As we work towards ZENworks 2016, one of the key things we are aiming for is to improve your experience with ZENworks Reporting. With upcoming release of ZR 5.6, we have already made a shift to Appliance only model and have tremendously improved upon the installation and upgrade experience. In ZENworks 2016, we are looking to improve upon how we can present data in more interactive fashion through drill-able dashboards, charts and tables, while increasing the performance.

Currently, we are packaging all ZENworks reporting objects in a single big domain. This has its advantages when a report cutting across different areas of ZENworks is needed. However, on the flip side, this has resulted in ZENworks domain becoming quite complex. In our experience, this has limited our ability to add objects at a faster rate. Additionally, though underlying Jaspersoft engine does provides many ways to create interactive reports, it requires an intimate knowledge of ZENworks to bring together rights set of objects from different sub-domains.

So how do we solve this? In our conversation with customers, we found that most of reports are geared toward reporting on a particular area in ZENworks and there are only few reports which cut across different ZENworks products.

So we have decided to build additional new domains catering to a specific  ZENworks area. We plan to have a separate Bundle domain using which all bundle reports can be created. Similarly, we would have a separate inventory domain to cater to all asset management reports. Thus in ZENworks 2016, we would ship multiple domains (including the current ZENworks domain). This would ensure that your current reports continue to work just fine. For any new reports, you can then choose to use newly introduced domains.

Now, we are designing these domains from ground up with an emphasis on performance. However, we are also looking to ensure that right from the word go, these domains should cater to as many use cases as possible. This is where we need help from the community.

We are looking for report examples so that we can understand in detail how you currently use ZENworks Reporting. This would allow us to do a thorough job while designing these new domains. Specifically I am looking for layout of reports created using domain objects or using SQL. Essentially any report not bundled with ZENworks Reporting. You can easily export these reports by using ZENworks Reporting Import or Export tool available here. You can send this across at my email address: vikram dot goyal at microfocus dot com. Alternatively, you can send them by sending me a email through cool solution itself.

We plan to use these reports to influence our domain design. During our development and much before release, we would share with you what we have developed and seek further feedback. We would then incorporate this feedback, so that our final release is closer to what you and our customers expect. The more data we have, the better we would be able to design and ultimately meet your needs.

Many thanks for helping us build a better ZENworks. I look forward to hearing from you all.