Creating a Custom Report with Counts

This article will help users to create custom reports with the count feature using various report sources. The user must have access to TDNext in addition to the application of where the report is created.

Overview

When building custom reports, many users want to make a report which shows a count of items by a common field(s).

For instance, you might want to see how many records there are of high priority tickets created by a particular user or department.

Counts refer to a field column in reports that have a numeric value that can be tallied, such as number of tickets, projects, milestones, people, etc. As with all fields, here are different count fields depending on the report source.

The field name always follows the format “X Count.”

For example,
In a custom ticketing report, there is the Ticket Count field.
In a custom knowledge base report, there is the Article Count field.
In the custom project report, there is a Project Count field.

Where to Find This

This feature appears in TDNext interface and is within the following report sources Accounts, Actual Hours, Asset, Configuration Items, Contracts, Expenses, Issue, Knowledge Base, Location, People, Plan, Project and Requests, Risk, Service, Survey Response, Tasks, Ticket, and Ticket Tasks report sources. The reports that a user has access to can be found in the left navigation within the application the report was created in.

Creating a Custom Report with Counts

For this example, we’ll walk through steps to create a report with a ticket count by type and account:

1. Once logged in to TDNext, open the Analysis application.
2. Click the + New link, then select Report from the dropdown menu.
3. On the What type of report would you like to create? page, select Ticket Report.
4. Under Select the columns you would like to see, select the following fields:
   1. Acct/Dept
   2. Ticket Count

For a count report to work, you cannot include a field whose value will be unique on every single item. If you do, you will see a row for every item with a count of one.
Item ID, for example, would not be a good field to include in a count report as is always unique.

5. This would show counts based upon the count of tickets per Acct/Dept. You could add or remove fields used in conjunction with the count field depending on your reporting needs. It is likely that the Filter section of the custom report will also be necessary in narrowing the results to what is being reported on.
6. Configure the rest of the custom report options as explained in Using Custom Reports.
7. Click the Save and Run button at the top.

Gotchas & Pitfalls

• It should be noted that charts do not group the data chosen for name/value differently than the actual report data table. Charts work well for a two-column approach, if three or more columns are selected in your report, the charts may show duplicated data.
• You cannot include a field whose value will be unique on every single item. If you do, you will see a row for every item with a count of one. Item ID, for example, would not be a good field to include in a count report as is always unique.