Administrator Guide#

Get the environment sound and ready to hand over: install and license the server, manage accounts, workspaces and security, configure the platform, plan capacity and topology, and run day-to-day operations and auditing.

Install & licensing#

• System requirements - The operating system, hardware, browser, and network requirements for a Reportworq server on Windows or Linux, including the minimum and recommended browser window size and why it differs from the monitor size, the Linux fonts requirement, running version 5 and version 6 side by side, the two ports every server must open, the default port change to 8600, the self-signed certificate that makes local access HTTPS out of the box, and the HTTPS requirement for the Excel add-in and Microsoft 365.
• Deployment topology - Choose a Reportworq deployment, on-premises Windows, on-premises Linux, single-tenant Azure container, or CloudHub relay, with the requirements for each, and scale an on-premises instance into a load-balanced cluster whose nodes join through the setup wizard, share a UNC Repository, and each run whole jobs atomically.
• Install Reportworq - Install Reportworq on Windows with the MSI (or on Linux and containers), set the Reportworq 6 Bootstrap Service account so jobs can reach network shares, activate the license, and uninstall safely.
• First-run setup - The one-time setup wizard that runs on a fresh install, Welcome, Repository, License, Users, and Finish, where the Repository step lets you create a new repository, import a v5 repository, connect to an existing one, or add a load-balancer node.
• Licensing and entitlements - How Reportworq is licensed, the License tab, entitlements that gate features, how seats are counted, and why keeping group sizes under licensed counts avoids silently disabling users.
• Update Reportworq - Keep a Reportworq instance current with the in-product updater, back up first from Configuration then know how to restore, apply official releases or hotfixes, update an air-gapped server from a patch file, update a container deployment by swapping its image, and update a load-balanced cluster together.
• Migrate to a new server - Move a Reportworq instance to new hardware by copying the Repository folder in the right order with the service stopped, reproducing the service account, moving the license (with an optional non-production key to test first), decommissioning the old server, or moving just a subset of content.

Security & access#

• Accounts, groups, and entitlements - Create accounts, collect them into groups, grant entitlements (roles), and bulk-provision from an accounts workbook, while keeping license seats and your administrator access safe.
• Sign-in and SSO - Choose the active authentication provider, native username and password or an OIDC single sign-on such as Microsoft Entra ID, understand the add-in login, and recover if every administrator is locked out.
• Workspaces - Understand what a workspace is, create rename and delete one, manage who belongs to it, switch the active workspace, and see why the shared job queue redacts jobs that belong to another workspace.
• Secured lists - Define named value-to-group mappings that decide which security groups, and therefore which Users, may open each bursted report output. Secured lists are report-level, not row-level, and apply to the User role only.

Configuration#

• Server configuration - The Settings, Configuration screen, a seven-tab editor for instance-wide settings covering the web server, execution, logging, email, API, license, and data collection, plus the parallel-execution memory rule, the safe way to relocate the Repository, and the SSL self-signed certificate traps.
• Output retention - Control how long a report's run history is kept, set per-folder and per-report policies, pin runs to keep forever, and understand the soft-delete and restore lifecycle.

Performance & capacity#

• Performance and capacity planning - The starting point for sizing a Reportworq deployment and for improving content that is already slow. Explains the two independent capacity stories, distribution and contribution, names every measurement Reportworq keeps about itself, and routes each question to the page that answers it.
• Distribute the load - Size a Reportworq deployment and spread its work across it, covering the concurrency settings and the memory rule behind them, what a load-balanced cluster does and does not distribute, why job granularity decides whether extra nodes help, how per-node capacity and job filters pin work to machines, and how to spread the clock so a batch does not collide with itself.
• Manage and improve performance - Diagnose content that is already slow and make it faster, covering the four questions to ask in order and the surface that answers each, how to read the run breakdown and the engine table, the levers worth pulling and the order to try them, and how to prove a change actually worked.

Operations#

• Data collection processing - Process contribution write-back, from uploaded or mailbox-received input workbooks back into your planning system, including the consolidated-cell and Exchange Online mailbox traps.
• Diagnose job failures - Diagnose a failed or warning job run from the server side, read the log and trace, send a run to support, and handle the "job succeeds but produces no output" pattern.
• Compare performance across reports - Use Settings > Performance to rank every report by how far its latest run has drifted from its own baseline, and to pivot the whole estate by product release and by execution node, so you can answer whether a release regressed you or whether one node is slower.
• Contribution processes - The contribution process console on Settings > Performance, the per-server contribution memory view, the 90% memory admission valve that governs new contributor sessions, and the session-log tools for support.

Auditing#

• Audit logs - The four audit log tabs, System, Job, AI Interactions, and MCP, what each records, the columns and detail they carry, and how to filter and export them.
• Log diagnostics and support packets - Gather log files into a single support packet for the Reportworq support desk, with the Verbose-before-the-run rule and the Debug Logging and HAR trap.
• The repository metadata report - A one-click Excel export from Settings, Auditing, System Log that documents a workspace's whole distribution configuration across seven cross-linked worksheets, Jobs, Reports, Report Parameters, Parameters, Static Burst Sets, Schedules, and Contacts, making it queryable for auditing.