Symantec Endpoint Management (EPM) Partners Community

With Windows 8.1 now released and some companies adopting the new operating system, users of IT Analytics for ITMS can gauge preparedness in their environment through a similar dashboard already out-of-the-box. If you currently have IT Analytics for ITMS installed, you may already be familiar with the Windows 7 Readiness Dashboard. The criteria behind this report is essentially the same as what would be necessary for a Windows 8.1 Readiness Dashboard, since per Microsoft's website Windows 7 requirements are similar to Windows 8.1 requirements.

All that really needs to be done to convert this to Windows 8.1 is change the title of the dashboard and the links to the underlying details reports. In this article, we will walk you through cloning, renaming and editing the Windows 7 Readiness Dashboard to provide a separate dashboard for Windows 8.1. Alternatively, if you want to simply import the Windows 8.1 Readiness reports, you can use the attached .rdl files in the zip file at the bottom. NOTE: If your data source was setup as anything other than 'IT Analytics' when you installed the product, you will need to modify the .rdl files to match your data source name.

Cloning the Reports

Rather than overwriting the existing Windows 7 Readiness Dashboard, as a best practice it is recommended that you clone the dashboard and rename it first through Report Builder.

1. Open Report Builder by either of the following options:

• On the server hosting SQL Reporting Services, open a browser and go to http://localhost/reports, then click Report Builder.
• From within the Symantec Management Console, navigate to Settings > Notification Server > IT Analytics Settings > Report Builder and click Launch Report Builder.

2. Allow time for the application to load.
3. When the Getting Started menu appears, click on Open a saved report.
4. Navigate to the IT Analytics folder off the ReportServer root. This is where all the default IT Analytics reports are stored. Open the Windows 7 Readiness Dashboard report. You should see something similar to the following:

5. At the top of the report, where it says '<<Expr>>' change that to 'Windows 8.1 Readiness Dashboard'

6. In the upper left of Report Builder, click the circle icon and then select 'Save As' then name the report 'Windows 8.1 Readiness Dashboard'. This saves the dashboard as the underlying .rdl format, which is the native format to SQL Reporting Services. It is important to rename the report here so that you do not save over the out-of-the-box report.
7. In the upper left of Report Builder, click the circle icon and then select 'Open' then select the report 'Windows 7 Readiness Details'. This is the underlying report that the dashboard links to (when a user selects a piece of the pie chart). Using the same process from above, change the title of this report and save it as 'Windows 8.1 Readiness Details'.

Modifying Report Actions

To link the two Windows 8.1 reports we just created, we need to link the Windows 8.1 Readiness Dashboard to the Windows 8.1 Readiness Details though the slices of the pie chart. Report Builder provides an easy way to do this:

1. Reopen the Windows 8.1 Readiness Dashboard 
2. Right-click on the first pie chart and you should see a Chart Data menu appear to the right. In that menu, then right-click on the Series1 line and select Series Properties.

3. In the Series Property menu, select Action. Under the Specify a report area, click Browse and select the Windows 8.1 Readiness Details report you renamed earlier. 

4. Repeat this process for every Series line in the Chart Data menu, for all of the 4 pie charts. This will ensure that when any slice of the pie on any chart is selected, it will drill down to the proper report.

Adding the Reports to the Console

The last step is to add the new reports to the Symantec Management Console so that they can be viewed.

1. To link these reports into the Symantec Management Console, open the console and then navigate to the Reports > IT Analytics > Dashboards folder.
2. Right-click on the Dashboards folder and select New > IT Analytics Report.

3. In the Report Type dropdown box, select Dashboard.
4. In the Folder Name dropdown box, select IT Analytics.
5. In the Report Name dropdown box locate and select the Windows 8.1 Readiness Dashboard and click the Add Report button.

6. Refresh your browser and expand the Dashboards folder.
7. Locate and select the report you just added and it should appear to the right.

8. Repeat the same process for the Windows 8.1 Readiness Details report, but this time in the Reports folder.
9. When you click on the pie slices from the Windows 8.1 Readiness Dashboard, it should drill into the Windows 8.1 Readiness Details report.