User Guide#

Build distribution jobs, parameterize and burst them, distribute and schedule, contribute to campaigns, and monitor results. Includes the Office add-ins and the worksheet function reference.

Orientation#

• What Reportworq is - Reportworq turns the reports finance already builds into governed, trusted assets that refresh, personalize, and deliver themselves, so your team gets its analysis time back.
• Key concepts and the mental model - The one mental shift that makes Reportworq click (a distribution job is a template that makes outputs), plus the core terms that follow from it.
• The distribution job lifecycle - How one distribution job moves from idea to inbox (author, parameterize, test, distribute, schedule, and monitor), told through a weekly store P&L.

Getting started#

• Sign in and take the tour - Sign in to Reportworq, then take a guided tour of the shell: the frame, the content library, filtering, paging, search, and creating your first item.
• Your first distribution job, end to end - Build a distribution job from a source workbook, choose its worksheets, and preview a finished output file, the shortest complete path in Reportworq.
• Set up My Profile - Make Reportworq look and behave the way you work: your name and picture, a light, dark or System theme and your own color palette, which navigation buttons appear and in what order, and what a click on a distribution job, data model or campaign opens.

Working in the workspace#

• Back, Forward, and shareable links - Reportworq keeps the browser address bar in step with the screen you are on, so browser Back and Forward work, and any screen can be bookmarked, refreshed, or shared as a link that opens exactly there.
• Roles and what you can do - The Reportworq roles, Administrator, Author, and User, plus the Recipient who simply receives distributed content, what each one sees and can do, and who can see and change permissions.
• Item properties - Inspect and configure any distribution job, campaign, data model, or folder from the Properties panel (its description and retention, who can access it, the schedules that run it, and the context it gives AI and search).
• Store files in the workspace - Keep supporting files (logos, source workbooks, templates, reference documents) inside the governed workspace alongside your distribution jobs, with the same folders, security, and actions.

Authoring distribution jobs#

• Choose the source workbook and worksheets - On the Reports step of the Distribution Job Editor, pick the source workbooks a job renders and choose which worksheets it outputs, in order.
• Global parameters - Define a named parameter value once at the workspace level and reuse it across every distribution job, so a period, version, currency, or entity is one edit instead of many, with an impact review before you change a widely-used value.
• Parameterize a distribution job - Turn a single workbook into a reusable distribution job by driving it from named parameters, so changing one input updates every formula and lets the job fan out per period, entity, or recipient.
• Parameters reference - The full parameter type catalog, per-worksheet mapping shapes, replication and cross-join behavior, and parameter sets.
• Advanced parameters: variables and cascading - How one parameter can embed another as a variable and cause a query to repeat, using param and global tokens, and cascading one-output-per-item fan-out.
• Worksheet output options - Set per-worksheet output behavior, sheet name, tab color, order, PDF bookmark, suppression, and the exception-check send gate, on the Reports step.
• Job options: collation and splitting - Set job-level output assembly from the Distribution Job Editor chrome, collate worksheets into one file or split them into separate files, and know when to use each.
• Save and Save As - Save Changes writes your edits back to the same distribution job. Save As creates an independent copy under a new name and leaves the original untouched.
• PowerPoint reporting - Turn a branded PowerPoint template into data-driven presentation output, link each slide shape to a report object in the add-in, and distribute the deck through the same pipeline as your Excel reports.
• Charts and maps - A report keeps every native Excel chart working, and the Excel add-in adds its own chart and map builder on top for the visuals Excel's own charts do not cover.
• Create an AI Profile for a distribution job - Describe a distribution job's purpose, audience, and terminology in its AI Profile so AI assistants, search, and recommendations answer from your curated business context instead of guessing from raw data.

Bursting#

• What bursting is and when you need it - Bursting means one distribution job producing many personalized outputs. Most jobs get there through replication, which uses a parameter's own values and never opens the Bursting step. Burst sets are for per-output control.
• Replicate output from your source system - Let a parameter's own values fan the output out, one file per value, so the list of outputs stays current in your source system and you never open the Bursting step.
• Burst sets - Build one row per output on the Bursting step, by hand, from an Excel workbook, or from a SQL query, so individual outputs can carry their own values, their own query, and their own recipient.
• Assign recipients to bursts - Recipients are optional. Route each output by an attribute from your source system, a value on a worksheet, a contact column in a burst source, or a contact assigned by hand, and understand which one wins.

Distribution#

• Distribution overview - Distribution is where one job turns a source template into many output formats and sends them to many destinations.
• Address book and contacts - The workspace directory of contacts that distribution and contribution resolve recipients against, covering contact fields and access rules, the additive-only import, the D_ and P_ column contract, why a custom field needs a value to save, and why directly-created contacts get no entitlements.
• Output formats - The full catalog of output formats a Reportworq job can generate, Excel, PDF, PowerPoint, CSV, and Files, with every per-format option.
• Name and organize output files - Build output file names from literal text and variable tokens, and use a token in a destination path to auto-create a folder tree at delivery.
• Destinations - The full catalog of distribution destinations, Email, Network Folder, SharePoint, Box, OneDrive, Google Drive, Slack, Teams, SFTP, and IBM Planning Analytics, with per-destination setup notes.
• Email messages and templates - Write a dynamic email subject and body with variable tokens so you do not edit it every week, add an AI-generated insight, and save the message as a reusable template.
• Combine emails, collate, and zip - Group multiple outputs into a single email with combining and the combine key, sort output pages with collation, bundle outputs into a zip, and split a workbook into one file per tab.
• The Workspace Inbox - Keep a copy of every message Reportworq sends and read it in the app, alongside your real email provider or with no mail server at all.

