User Guide#

Author reports, 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 report is a template that makes outputs, plus the core terms that follow from it.
• The report lifecycle - How one report 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 report, end to end - Build a report from a source workbook, choose its worksheets, and preview a finished output file, the shortest complete path in Reportworq.

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 report, 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 reports, with the same folders, security, and actions.

Authoring reports#

• Choose the source workbook and worksheets - On the Reports step of the Job Editor, pick the source workbooks a report 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 report, 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 report - Turn a single workbook into a reusable report by driving it from named parameters, so changing one input updates every formula and lets the report 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-report-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 report-level output assembly from the 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 report. 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 report - Describe a report'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 report 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 report 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 ten 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.
• IBM Planning Analytics functions - Full reference for RW.PlanningAnalytics.MDX plus the catalog of native TM1 worksheet functions (DBRW, DBS, SUBNM, DIMIX, VIEW, TM1RPT*, and more) that Reportworq evaluates against an IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 connection.
• 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 reports 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, release or cancel held deliveries, and review recent runs, and open a report's Run History for its full per-report 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 Report 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 report'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 report got slower - Use the Compare tab on a run's diagnostics to search a report'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 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.