Decent tool to store very specific reports in one location
February 14, 2018
Decent tool to store very specific reports in one location
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with OpenText Actuate Information Hub
My company uses OpenText iHub for storing every report used by every department within the company. We generate reports using OpenText BIRT development tool and then we publish the report to the iHub instance. We then create the appropriate dashboards and assign the proper privileges to the dashboards. This will enable the end user to have access to the reports and run them on demand when it is of most benefit to them. We also set up a recurring schedule to automatically generate a report and mail it to a set group of users.
- It is fairly easy to set the sharing rules for a report/dashboard.
- They have a decent amount of time frame options for setting a schedule to generate a report.
- The support is mostly helpful and timely if you have an issue.
- Setting up a "dashboard" is extremely lacking in functionality. The different chart widgets you place on the page do not interact with each other. When you select an item from one do not expect it to highlight or filter another.
- The speed and stability are not great, but maybe that is just our environment not being up to snuff...even though we are above the "recommended" settings.
- The main GUI for a user is TERRIBLE. You log into a File Tree format where you have to navigate folders to reach the correct dashboard. There are ways around this, but it would either require an expensive payment to the Professional Services team to revamp to UI or another option they gave us was to create the "Default Dashboard" and provide that link to users and in that Dashboard, you use a new tab to include the navigation back to the main screen so that at least on the initial load the user is taken to a friendly looking dashboard instead of a file tree.
Our instance of iHub does not stack up against the other larger BI tools out today. It is a good place to store reports in a central location that allows users to run very specific reports on demand, but it is not a place I would want to store all of my "dashboards". As far as holding individual reports that are specific to an individual need, it is a great tool. If you want to create a report that will be used as a Template for a Form or a Label, iHub is a good choice to store and schedule the report or call it via API to generate it and return it to your calling app.