Information technology deeply impacts the way of doing business. However, the rigidity in traditional static reports tends to hinder users from freely browsing information, and meanwhile, make the organization’s operations inefficient. Users tend to seek technical assistance every time they want to customize a report. Fortunately, interactive reports solve this problem.

1. What are Interactive Reports?

Interactive reports

An interactive report is a report that enables users to perform various types of data discovery and analysis (such as drilling down, filtering, or sorting) with ease. The purpose of interactive reports is to allow users to independently conduct deeper mining and custom reports on demand, which is common in enterprise-level reports and business intelligence (BI).

Meanwhile, with the practice of animation, embedded video, stunning graphics, and other visual elements, interactive reports are more dynamic, more engaging, and more effortless to track compared with static reports.

The following is a template of an interactive report made with FineReport. As you can see, the secondary analysis enables you to sort and filter data on the current page to realize convenient analysis in real time.

An interactive report is a report that enables users to perform various types of data discovery and analysis (such as drilling down, filtering, or sorting) with ease.
Data Discovery (By FineReport)
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2. Why You Should Choose Interactive Reports?

The advantages of Interactive Reports are apparent.

For end-users viewing and analyzing data, they can do active exploration rather than passive consumption.

  • When the business manager wants to conduct a more in-depth analysis, they can click to drill down for more specific information.
  • Similarly, when analysts try to summarize overall trends or characteristics, filtering and sorting can be adopted.
  • In addition, the end-user can also create the form required and export it to PDF, Excel, PNG, or email without asking for help from the developer.

For the developers, interactive reports make it possible for the high-efficiency development of reports.

  • Since interactive reports expand the scope of operations that non-technical users can perform without IT professionals’ help, developers can spend more time on other valuable work to improve the business.
  • Meanwhile, developers can restrain the features available to end-users under permission and security concerns (e.g. disable download).


3. How can Interactive Reports Analysis be Effectively Conducted?

An excellent interactive analysis experience can help users better read reports and discover data value. The interactive analysis methods supported by FineReport include chart drill-down, chart linkage, and parameter query, and here is a comprehensive introduction to how these functions assist businesses.



Linkage

As suggested by its name, linkage means that the change of data in one report element will lead to changes in other parts. 

For instance, in the report below, if you switch to data in a different region, the chart area data will also update with the corresponding new information.

Linkage is an interactive effect whichmeans that the change of data in one report element will lead to changes in other part
Linkage (by FineReport)


Drill-down

Drill-down is to switch from summarized data to detailed data. For example, when a user analyzes “sales by city”, drilling down action helps to study the yearly sales in a specific city and then the yearly data can be further drilled down to the quarter level. 

  • Drill-down combinations: You can drill down the chart (or table) to other charts and tables. Therefore, the drill-down relationship includes chart-to-chart, chart-to-table, and table-to-table. 
Chart-to-chart Drill-down in Interactive reports
Chart-to-chart Drill-down (By FineReport)
  • Multi-dimensional drill-down: You can drill down from one record to different dimensions. As shown in the figure below, click on the order ID, and you can choose to drill down to view order details or logistics information. 
Interative Report Example
Interactive Report: Multi-dimensional drill-down (by FineReport)
  • Infinite drill-down levels: Users can set infinite drill-down levels.

Besides, FineReport supports the integration of reports into mobile applications and can display mobile reports adaptively. With the native app FineMobile, the rendering speed and the smoothness of the interactive operation are greatly improved compared with the traditional HTML report.

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4. Choose a Leading Interactive Reporting Tool: FineReport

As information is critical to any business’s success, choosing the right enterprise reporting solution can be full of challenges.

Low-Code Development and Drag & Drop Operations

FineReport uses a low-coding design concept, with most operations can be done by dragging and dropping in an Excel-like interface. The report designer offers various design approaches for different reporting needs, including general reports, aggregated reports, and decision-making reports.

Meanwhile, you can find many excellent templates and tutorials in the Help Doc of FineReport, they can help you create perfect interactive reports with half the effort.

Diverse Chart Interaction Effects

Rich chart interactions allow users to read data conveniently and greatly enhance the user experience. FineReport charts support the following interaction effects.

  • Chart zoom: The chart and axis can be zoomed in and out by mouse gestures. 
Interactive reports demo
Interactive Gesture Zoom (by FineReport)
  • Chart real-time refresh: If the data changes, the report will dynamically update the data and explain the relevant information in the tooltip.
Chart Data Auto Refresh in interactive reports
Chart Data Auto Refresh(by FineReport)
  • Tooltip: When the mouse moves to a data point in the chart, the coordinate value and other information of the data point are displayed
  • Interactive highlighting: When the mouse moves a data point, the line/area/column relevant will be highlighted. Additionally, you can make a data point be highlighted when a particular condition is met.
  • Customize data points: This allows you to resize points and even replace points with customized images.
3D visual effects in interactive reports
3D Line on Globe(by FineReport)

5. A Conclusion of Interactive Reports

Information plays a vital role in business organizations. However, this work has been recognized as being full of boring reports for a long time.

Interactive reports can move you out of the woods by empowering end-users. Also, interactive elements such as drill-down, sorting, filtering, animation, and links are often used to enrich the user experience.

Finally, we recommend FineReport reporting software that provides interactive reporting solutions to tackle these concerns.

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Feel free to make an appointment for a live demo with our product experts. We will be more clear about your needs and see how FineReport can help you and your organization transform data into value.

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