Global Platform Reporting (GPR)
for timely Management Information
At a Glance:
Merrill Lynch was an existing customer of Actuate’s
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prior to this project. The objective of the Global
Platform Reporting project is to replace a current
reporting system pertaining to KPI’s, client, region
and agent information, anti-money laundering,
The Requirements:
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Users must be able to report flexibly (parameter
driven) and without the need for database/SQL
trading data and exchange rates.
skills.
The project will make flexible reporting directly
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available to the users, without the need to involve
Security mechanisms to ensure that users, who
belong to offices, can only see data pertinent to
specialist database/SQL staff.
their own office.
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The Brief:
system is paramount.
The reports are to be delivered in 2 tranches where
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tranche 1 is to be concerned with simply replacing
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other newly requested reports.
The data must be accessible as spreadsheets
or PDF documents.
the existing reports and delivering new, high priority
reports. Tranche 2 will then proceed to deliver
Availability and performance of the reporting
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PDF documents must be made available such
that users can download the PDF over FTP.
The ‘office security’ referred to in point 2 above
The tranche 1 reports are to be made available to
should still be honoured by the PDF/FTP
users, who will be able to view reports that had
method of access.
previously been run at pre-arranged times. The
users must also be able to run the same reports on
an ad-hoc basis.
e.Business Platform
Technical Environments:
Operating System
Windows NT
Database
SQL Server
Information Delivery
Actuate 5.0
Case Study
The Benefits:
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24x7 deal and agent data available on demand.
These will be available to 50 users initially, located
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Ability to form a view of long-term performance
throughout their European offices: Madrid,
by viewing historical data and spotting trends.
Frankfurt, London, etc.
Management can manipulate and search on
the data in the Excel format that they are
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familiar with.
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Work towards making the next 15 reports
available.
Seamless integration of the Actuate Web
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Reports within the ML web site.
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Next Steps
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Merrill Lynch wish to develop in-house
Libraries and templates will enable any future
expertise for the maintenance of their
developer to develop reports which conform to
report suite.
the Merrill Lynch look and feel quickly.
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Users wish to raise requests for new reports
to the in-house team, with the expectation
that they will be available in a matter of days.
Is It Live Yet?
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Archiving - Merrill Lynch are looking for an
automated way of archiving regularly.
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As the system was being developed Merrill Lynch
The standard Actuate mechanism cannot be
Consequently, the reports were developed from
used because the report server has many
‘dummy’ data sources in excel spreadsheets that
projects on it and the standard Actuate
were the same format as would appear in the
archiving rules would need to be constant for
revised database. Once the database has been
all projects. This does not fit Merrill Lynch’s
made available the reports will be quickly changed
requirements. Consequently, a small .dll
to work of the live data source. The porting
would need to be constructed using the
exercise is scheduled for the end of January 2002
Report Server API.
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were amending their database structures.
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Externalise security.
The system will be made live by the beginning of
March. The environment and reports are ready, but
we are still waiting on the CDR team to deliver a
working database. Once that has happened, the
reports will be tested and made available to live
users. Tranche 1 contains 18 reports, Tranche 2
contains 4, but for the date at the beginning of
March the GPR team has agreed to deliver 7
reports from Tranche 1.
Case Study