Using templates with Cube makes your reporting process consistent and ensures the reliability of your data. Temples also allow your stakeholders to self-serve and access the data they need, right from the Reports page in the Web portal.
Templates can be built in your spreadsheet, saved to your Cube via the Spreadsheet Add-on and accessed in the web portal. They provide a structured, filterable report that can be refreshed with live data anytime directly in the web.
There are numerous ways to use these templated reports but to get started, consider using them to enable:
- Your sales department to keep an eye on their monthly and quarterly sales targets
- Your department heads to compare their budget with their actual expenditures
- Your marketing team to track spend allocation across channels or programs
- And your executive team to pull a cash flow report
Build your report
The first step is to build the report structure in your spreadsheet. There are a number of ways to begin building a web report:
- Generate an ad hoc report
- Cubify a report you're already using
- Open a template you've already saved to Cube
No matter where you begin, be sure that you've installed the Spreadsheet add-on.
Generate an ad hoc report
In your Spreadsheet add-on, click on the New button under Build to start building your report by dragging your dimensions into rows and columns. Any additional dimensions can be added as filters. Then click Fetch Data to generate and populate your new report based on the criteria you’ve set.
Web report viewers can use filters to modify the set of data they pull into the report.
Want more details on ad hoc reporting? Check out our step-by-step guide.
Cubify an existing report
If you have a report you would like to start using with Cube, you'll need to update the row and column headers to match your Cube dimensions exactly. The Spreadsheet add-on will use these row and column headers to pull the associated data from the cloud.
Here's our guide to Cubifying your workbook for steps on how to get this report ready to use.
Open a saved template
Any template you've saved to Cube can be opened as a Web report. It's easy to start from an existing template and save changes to create a new report. This would be especially useful when creating similar reports for leaders across different departments.
To open a saved report, click on the Open button under Build and select the template name. Then click Open Template.
Learn more about creating and saving templates.
Format the report
Any formatting you add to the spreadsheet, except merged cells, will save to the web report, so you can format your report for better readability and to call attention to important information.
- Adjust column headers: Expand the column headers and change the fill color.
- Change value formatting: Change the value formatting to the accounting format and remove unnecessary decimals.
- Format rows and columns: Bold and highlight specific rows (e.g., totals) for emphasis and add spaces to create sections of related items.
Publish the report as a template
In the Spreadsheet add-on, highlight the cells you want to use for your web report, click Select and then Select Range. Cube will scan the headers in the rows and columns of this range and match them to your dimensions in Cube. To confirm that the headers match and Cube recognizes all of the dimensions listed, click Validate.
Now you're ready to save your report as a template so you can open it as a web report. At the bottom of your Spreadsheet add-on, under the Publish section, click Template. Give your template a descriptive name (e.g., "Product x Market Revenue") and decide whether to share it with your colleagues or keep it as a private web report for only you to access. Then click Publish Template.
Templates can be edited later from the Reports page in the Web portal to update their name and who can access them. You can also open a template in your spreadsheet to make changes to the rows and columns or formatting.
This saves the structure and formatting of your report, making it accessible in your Cube either through the spreadsheet environment or the web portal.
Access the report in the Web portal
In the Reports section of the Cube web portal, you'll see all saved templates that have been shared with you. You will see all saved templates if you are an Admin in Cube.
Learn more about the Reports page.
Find your newly published template and click on the title to open the web report. You'll see the same structure you created in your spreadsheet and can click Fetch Data to pull in the most current set of data for the parameters.
If the range you saved included filters, those will appear above your report so you can slice and dice your report data and fetch the subset you need.
Ready to share your web reports with your team? Learn how to invite new users to Cube and manage their permissions.