Reporting tool migration guide
- What's happening?
- When do we migrate?
- Why are the old reports being closed?
- How do I migrate my reports?
- What are the advantages of Dashboard reports?
- Can I start with a clean slate?
- Considerations
What's happening?
We are discontinuing our old reports tool. Specifically, the older reports found under the Settings menu in the platform. If you do not have this menu item, then you do not have any old reports.
The old reports that are being closed appear as shown in the image below.
If you wish to continue to receive any of the reports originally configured on the old system, you will need to migrate these reports to the newer Dashboard reports.
Note: This article does not refer to the Classic QA reports which are not being migrated at this time.
During this migration period the functionalities in the old report’s module are limited (i.e., you cannot add new schedules or templates).
Dashboard Reports is our cross-product reporting tool. Most customers have already started to use the new Dashboard reports. For information on Dashboard reports, see “Configuring Siteimprove Dashboards and Dashboard reports”.
When do we migrate?
You (Account owners and Administrators) will be notified by email when it's time to migrate. The deadline and information on migration will be sent to you in three emails from Siteimprove during 2022.
- The first migration email will be sent two months before the migration deadline
- A second reminder will be sent one month before the deadline
- A final reminder will be sent one week before the deadline
Note: You need to migrate before the deadline. After the deadline, you will lose access to the old reports. Your deadline will be shown in the platform and within email notifications sent to Account Owners and Administrators.
After the first email is sent you will no longer have the possibility to schedule old reports.
When migration is possible for your account, you will see a notification within the platform dashboard on the old report’s module pages.
You will also find the migration options under
Dashboard > Reports > Manage Scheduled Reports > then select “Reports to migrate”
If you do not see the options, then migration is currently not possible on your account.
Why are the old reports being closed?
We are closing the old reports for several reasons including security, legal, and accessibility liabilities.
We believe that our cross-product Dashboard reporting solution is more aligned with customer’s needs. It provides one reporting solution for the entire platform.
Rather than investing in maintaining the old reports, we will instead invest in the Dashboard reports that will enable you to get even more value out of our product.
How do I migrate my reports?
Existing reports and their schedules can easily be migrated to dashboard reports. Alternatively, you have the option to delete them if they are no longer needed.
By migrating, old reports are enhanced with new widgets and functionalities supported in the Dashboard Reports.
As report recipients will notice a difference in how their reports look, we recommend that you reach out to recipients and explain that this change is due to the migration to Dashboard reports.
Siteimprove Administrators & Account owners can migrate the old reports as follows:
- Go to Dashboard > Reports > Manage Scheduled Reports
- Then click on the tab, “Reports to migrate”
- Here you can see and review your report templates, modules, and schedules
- You have the option to either “Migrate all” schedules for each module or expand the schedules and migrate individual report schedules.
- You can also delete report schedules using “Delete all” to delete all schedules for a module or “Delete” to delete individual report schedules.
- When you migrate, we will convert the old reports to Dashboard reports including converting the templates and schedules:
- Converting the templates: The widgets on the new dashboard will be mapped from the original template widgets. In some cases, the widgets can look slightly different than the original. The information shown in the widgets will essentially be the same.
- Copying the schedules: We will copy the schedules including site, group, recipients, and frequency, from the old report to the new Dashboard report.
What are the advantages of Dashboard reports?
- Dashboard Reports cover all products and widgets within the Siteimprove platform (i.e., more than 650 widgets)
- Dashboard reports are very customizable. You can customize the dashboard layout, widget presentation, email templates, and add text widgets.
- You can apply automated rules as to who should receive the reports, based on tags, user roles, and site/group access.
- Your dashboard and email reports are identical. Therefore, you can easily link back to the platform to find the source of the data and investigate further if required.
- Insights are provided directly within the email - making it more relevant by default.
- Each report gives a snapshot in time, so can be used to compare progress between reports.
- As all reports are widgets within the platform you can easily log in and work with the dashboard or widgets live and go into even more details.
- All features are permissions based so you can customize who should have access to what
- You can send and schedule reports to external users.
Can I start with a clean slate?
- If you prefer not to migrate you can delete the old reports and create new Dashboard reports and schedules instead. For information on this see “Configuring Siteimprove Dashboards and Dashboard reports”.
- As well as preconfigured dashboard reports you can import Dashboard templates. You can read more in the article “Dashboard template library”.
Considerations
Migrated reports will look different than the old reports
Migrated templates may not exactly resemble the original report, however, the information shown in the widgets will essentially be the same.
This is an example of the standard QA report and how it looks after migration to Dashboard Reports.
After migration, you have the option to further customize the dashboard reports if you wish.
- Style of Dashboard reports
- Style of old reports
Migrate reports are shared by the person migrating
The reports you see listed under the tab are those shared that you have site/group access to, and private reports which you created.
When you click the migrate button you will be set as the owner of that schedule. So, unless you have a custom template it will look like the report is being shared by you.
Reports are no longer triggered by crawl completion
With dashboard reports, we do not support report schedules "after a crawl ends". Instead, you can choose exactly when you want the report and how often. With migration, reports previously triggered by crawl completion will be automatically scheduled for Monday mornings. You can always change the frequency and day later if required in the report settings.
We have chosen to phase the "after crawl" schedule functionality as it did not live up to our standards. For example, reports were sent "after the crawl" rather than "after the full scan", which is when users can view the results. See the related article, "The Siteimprove scan process".
We want to avoid situations where customers receive reports that do not reflect their latest improvements to the website. We also want customers to receive reports on time regardless of an increase in the number of checks offered, website size, and website complexity.
Customer feedback supports the need for regular reports, received on a specific day instead of random reports received after the crawl event.
Note: Checks occur continuously due to back-end automation and users enforcing re-checks of pages and groups.
Report within a report is no longer possible
With the dashboard reports, we do not support having reports within a report. If you have previously received a report email with links to multiple reports, they will now be split into separate emails.
Migrated reports will not appear in the old report archive
When you migrate or delete a report, it will no longer be shown in the platform report archive. It will, however, still be physically available on our server until 1 November 2022 allowing you to open the report from links in the report emails. If you would want to keep the previously received old reports after 1 November 2022 you will need to make a backup.
Schedules without recipients not included
We don’t list schedules without recipients on the migration page. This may result in a mismatch in the numbers of reports in the old reports module and on the migration page.
Improved languages support
We have improved the languages support in the new Dashboards reports. System Dashboards and standard widgets will be sent out in the language of the recipient. However, customized text will not be translated.
User’s private templates reports are not migrated
It is not possible to migrate reports based on private templates by non-admins.
Widget subtitle text not included
Widget subtitle text will not be migrated as it is not supported in the Dashboard reports. We do however support custom widget titles so these will be included in migrated widgets.
Report headers and footers not included
Report headers and footers will not be migrated as we have found a lot of the current text outdated. We do however support custom text widgets which you can include on your dashboard. We encourage you to start fresh and use the text widgets to explain your goals and expectations within the reports. Adding relevant content to your dashboards and reports can assist your team members a lot in their work.
User Feedback reports will not be migrated
User Feedback reports will not be migrated. If required, they will need to be recreated as a Dashboard report.
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