<%NUMBERING1%>.<%NUMBERING2%>.<%NUMBERING3%> PRTG Manual: Reports Step By Step

To create a new report or to run an existing one, follow the steps in this section. In the PRTG web interface, click on the Reports entry in the main menu to show the reports main screen.

Note: This documentation refers to the PRTG System Administrator user accessing the Ajax interface on a master node. For other user accounts, interfaces, or nodes, not all of the options might be available as described. When using a cluster installation, failover nodes are read-only by default.

Quick Start: Run an Existing Report

PRTG is delivered with several pre-configured reports. To use one of them, click on a report's name in the reports main screen, select the Settings tab. The other steps are the same as for new reports. Although some settings are already given, we recommend you to check the settings. For example, check the sensors that are included in the report. For some reports that come with PRTG there are no sensors added yet. Continue with Step 3 in this section.

Step 1: Add Report

Click on the Add Report button to add a new report. An assistant appears where you can define various settings. First, enter a Report Name.

Step 2: Select a Template

In the Template section, select one of the report templates from the list. This defines the overall look of your report and affects in which detail (interval) monitoring data is included. For a detailed description on the available options, please see Reports Settings section. If you are not sure, try a template that appears most suitable to you. You can change all settings later.

Step 3: Define Additional Settings

Select a Security Context (best choose PRTG System Administrator, if available), your Timezone, and Paper Size for PDF generation. For detailed information, please see Reports Settings section.

Step 4: Select Nodes and Sensors

Choose the sensors you want to include in the report. First, when running in a cluster, define the Cluster Node the monitoring data is taken from. Select a specific node from the list. If you select All nodes, PRTG creates a report with data from all of your cluster nodes, but only the primary channel of every sensor appears in the report.

Every report shows monitoring results from sensor data. There are two ways to include sensors in a report: You can either add sensors manually, or by tag. In the Add Sensors by Tag field, enter one or more tags that matches the sensor range you want a report for. For example, enter the tag bandwidthsensor to include all sensors that measure bandwidth (or select it from the list of tags which PRTG suggests). PRTG provides this tag as default when you add bandwidth sensors, so this tag typically gathers all bandwidth sensors, unless you configured your system differently. You can enter several tags. Hit the enter key, comma, or space after providing one tag and enter the next one. Use the Filter Sensors by Tag field to explicitly filter sensors with certain tags from the bulk of tags or manually selected sensors defined above.

Tagging is a great tool to group sensors or other objects. For more information, see Tags section. You can also leave the tag fields empty and only choose specific sensors manually later.

Step 5: Decide on a Schedule and Additional Settings

In the Report Schedule section, choose if you want to run the report on a regular basis or on demand only. Also choose which time Period will be covered by the report, and if you want to show percentiles, add report comments, or special access rights. For detailed information, please see Reports Settings section.

Note: Scheduled reports are not executed on failover nodes by default.

Click on the Continue button to store your settings. If you change tabs or use the main menu, all changes to the settings will be lost!

Step 6: Check and Adjust the Sensors Included

When you saved the settings, switch to the Sensors Selected by Tag tab to see a list of all sensors that you added with the tag(s) you defined in step 4. To change tags, go back to the Settings tab. You can additionally add sensors manually. To do so, switch to the Select Sensors Manually tab. See Reports Settings section for detailed information. The final report shows sensors from both manual and by tag selection.

Step 7: Run Report

Switch to the Run Now tab, select the current or previous period, and in the Processing Options select View Report as HTML. Click the Run Report button. PRTG generates the report in a new browser window or tab immediately. Depending on the number of selected sensors and the used template, it may take a few minutes until you see the report. If you do not want to wait, close the newly opened browser window or tab and select a PDF option in the Processing Options. Click on the Run Report button again. The report is then generated in the background and you get a ToDo ticket or email once it is finished.

Note: For large PDF reports, PRTG automatically splits the output into separate files to avoid huge PDF files. You can change the number of sensors which PRTG includes into each PDF file by editing the report templates manually. See More section of Reports Settings.