Office add-ins#

• The Office add-ins - Reportworq loads a task pane inside Excel and PowerPoint so you can build, refresh, and link governed report content without leaving Office.
• Excel: build and refresh reports - Use the Excel companion pane to import a published data-model view, shape it into a list report with grouping, sorting, aggregates and filters, place it on the sheet, and refresh it from source or from cache.
• Excel: find and insert functions - Use the Formula Library dock in the Excel companion pane to search the Reportworq worksheet functions, read what one does, and insert it into the active cell.
• Excel: charts and maps - The complete reference for the add-in's chart and map builder - every chart type and the data it expects, the full mapping capability including cell-driven framing, and how an imported visual is kept current.

Worksheet functions#

• Functions overview: which one do I use - The complete index of Reportworq worksheet functions, with a direct link to every function's full reference entry, a which-function-do-I-use table, how functions compare with the Excel add-in, and the naming trap that catches almost everyone.
• General report and layout functions - Full reference for the eleven RW.Tools.* functions that shape a generated workbook, with the signature, every argument and default, the pipeline order they run in, and what happens when an argument is wrong.
• The AI insight function - Full reference for RW.Tools.AIInsight, the one genuinely generative worksheet function, which calls a configured AI provider and writes the response into a named TextBox or a cell.
• Workday Adaptive functions - Full reference for the seven RW.Adaptive.* worksheet functions that read from and write back to Workday Adaptive Planning, with every argument and default, and why their AI* aliases are not artificial intelligence.
• Relational database functions - Full reference for RW.Relational.Export, Update and Upsert, the functions that read from and write back to SQL, OLE DB and ODBC sources, with every argument, the table-target rules, and how to split a long query across cells.
• Anaplan functions - Full reference for ANAPLANINPUT, the Anaplan write-back function, including the tuple breadcrumb it depends on and why its optional trailing arguments are a trap.

Running and scheduling#

• Run a job - Use Run Jobs to run one or more distribution jobs on demand, pick which outputs to produce, choose Production or Hold for Delivery, and set logging and notifications.
• Schedule a job - Create a schedule in the Schedule editor with a 5-field cron expression, a job or folder selection, per-schedule parameter overrides, and delivery behavior.
• Manage scheduled content - Use Scheduled Content to see every schedule, turn the master scheduler on or off, run or edit a schedule, check health, and understand how missed runs are handled.

Monitoring#

• Track activity and run history - Use Activity to watch running jobs (with each output's live progress, step by step), release or cancel held deliveries, and review recent runs, and open a distribution job's Run History for its full per-job record.
• Run estimates and expected completion - How Reportworq predicts how much longer a running job has to go, where the estimate appears, how it is calculated, and why it sometimes shows nothing at all.
• View and download results - Use the output viewer to open a run's output in Markdown, HTML, PDF, Excel, PowerPoint, or CSV, switch between runs and variants, download files, and email a copy to yourself.
• When a job fails - Read a failed run's log, work through common causes, and escalate to support with the right logs.
• Review a run's performance - Compare a run against the distribution job's own recent history with the Elapsed vs baseline, Trend, and Peak mem columns, then open the Performance tab on a run's diagnostics to see where the time went, by output, workbook, processing phase, and calculation engine.
• Find when a job got slower - Use the Compare tab on a run's diagnostics to search a distribution job's whole history for the single point where its typical run time stepped, and narrow the search to one variation of a bursting job.

Contribution#

• Contribution (write-back) overview - Contribution turns Reportworq reports into input forms, collects the numbers and comments people enter, and writes them back into your planning systems.
• Author a contribution campaign - Build a write-back campaign in the five-section campaign editor, generate and assign input forms, set notifications, and configure the export that writes collected data back to your plan.
• Fill in and submit a form - Open an assigned input form from My Input Forms, enter values, use the planning toolbar and its operators, clear validation, track your work in the Details dock, and submit; approvers review and approve or reject.
• Collect data with an input workbook - Send a workbook out, let people fill it in wherever they are, and have Reportworq post the values back to your planning system when it returns. The workbook route is a separate process from a contribution campaign, and this page explains when to reach for it.
• Contribution functions - Reference for the RW.Contribution Excel functions that define input ranges, validation, and interactive controls in a contribution form, plus the workbook-design rules that keep forms from breaking.
• Profile and stress-test a contribution campaign - Use the Campaign profiling screen to measure a form's server-side memory footprint, build load-test plans for the rw-stress-runner, and read a plain-language report of what contributors experienced under load, before you open a campaign to real people.
• Scale and size a contribution campaign - Turn the campaign profiling measurements into decisions, how much a form should cost, how many concurrent contributors a server carries, how many servers a round needs, and how to confirm the sizing held while the round is live.