• Network Security Manager Reporting and Analytics
• About Reporting and Analytics
  • Conventions
    • Guide Conventions
    • UI Conventions
  • Related Documents
  • Navigation
• Manager View
• Group and Tenant Reporting
  • Understanding How the NSM License Affects Reporting
  • Navigating Reports
  • Tenant Reports
  • Group Reports
• Firewall View
• Analytics
  • About Analytics
  • Navigating to the Analytics Page
    • List View
    • Graph View
    • Log View
  • Custom Filters
• Log Download
• Productivity Reports
• Reports
  • Capture Threat Assessment (CTA) Report Rules
  • Default Report Rules
  • Firewall Up-Time Summary Report Rules
  • Custom Reports
• Alerts and Notifications
• System Events
• Notification Center
• SonicWall Support
  • About This Document

Custom Reports

The Custom Reports section provides the tool to produce customized reports and view them once generated. These reports can be customized by a user according to the collected data. The user can create custom filters or use the default filters to create these reports.

You need to have NSM advance license to view and manage the Custom Reports.

Custom reports can be generated in the Reports section of Manager View as well as Firewall View.

Creating Custom Filters

Before creating a custom report, an user first needs to create a custom filter as per their requirement. To learn more about creating custom filters you can check the Custom Filters section in the Analytics chapter.

Navigating the Custom Reports Page

You can view the Custom Report section by navigating through the Firewall View or Manager View page. You will also be directed to this page automatically from the session log page by clicking on Save and Create Report Rule.

Go to Report > Rules section to view the report rules table.

Click on Add button to open the Create Report Rule dialog box. Select the Custom option and click Next to go to the Basic Info page.

Basic Info

Basic Info page allows you to provide all the basic information for your report.

• Logo - This option allows you to add a custom logo to the report. You can only select a PNG format file having a maximum height of 160px and maximum width of 200px.
• Report Title - You can add a title to the report.
• On-demand Run Type - It is used to change the time period of the report using the slider. The maximum report time permissible is 30 days.
  
• Scheduled Run Type - It is used to choose when the report will be generated for a day, or for selected day of week or selected day of a month.
• Description - You can add a description to your report.
• Delivery Type - You can select from Save Report and Email option. Save Report allows you to save the reports in NSM. You can view these saved report in NSM under Reports > Saved Reports. Email option allows you to email the report. To email the report you need to select the Email Destination as Administrator or Adhoc user. You need to provide the user mail id in the Email Id column if you select Adhoc User. You also need to add the Email Subject and Body as well as select Zip Report to send the report in a Zip format.
• Password Protect - You can provide a password to the report pdf.

Click Next after filling all the required details.

Setup Content

After filling the basic information, you will be directed to the Setup Content page. You need to fill the following details and click Next.

• Section Title - You can add a title to the report section.

• Scope Selector - You can change the scope of the report to any tenant or group level.

  The scope selector option is only available on custom reports for the Manager View and not the Firewall View.

  

• Filters - You can select from the list of Custom Filters that you have created or from a list of Predefined filters.

  

  

• Representation Types - You can select from Time Series Chart and Data Table option.
  

  Time Series Chart: This allows you to generate a report where the selected item values will be plotted in a time series chart. Each point on the chart corresponds to the number of data points of selected item(s) at a time-point. You can use the drop down to select your data points. The data points are divided into 3 different categories i.e. Distinct Data Points, Data Points and Aggregate Data Points.
  

  General recommendations:

  • Select an item that is not part of a filter criterion.
  • Select items for which y-axis magnitude is comparable, or create separate charts with different y-axis scales.

  

  

  Data Table: This allows you to generate a report where the selected item values will be represented in a tabular manner. You have to make the appropriate selections from the list of Grouping Criterion and Aggregated Criterion to get the desired report. For example, you want a weekly report of users accessing high risk application where along with user name you need total number of connections, data send, total data transferred and total threat. To generate this report, you need to create custom filter to filter out all high risk applications and use data table custom report to generate the desired report..

  You can also choose the Number of Rows of data that you want in the report.

  You can select from a maximum of 6 columns from the Grouping Criterion and Aggregated Criterion list.

  

• Show representation - This lets you see a representation of the report that you will generate according to your selections. Kindly note that this is only a representation and not the real data.

You can click on Add Section to add multiple sections of information in your report.

You can Delete and Edit a section by clicking on the delete and edit symbol above a section.

Representation

This page provides you a representation of the data that will appear in your report as per the selections that you have made. The data is generated in the form of charts and tables along with the respective section title. You can drag and drop the section titles to rearrange them as per your requirement. Kindly note that this is not the real data. Click on Next to go to the Review page.

Review

The Review page lets you see all the information that your have added for your report. This provides you the opportunity to review the data before generating the report. Click on Save to save the custom report rule.

Generating and Downloading the Report

After you click on finish, a new rule is created on the Report Rules page with your report title. You can use the options provided to edit, delete, generate and download the report.

To generate and download a report:

1. Click on the three dots at the right of the report and select Generate Report Now. You can also select Generate Report for Time Range to generate the report for a selected time range. Click on Refresh to refresh the data.

   

2. Once the report is generated successfully, click on the three dots at the right of the report and select Download Last Generated Report to download the report to your system in a pdf format. You can open the pdf to view the generated report.

   

You can Edit or Delete an existing report rule by clicking on the Edit Report Rule or Delete Report Rule button.

You can create another report rule using the properties of an existing report rule by clicking on the Clone Report button.

You can reset a currently running task for a selected rule using the Reset Status button.