What Advanced Reports is
A catalogue of stored SuiteQL reports, dashboards and portlets that runs entirely inside your NetSuite account.
HiScale Advanced Reports is a reporting app that runs inside NetSuite. You store SuiteQL queries as reports, NetSuite refreshes them on a schedule, and your team opens the results from a catalogue. Each report can be filtered and exported, and it can feed charts, dashboards and NetSuite home dashboard portlets.
Most people who use it only read reports. A few people build them, and one or two administer the app. This guide covers all three.
How it fits into NetSuite
Nothing runs outside your account. The app is made of standard NetSuite objects, installed as a SuiteCloud project:
| Part | What it is | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| The app | A Suitelet serving a web app from the File Cabinet | The catalogue, report pages, dashboards, the report wizard and Manage |
| Definitions | Custom records: Advanced Report, Advanced Report Dashboard, Advanced Report Category, Advanced Reports Configuration and Advanced Report Portlet | What each report, dashboard, category, setting and portlet is |
| Refresh | A Map/Reduce script, HSS - Advanced Report Refresh MR | Runs each report's SuiteQL and stores the result |
| Results | Files in a private File Cabinet folder, report-cache | The cached rows a report page reads |
| Portlets | A portlet script | Shows a report widget on a NetSuite home dashboard |
The app has no HiScale server and makes no outside calls. Your data stays in NetSuite, and it moves from the result files to your browser only after the app has checked that you may see the report.
You open the app from the HiScale Advanced Reports tab in the NetSuite menu bar. Back to NetSuite at the foot of the sidebar takes you back to your home dashboard.
Why reports open fast
A report page does not run a query. It reads the result that the last refresh stored, and the top of the page shows its age, such as Updated 12 minutes ago. Refreshes run in the background on the interval the author chose, and you can ask for one at any time with Refresh.
This design has two consequences:
- Everyone who opens a report sees the same rows. The app does not recalculate them for each viewer.
- Filtering, sorting and exporting happen in your browser on the stored result, so they respond at once, even on large reports.
Who does what
The app has three levels of access, and the server checks each one. Hiding a button in the interface is never the only guard.
- Viewers open the reports and dashboards whose audience includes them, then filter, export and drill through them.
- Authors create and edit reports, layouts, dashboards and portlets. An admin grants authoring by role under Manage, Configuration.
- Admins change configuration and categories, and move reports between accounts with Import / Export.
A NetSuite Administrator is always an author and an admin, so a new install is usable straight away.
What author rights mean
The refresh runs every report's SuiteQL as Administrator. That is why every viewer can share one cached result. It also means that anyone who can write a report can read any data in the account, including compensation, pricing and anything else SuiteQL can reach.
Treat the author right as Administrator-level read access to the whole account. It is not a power-user permission. Grant it to the few people who would be trusted with that access anyway. Audiences then decide who can open each finished report.
What it is not
Advanced Reports is not a replacement for saved searches, and it is not a general BI tool. It runs stored SuiteQL and shows the rows as tables, charts and dashboards. Each report is a fixed query. Viewers narrow it with filters in the browser and cannot pass parameters to the query, and the author sets any date range in the SQL.
Where to go next
If the app is not installed yet, start with installation. If it is, start with the tour of the catalogue.
Related: Installing in your account · Finding your way around · Reading a report · Categories, audience and rights