The Advanced Reporting Page

The Advanced Reporting page in Virtual Superintendent allows you to create custom reports using the built‑in Metabase analytics tool.

You can access data from across your Virtual Superintendent databases and visualize it in flexible, powerful ways, making your data easier to understand and act on.

Permissions

To access the Advanced Reporting page, enable the Advanced Reporting permission.

Users with this permission can:

• Access the Advanced Reporting page
• View Advanced Reports
• Create Advanced Reports
• Edit Advanced Reports made by other users

Open the Advanced Reporting page

To open the Advanced Reporting page:

1. Sign in to Virtual Superintendent.
2. Click Menu > Advanced Reporting. The Advanced Reporting page opens. From here you can create a new Question, a new dashboard, or a new document.

Create a New Question

Create a Question to query data and visualize the results as a table or chart.

Create the question

To create a new question:

1. Select New > Question. The new question panel opens.
2. Select Pick your starting data.
3. Locate the database table you want to query. You can use the Search field to find a database table by name.
4. Select a database table. The query builder opens with basic query options.

Add filters

To add a new filter:

1. Select Add filters.
2. Select the database table column you want to filter.
3. Select the value to filter by.
4. Select the operator from the dropdown menu (for example, is, is not, contains, not empty, starts with).
5. Click Add filter.

To modify filters:

• Click the plus icon to add more filters.
• Click the X icon to remove a filter.

Add functions and grouping

To add a new function or grouping:

1. Select Pick a function or metric. The Functions menu opens.
2. Select a basic function (such as sum of, average of, or minimum of) or select Custom Expression for a more complex calculation.
3. Select Pick a column to group by. The Grouping menu opens.
4. Select a column to group the data (for example, project ID, cost code, subcontractor name, or supplier number).

Visualize and save the question

To visualize and save a question:

1. Click Visualize to create a chart or other visual representation of your query. You can continue refining the query by:

   
   

   • Adding filters
   • Adding summaries
   • Sorting results
   • Setting a row limit
   • Joining additional data
2. Click Save to save the question. The Save new question dialog opens.
3. Type a question name in the Name field.
4. Type a question description in the Description field.

5. Choose where to save the question:

   
   

   • Click the three-dot menu (...) next to Where do you want to save this? The Select a collection or dashboard dialog opens.
   • In the left panel, select Recent items, Collections, or Your personal collection.
   • Subfolders appear in the right panel. Choose a folder location or a dashboard.
   • To create a new collection, click New collection in the lower-left corner, enter a name, and click Create.
6. Click Select this collection or Select this dashboard. The Select a collection or dashboard dialog closes.
7. Click Save. The question is saved.

Create a New Dashboard

Dashboards are used to group questions into tabs on a single page. Use dashboards to bring together information about common theme. They are a great way to visually convey complex information.

A dashboard consists of cards arranged on a grid. These cards can include:

• Questions - You can add saved questions from your own or shared collections, or directly to a dashboard
• Text and header cards - Use these to provide context about the visualizations being shown or to explain what is being shown, or as section titles
• Iframe cards - Use these to embed external content
• Link cards - Use these to add quick navigation to other resources

Dashboards can also include filter widgets that apply the same filters across multiple questions, ensuring consistent data views. You can also customize what happens when users click on the dashboard's charts or tables, such as drilling into underlying data or navigating to a related question.

Create a new Dashboard

To create a new dashboard:

1. Click New > Dashboard. The New dashboard dialog opens.
2. Type a dashboard name in the Name field. This field is required.
3. Type a dashboard a description in the Description field. This field is optional.

4. Choose where to save the dashboard:

   
   

   • Click the three-dot menu (...) next to Where do you want to save this? The Select a collection or dashboard dialog opens.
   • In the left panel, select Recent items, Collections, or Your personal collection.
   • Subfolders appear in the right panel. Choose a folder location or a dashboard.
   • To create a new collection, click New collection in the lower-left corner, enter a name, and click Create.
5. Click Select to confirm the location. The Select a collection dialog closes.
6. Click Create. The dashboard builder opens.

Build your Dashboard

The dashboard builder includes tabs and formatting options at the top of the screen. Use these controls to:

• Add a question (chart)
• Add text or a heading
• Add a link or iframe
• Add a new section

Add a question

You can add questions (charts) previously saved in collections or save questions directly to your dashboard.

To create and add a new question to a dashboard:

1. Select New > Question. The new question panel opens.
2. Follow the instructions in Create a new Question to create a new question. This new question can only be used on this dashboard and not reused elsewhere, so is not generally recommended.

To add an existing question to a dashboard:

1. Click Add question (+) on the top row of the dashboard builder. Note that you must be in edit mode. If you aren't, click the pencil icon along the top row.
2. Search for a question by name or navigate through the folder structure by clicking collection name in the breadcrumb menu. You can't add questions that were added directly to other dashboards.
3. Click the question. The question is added to the dashboard. Adding the question doesn't make it unavailable to other dashboards (like questions created directly from dashboards).

