At Miami University, we have a large number of reports
in Portal (currently version 7.0.2, attempting to
migrate to 8.2.1). The reports are spread across a
number of categories; for example, enrollment reports
are in an enrollment section, which has subsections
for different semesters; payroll reports are in a
personnel section; and so on.

Some of our users may need to look at different
reports at different times, and they have some
difficulty in remembering where reports are. We have
worked on ways to direct users to the reports that
they need based on what information they are trying to
locate, and wonder if anyone else has done something
along these lines.

One thing we tried was developing an HTML-based index.
This index provided links to the URLs for report
parameter entry pages. This worked well, but the URLs
occasionally change in unexpected ways, apparently as
the repository reorganizes itself. Does anyone know
of a way to link directly to a report without running
into the shifting URL issue?

By the way, we thought of using the Search function,
but we have turned off this function because a user
who does not have access to a category can see a
report in that category by accessing it through the
search function. Not good.

Has anyone come up with other ideas to help users find
the reports that they need?

Thanks,
Bill Heck




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