Creating and Editing Reports

Secret Server provides robust reporting capabilities to help you analyze and manage your privileged access data effectively. With customizable reports, you can gain insights into user activity, security compliance, and system performance.

This guide walks you through the process of creating, modifying, and customizing reports in Secret Server. Whether you need to generate pre-built reports or tailor them to specific security and compliance requirements, you’ll find the tools and options necessary to streamline reporting for your organization.

Creating a Custom Report

  1. Click Reports on the main menu. The Reports page appears:

  2. Click the New Report button. The New Report page appears:

  3. Type the report name in the Name text box. This is the name that is displayed on the Reports page as a link underneath its containing category.

  4. Type a description in the Description text box. This is displayed in the View Report tab of a report. It is also used as the Tooltip when hovering over the report name on the Reports page.

  5. Click the Category dropdown list to select the category the report will appear in on the Reports page.

  6. Click the Page Size dropdown list to select the page size limit for the data displayed in the grid.

  7. Select the Use Database Paging checkbox if desired. See Database Paging for details.

  8. Click the Chart dropdown list to select the type of chart to use for displaying results. If set to <None>, a grid displays.

  9. Paste your script in the Report SQL text box. See Report SQL Scripts for details.

  10. Click the Save button. The new report's page appears and now appears on the reports page.

Editing Reports

To edit a report:

  1. Click the Reports menu item. The Reports page appears, listing all reports.

  2. Click the name of the report you wish to edit, which is a link. The report's page appears.

  3. Click the Edit button. The Edit Report page appears. See Creating a Custom Report for details about the parameters.

The SQL script text cannot be edited for (non-custom) system reports.

Report SQL Scripts

Overview

The best way to create SQL scripts is to view existing ones and the Secret Server database structure. Click any existing report link from the Reports page and select the Edit button. The SQL script appears in the Report SQL text box.

You cannot edit (non-custom) system reports. You can view their parameters in the Edit page, including their SQL script, which you can copy for use, but no modifications can be made or saved.

Dynamic Parameters

Reports support the embedding of certain parameters into the SQL so you can dynamically change the resulting data set. Another option available for custom reports is to apply a different color to returned rows dependent on certain conditions. For more information as well as examples, see Using Dynamic Parameters in Reports for details.

Viewing Secret Server SQL Database Information

You can show the SQL database information of Secret Server to assist with creating custom reports.

When Creating a Custom Report, in the New Report page select the Chart and SQL Editor link. The Report SQL page appears and it is blank. Click Help and search for specific tables with examples of data, data types and whether they are nullable. This data is available for search to assist in creating custom reports.

You can click the Run SQL button at the bottom of the page to see a preview of the chart generated by the report. The resulting chart displays in the Report Preview section at the bottom of the page.

Database Paging

Database paging allows the database to load large reports more quickly. We recommend database paging if the query is expected to pull large amounts of data for a report.

Implementing database paging may not work if the SQL query uses certain keywords, including TOP, OPTION, INSERT, UNION, WITH, or aliases containing the word FROM.

Example queries:

  • Successful query: SELECT * FROM tbSecret WHERE NAME LIKE 'Test%'.
  • Failing query: SELECT TOP 10 * FROM tbSecret WHERE SecretName LIKE 'Test%'.