Planned feature
This feature is not available yet. Here is what is planned, so you can tell whether it will cover your need — and tell us if it will not.
Status — design settled
Planned availability — server mode only
In short
A report is a written document mixing text and figures from your analyses. Where a dashboard is an instrument you explore, a report is a settled argument: the author decides what the reader sees. One document reads, projects as slides, and exports.
Why not just a dashboard
Both display figures over data, but they do not answer the same question.
Dashboard
An instrument you question.
The reader filters, changes the period, explores. The numbers follow the data: that is the whole point of a monitor.
Report
An argument you pass on.
The author fixes what is shown and writes around it. A thesis chapter, a study deliverable, a steering-committee talk.
The difference fits in one sentence: in a report, the filtering choices belong to the author, not the reader.
The case that motivated the feature
A thesis figure or a regulatory deliverable must stay reproducible and immutable. If the dataset moves the following week, the already-rendered PDF must not move with it. A dashboard, by construction, does exactly the opposite.
What is planned
A document, not a grid
A report is written like text: headings, paragraphs, lists. There are no tabs and no layout grid — the structure comes from the content, as in a word processor.
Figures inserted in the flow of the text
A figure is inserted as a block, in the middle of writing. Two gestures are planned:
- Insert a figure and configure it on the spot, as you would a dashboard widget.
- Take a figure from an existing dashboard, which copies the figure, its dataset, and freezes the filters active at that moment.
Every dashboard figure type is covered, including those produced by plugins and those backed by code.
Each figure carries its own filters
There is no global filter running through the document: each figure has its own, set from a panel on the block, with a badge recalling which are active. Two figures in the same report may therefore cover two different periods — often exactly what a text needs.
Freezing a figure
This is the central mechanism, and it is worth understanding precisely.
Live, by default
The figure recomputes every time the report is opened, with its own filters. That is what you want while writing: the numbers follow the work in progress.
Frozen, on decision
The image is then captured and it is what appears: no more computation. A note records the date the figure was frozen, and a button refreshes it.
Inserting does not freeze the data
Taking a figure from a dashboard freezes its filters, not its numbers. While the figure is live, it recomputes. Freezing the data is a second, deliberate gesture — and it is the one to make before circulating a deliverable.
A planned action freezes the whole report at once, when finalising it.
Three uses of one document
There is no “document” on one side and “presentation” on the other: one document, three ways to use it.
- Read it in Linkr, or hand it over to be read.
- Project it as slides — see Presentation mode.
- Export it to an office format — see Exporting a report.
What is not settled yet
- Speaker notes, a presenter view and a slide overview are not designed at this stage.
- Sharing a report outside the project — a public link, a catalog entry — is not addressed.
- Writing together simultaneously is undecided: the chosen technology allows it, the choice has not been made.
- Versioning a report: a report will carry a version number like other entities, but the detail remains to be specified.
What is already visible in the application
The Reports entry exists in a project’s lab and shows a waiting page. The matching permission exists too, which lets you prepare roles before the feature arrives.
Going further
- Presentation mode — the same document, projected.
- Exporting a report — the six planned formats.
- Dashboards — the tool to prefer for monitoring that must stay live.
- Tabs and widgets — the figures a report will be able to take.