, by location, by item. Dimensions are the labels down the side of a result, the groups the numbers are broken out into. Choosing a dimension is choosing the shape of the answer. "Sales by customer" and "sales by state" ask almost the same question, but each slices it a different way.

Measures: what you count

A measure, sometimes called a metric, is the number itself: revenue, units, spend, a count of open items. Where a dimension says how to slice, a measure says what to add up inside each slice. A report rolls its measures up across each dimension, so "sales by customer" shows one revenue total per customer rather than one row per order.

Put a measure and a dimension together and you have a report: a number, broken out by an angle you care about.

Where reports come from

You do not start from a blank page. Workcell gives you two places to get a report.

The library: ready-made reports

The library is the catalog of reports that ship with Workcell, grouped by area such as Sales, Inventory, Production, Workforce, and Financial. Each one already has its dimensions and measures chosen for a common question, like Stock Status or Job Cost. You run a report by opening it and setting its parameters, the inputs that scope the result to what you need, such as a date range, an "As of" date, or a location. The report then reads your live records and shows the answer as a table or as cards.

Custom: build your own

When the library does not have your exact question, you build a custom report. You pick which records to pull from, choose the columns to show, decide how to group and total them, and filter down to the rows that matter. That is the same dimensions-and-measures model, assembled by you. A custom report saves alongside the standard library, so you can run it again like any other report, and share it with your company or keep it private.

Keeping a copy

A report result is live, which is the point, but sometimes you need a snapshot to file or send. Export takes a copy of the result exactly as it is currently scoped, as a PDF or a print-out. The export is a frozen picture for sharing; the report stays live for the next time you run it.

Why it works this way

Because analytics reads the same records every other module writes, a report is never out of date and never disagrees with the source. The team that creates the data and the team that reports on it work from one truth. Slicing by dimensions and totaling by measures is what lets one set of records answer many different questions without ever being copied.

Ready to try it? Start by running one from the library in Run a report, then build a custom report when you need your own answer.