Custom reports provide a flexible and easy-to-use approach to creating reports for your measurement results. This is most useful when you need to generate a report quickly and simply for a specific measurement routine, but you don't need the power available to the template-based approach. Since custom reports do not use any report template, and instead utilize your current measurement routine's data directly, custom reports are generally easier to create and customize, but they lack the power and scope of template reporting.
Advantages of Custom Reporting:
You can place the data anywhere on the page and in any order.
You can combine the data from multiple commands as a single element on the report.
You can generate the reports by unique drag-and-drop method.
The report editor uses the actual data from the measurement routine, not the dummy data. This makes customizing the report much simpler.
Disadvantages of Custom Reporting:
You are creating a single report, not a template, and this report is tied to your measurement routine. While you can import the structure of the report to use with other measurement routines, the reusability is not as great as with report templates designed with specific rules.
It isn't as extensible as template reporting. Suppose you add a new feature or dimension later to your measurement routine. For it to show up, you will need to drag and drop the new item into your report editor.
The following topics provide you with a tutorial that walks you through how to create, view, and print your first custom report. Procedural topics will also be provided for quick access should you need them later.
More:
Understanding the Custom Report Editor
Tutorial - Creating a Custom Report
Dragging and Dropping Information into a Custom Report
Viewing and Printing Custom Reports