vRops 7.5 introduces many changes in views and reports to make them more powerful for diverse customer use cases.
These enhancements have been implemented in all areas: views, reports and reports schedules.
The major changes we will be looking at in this post are:
1. Timestamp value support in list views
2. Ability to group list views results by parent object type
3. Report generation in pdf format now supports cell coloring based on result value
4. Customer now can set default cover page image for reports instead of defining it one by one for each report template
5. Time granularity in Report schedules now is 15 minutes instead of 1 hour. In addition, we added daily schedule support and cc-bcc recipients support for email delivery.
1. Timestamp value support in list views
Let’s start our overview from the timestamp feature. Using it customers can see timestamp value for metric/property change. For more flexibility, timestamps can be requested in two ways:
a) as additional column to configured data
In picture below, we see a table showing the “Summary | Runtime Power State” property with the “Last” transformation:
But at the bottom of page, under “Transformation” field now we have additional combo box with the following values:
1. No Timestamp (default value)
2. Absolute Timestamp (to show formatted date/time)
3. Relative Timestamp (calculates past period from current time).
If we select “Relative Timestamp” we will see that new column appeared just right of the “Summary | Runtime Power State”, it’s shows that last time property value was changed 3 days ago:
b) by using new “Timestamp” metric transformation
In this case timestamp value displayed in the same configured data column, like other transformations like “Current” or “Last”:
We again can select date displayed format as “Absolute Timestamp” or “Relative Timestamp”:
So, if we wish to see timestamp value for some transformed result like “Minimum/Maximum” – we need to configure timestamp as additional column to “Minimum/Maximum” transformation.
Otherwise, if you need last timestamp value without having actual metric value – we can use simple ‘Timestamp” transformation.
2. Ability to group list view results by parent object type
Sometimes we need to group resulting objects by parent object, now it can be easily achieved using the all-new “Group by” option in “Subjects” tab:
In our sample I want to see virtual machines grouped by parent host system:
3. Report generation in pdf format now supports cell coloring based on result value
In vRops 6.7 we introduced cell coloring (https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2018/04/whats-new-vrealize-operations-views.html?src=so_5703fb3d92c20&cid=70134000001M5td), but coloring was visible only in UI. Starting from vRops 7.5 generated pdf report can colorize results as well, if corresponding “Colorization” flag for view was enabled in report template configuration:
4. Customer now can set default cover page image for reports instead of defining it one by one for each report template
Many companies use own image as reports cover page and they forced to set this custom image in all report templates, one by one. Now they can change default cover page image in one single click:
5. Time granularity in Report schedules now is 15 minutes instead of 1 hour. In addition, we added daily schedule support and cc-bcc recipients support for email delivery.
All these options easy to use and available in “Schedule report…” dialog:
