Hello and welcome back to a short series of videos regarding the creation of custom reports in a MC data protection advisor. The objective in this part four of a series looking at the building of the reports is to consider the use of a single operator to provide an alternative method of summarizing backup data into a hierarchical grouping and displaying a rolled up number of jobs by object group or groups. This is the extended job roll up operator. So let's start at the now familiar custom report template screen and select create custom template.
We'll name the template and add an appropriate description from the available data sources from the backup category. We'll pick up the backup job details, data source. Before we connect the dots, we'll need our operator which again we'll find in the backup category, the extended job roll up operator, checking the properties of the data source. We can again see that there are 63 available fields all of which are included for use. We have seen this previously on looking at the operator, we see no fields yet available and a number of parameters we shall utilize these very soon.
But before we do, we will have to add the connections between the three components, data source to operator and operator to report. And let's use the arrange button to tidy up the display. Just to confirm, we can still see the 63 fields of the data source on opening the properties of the operator. And we can now see all 63 fields presented here, but notice that it states 63 out of 65 are included. So we have acquired two additional fields from somewhere. In fact, as we scroll down the fields panel, we find that duration and numb jobs are now available. But unchecked, these two additional computed fields have been added by this operator.
So we'll check the include all box to bring in these additional fields. Opening the parameters for editing will determine the hierarchy into which we wish to roll up by server by group and by client quick navigation may be achieved by keying the initial letter of the group by entity opening the field section of the report design. We will see that both duration and numb jobs fields are now available if populated. So let's now go to a preview of the report and select the scope of backup servers and time period of last hour as we have done on previous occasions for my report requirements. There are far too many fields here.
I just want a simple summary just showing the field's server group and client may be the level of back up and the number of jobs. So we may trim this down by using the table format button. While we are here, we can adjust the title of the report to make it more meaningful or unique. And in this case, we'll add a current date and time to the title. Our table style is acceptable. So we'll enter the series tab format columns to suppress or hide the columns we don't want as we have over 60 possible columns. Let's start by hiding them all and read just those we wish to see, apply this table format and click. OK. Our desired table format is now displayed and we can see the last hour's activity neatly summarized by servers, groups, clients and levels where appropriate.
Now we have this design, we may save and close and then of course add the report template to the menu based on the knowledge gained from previous videos, we should always be aware of the need for efficiency. And while this may not matter when returning only a few lines, it may impact adversely upon the efficiency of the DP A server. Were it to return many thousands of lines? As an illustration? This video shows no regard for such efficiency. Don't forget include only the required fields in the data source, removing all fields which do not make a contribution to the finished report. So we've now looked at how the extended job roll up operator can allow us to create meaningful reports in a filtered fashion to create reports of a more hierarchical structure.
In part five, we'll investigate use of the translation operator. Thank you for watching.
