UserTime allows you to produce a range of different reports that analyse computer usage. Most of the reporting is achieved by running a program called "UserTime Reports". This program connects to your UserTime data file and produces reports based on the selected data. You can use the reporting software to build reports on any UserTime data file. If your computers are networked you can even produce reports from a UserTime data file on another computer.
The reporting software can be run by selecting "reports" from the "tools" menu in UserTime, or directly from the Start menu.
The menus in the UserTime Reports program are:
Allows printing and saving of reports. Both the print and the save options will become active when there is a valid report showing in the viewer for printing or saving. The print option on the menu has the same function as the print button in the report viewer.
The "View Licence" option in the tools menu allows you enter licence details or view your current licence details.
The "Change data file" option from the tools menu allows you to choose an appropriate UserTime data file for producing report results. Clicking this menu option will bring up the "UserTime data file" screen. which allows you to enter or browse to an appropriate data file.
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The
reports menu allows you to choose a basic report type for the report you would
like to produce. There are two main formats of report you can produce in
UserTime Reports, the Totals Report and the Day Report. Both these reports are
viewed in a common report viewer/printer.
You can choose which type report the software will produce by selecting it from the Reports menu. Once the report changes you will see different options controls for configuring the report. |
The totals report shows the total time the computer has been used over a specified period. Data is generally shown as the total active time per day. It can also be organised into the total per week, month or even years.
Details of the options available when configuring the totals report are here.
This report allows you to analyse computer usage on specific days of the week. It divides the usage into hourly intervals so you can view a snapshot of computer usage at various times of the day on specific days of the week. You can display data for a range of single days or an average on a specific weekday over a period of time.
Details of the options available when configuring the day report are here.
The report viewer is the central screen in the reporting software. To vary the output of your report you just alter the appropriate configuration options and click "preview" to produce the report.
Follow these steps to view or print a report:
A description of the various report viewer controls that are common across all reports follows.
If you have configured your system to save data from different computers into
one data file then your data will contain a range of users and computers. You
can choose different combinations of users and computers to include in your
report by selecting the appropriate option from the dropdown list. If your
data file only contains one user and one computer then the dropdown list will be
disabled and this box will just display the user name and computer name that
your data is based on.
The
date selector allows you to choose the range of days that your report covers.
The default values will show a range covering the last week of data. You can
type numeric dates directly into the displayed date or you can click the
dropdown arrow to show a colander.
If you want to quickly move the entire date range back or forward one week you can use the forward and reverse buttons directly below the date boxes.
WARNING: If you select a large date range some reports may take a long time to produce a preview as there is a large amount of data to process.
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Click this button to produce a preview of your report once you have set all the options. If you change an option while there is a report showing, then the display will be cleared until you click this button to redisplay the report. |
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This dropdown list allow you to choose the style of the chart (graph) that is
included in your report. There is a range of two dimensional and 3 dimensional
charts available. This choice applies to all reports that contain a graph.
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Check this box if you want your report to contain a table showing all the values that make up your data. Note that this may contain several pages of data if you select a wide date range.
The print button is located on the toolbar above the report. This button allows you to print the current report. A standard printer dialog will be displayed which allows you to adjust printer settings. These will vary depending on the type of printer you have installed.
You can adjust the scale of the report in the viewer using the zoom controls. The + and - magnifying glass buttons allow you to quickly increase or decrease the zoom level or you can choose a scale from the scale dropdown list. You can also type a scale ranging from 10% to 800% in the scale box and press enter to see the report using the new scale. If you select "Whole page" or "Page width" from the scale box your report will resize to fit the size of the viewer window. If you alter the size of your window the report will dynamically resize while you drag the window size, provided your operating system is configured to allow this.
If your report is larger than the available window you can use the mouse and the hand tool to drag the report around in the window until you canview the portion you want to look at.
The page controls allow you to step through multi page reports. You can use the green up and down arrows to move one page at a time through the reports.
The box next to these buttons shows the current page number and the total number of pages. If you overwrite the current page number with a number that is a valid page in the report and press enter the page you typed will be shown. This is a quick way to move to a specific page in the report.
The back and forward buttons allow you to move back and forward through you recently viewed pages.
You can save your reports to disk in a number of different formats. When you have a report in the report preview window the "save" option on the file menu will be active. If you click save you will see the "Save as" screen.
This screen allows you to save the report. The recommended format is as a Portable Document Format file (PDF) file. You can also save the file in a number of other formats. The available formats are:
This will save the report as a PDF document file. This can be viewed using a free viewer made available by Adobe® for download from www.adobe.com
This format is best if you want to use Microsoft® Word for viewing the report file.
This will save the data from the report as raw text. The graph will not be saved in this format
This will save the file as a Microsoft® Excel spreadsheet file.
This is a special format that is included to allow further customisation of the report using additional software. This format is not generally readable without special software.