Creating, updating and distributing a Tamara report | Vose Software

Creating, updating and distributing a Tamara report

Once you have finished running a simulation, you can create a report to distribute. In the Results tab, click the icon Report Designer:

This will open a separate Tamara Report Designer application:

Tamara Report Designer works on the principle of templates. The reports you see on screen are how the currently saved templates display the results for the simulation of the model you have just completed in Tamara. Each template report is shown in a separate tab. By default, Tamara automatically creates two reports: Simulation Report shown above gives:

    • Distributions of the project duration and finish date and cost as both histograms and Pareto plots;

    • A Tornado sensitivity plot for finish date and cost;

    • A stochastic Gantt chart; and

    • Tables of summary statistics.

The Executive Summary gives the minimal information:

    • Histograms of the finish date and cost of the project; and

    • Tornado sensitivity plots for finish date and cost

All plots are provided with descriptions explaining how to read the charts.

The Tamara Report Designer has two modes:

    1. Report Viewer

    2. Report Designer

These are described below.

Report Viewer mode

The Report Viewer mode allows you to view how Tamara’s results look in the saved template reports, as well as print them and create report files to distribute.

The sections Print, Page Setup, Navigation, Zoom and Page Background in the Report Viewer ribbon are self-explanatory. The Report section of the ribbon allows you to modify the reports, or create new ones for this project:

Designer opens the Report Designer tab, and allows you to edit the current report

New Report opens the Report Designer tab with a new blank report for you to design from scratch. Generally, you will find it easier to use the Report Wizard

Report Wizard opens the Report Wizard

Save All saves any edits to the templates that you have created

Update Report. If you switch to Tamara and run another simulation (say with more samples), clicking this icon will update the report templates in each tab with the latest simulation results

The Export section of the ribbon provides various options for creating a file of the current report, or directly sending an email with an attached file:

 

Report Wizard

Clicking the Report Wizard icon makes the following dialog open:

You can select one of the standard reports (Executive Summary, General Overview or Complete View), click Next and then Finish and a new template report will be created in the selected style. This can then easily be edited to reformat, add or remove content in the Report Designer.

Alternatively, select Custom template. You will then be asked to fill in a series of options, as follows:

 

 

At the end, click Finish. The Report Wizard will then generate a template report with all the content selected. The titles, layout, etc. can then be edited in the Report Designer mode.

Tip: select only the items you really need, particularly for a large schedule. Selecting many items, at several levels, is likely to result in an excessively large report full or irrelevant graphs and tables.

Report Designer mode

The Report Designer mode allows you to edit current templates or create new ones. These edited templates are linked to the Tamara model, which means that you can create different custom reports for each project.

Report Designer is a sophisticated document design application, allowing you a very high degree of flexibility to create a report with the design and content you need. The following image shows the Report Designer open after the New Report icon has been clicked:

The main central window shows the report template (currently empty) with its grid. On the left are elements that you can add to your report by simply dragging them to the report template. For example, dragging the histogram icon onto the report opens the following dialog:

Select the task to display from the expandable list on the left, and choose between Start, Finish or Duration at the top. Click Finish if the graph format and titles are acceptable. If not, click Next and follow through the sequence of dialogs selecting the required options. Every element of the graph can be edited, for example:

Add and format the markers to be displayed:

Edit the color palette and style to be used:

Edit the background:

Edit the margins:

Edit the axes:

Edit the histogram bars:

Edit title text and format:

Add annotations:

Once you have finished, resize the plot in the report template to suit.

Tip: Instead of running through each dialog, you can go directly to the ones you want to change by selecting the appropriate option from the icon list on the left of the screen:

You can also make your report more interesting by adding other types of plots to your report. For example:

 

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