Add headings and text cards

You can add headings to the dashboard (useful for each section) and text cards to explain what charts and tables show.

To add a headings card to a dashboard:

1. Click Add text (T) on the top row of the dashboard builder. A contextual menu opens.
2. Click Heading. A heading card is added to the dashboard grid the full width of the dashboard.
3. Type into the field to add the heading. Markdown is not supported in this field.

To add a text card to a dashboard:

1. Click Add text (T) on the top row of the dashboard builder. A contextual menu opens
2. Click Text. A text card is added to the dashboard grid. Type into the field to add text. You can use  Markdown formatting in this field to add bold and italic text, bulleted lists, code blocks, paragraphs, and blockquotes. You can also use Markdown to add images, links, and tables. Text cards also support variables (using filter names) using the following double brace syntax:{{my_variable}}.

Add link cards

Link cards contain links to external documents, or to other data items.

To add a link card to a dashboard:

1. Click Add link on the top row of the dashboard builder. A contextual menu opens.
2. Click Link. A link card is added to the dashboard.

3. Click inside the link card to add a link:

   
   

   • Select from a list of recently viewed dashboards, questions, or documents; or
   • Enter a web address to add an external link.

Add iframe cards

Iframe cards let you embed web content from external websites directly into your dashboard. This can include:

• Videos
• Charts hosted on external sites
• Google Sheets
• Live status dashboards (such as electricity supply, weather events, or system status pages)

To add an iframe card to a dashboard:

1. Click Add link on the top row of the dashboard builder. A contextual menu opens.
2. Click iFrame. An iframe card is added to the dashboard.
3. Paste your iframe HTML in the card.
4. Click Done.

Example iframe code:

<iframe 
  src="https://www.thevirtualsuperintendent.com/" 
  height="400" 
  width="600" 
  title="Iframe Example">
</iframe>

Add a section

To add a section to a dashboard:

1. Click Add Section on the top row of the dashboard builder. A contextual menu opens.
2. Select a layout option from those shown. The new section is added to the bottom of the dashboard. Sections take up the full width of the dashboard.

3. Click Select question on one of the question panels. The Pick what you want to replace this with dialog opens. Find and select an existing question:

   
   

   • In the left panel, select Recent items, Collections, or Your personal collection.
   • Subfolders appear in the right panel. Navigate to a collection location and select the problem to display in the section panel.
   • Repeat this process for each problem panel.
4. Type the required heading text into the heading card.
5. Save the dashboard or continue adding problems, cards, or sections.

Card Management

Once you have configured your dashboard with the cards you want, you can reorder them, change their size, copy them, remove them, or move them to a different tab. Most of these tasks are carried out using the menu options in the top-right corner of each card.

These menu options appear when you hover your mouse over a card while the dashboard is in edit mode (after the pencil icon in the top menu bar has been clicked). They are:

• Edit - Click to edit the content of the card.
• Duplicate - Make a copy of the card. The duplicate is added to the bottom of the dashboard.
• Replace - Swap the problem with a different problem. Opens the Pick what you want to replace this with dialog, where you can pick the problem that will be used instead of the current problem.
• Click behavior - Specifies how viewers of the dashboard can interact with the problem using their mouse. The default option is to open a drilldown menu when the problem is clicked, but this can be changed to open a custom destination (a dashboard, question, or URL) or to update a dashboard filter.
• Visualize another way - Changes the chart style used to present the problem. You can choose from several different chart styles including line charts, area charts, bar charts, combo charts, scatter charts, pie charts, and funnel charts.
• Visualization options - Changes how the problem visualization is formatted, including its title, description, alignment, what information is shown when no results are available, pagination options, index row visibility, and general formatting options such as separator styles, prefix units (such as "$"), suffixes (such as "dollars"), as well as conditional formatting rules for table cells that meet specified conditions (typically green for good and red for bad).

Create a New Document

Create a new document to add text, context, and explanations alongside questions and dashboards.

Create a new document

To create a new document:

1. Click New > Document. The new document panel opens.
2. Type a title into the Title field.  If you do not enter a title, the document is automatically named Untitled document – [date] when it is saved.
3. Type your content into the text field. You can add charts, links to other dashboard elements, document mentions, and text formatting here. Enter a forward slash (/   ) to open the command list to add charts and text links to charts, dashboards and documents, or text formatting, including headings (H1, H2, H3), bullet lists, numbered lists, quotes, and code blocks. Enter an at symbol (@   ) to open the file menu and mention Questions, Dashboards or Documents. Mentions create direct links to the selected items.

Save the document

1. Click Save. The location dialog opens.
2. Select a save location. Recent items, Collections, and Your personal collection appear in the left tree menu. Subfolders are shown to the right.
3. Click Select. The document is saved.