By Ravi Shankar, PgMP, PMP, PMI-RMP and PMI-SP

Oracle Report Manager is an online report distribution system that provides a secure and centralized location to produce and manage point-in-time reports. Report producers submit, publish, and set security for reports. Report consumers view and approve reports. Reports can be published and presented to specific responsibilities without additional security. Various security models can be applied, allowing only authorized users to view entire reports or parts of reports. In addition, we can use specific templates to integrate reports displayed by the Report Manager using the organization’s style.

The critical benefit of Report Manager in R 12 is that the report can be directly viewed and opened in Excel (as against earlier releases, wherein it can be viewed only in PDF or HTML).

The following are the key benefits and highlights of using Report Manager.

• It provides a centralized report distribution system for point-in-time reports.
• It enables information producers to submit and publish Financial Statement Generator (FSG), Ad Hoc FSG, Variable Format, and Standard reports to a central repository.
• It enables information producers to present reports in the repository to end users via menu items on the Oracle Apps Home page or portal.
• It is accessible by any Oracle Applications user using a Web browser.
  It offers approval requirements before making reports available for general viewing.
• It permits report availability in a future timeframe.
• Reports can be opened and viewed in PDF, HTML, or Excel formats.
• It secures reports by utilizing security paradigms.
• It provides an archive facility to maintain reports for future reference that no longer need to be displayed.
• It enables the publishing of reports that have been submitted as part of request sets or report sets.
• It enables uploading any file and publishing it to a central repository. Reports in the repository can then be distributed to the Apps home page.