Zoho Reports - FAQ

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Note: If you have any questions not covered above that you wish to get answered, please send them to support at zohoreports dot com

1. What is Zoho Reports?

• Complete Online Reporting & Business Intelligence service accessible anytime and anywhere!
• Easy to adopt 'Spreadsheet-like' interface for data addition and report creation
• Powerful drag & drop based reporting features for quick report creation and publishing.
• Visual Analysis capability for in-depth analysis and to slice & dice your data.
• Supports Charts, Pivot Tables, Summary and simple Tabular reports
  
• Supports data import from variety of file formats including Excel, Open Office, CSV, TSV and HTML. Also supports periodic scheduling of import
• Also push data from traditional in-house applications and databases with batch tools or API (application programming interface)
• Supports relating data with each other through look-up columns (as you have in a relational database)
  
• SQL (Structured Query Language) driven querying for powerful report creation. You could provide your SQL queries written in any of the familiar database dialects, including Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Informix and ANSI SQL.
• Real-time collaboration by sharing data and reports in read or read-write modes with your friends and colleagues. You could also notify reports via email.
• Export and Print Reports in variety of formats
  
• Embed reports within your Websites, Web Applications and Blogs
• Highly secure through user login with support for HTTPS (SSL connection). All your data and reports are hosted in highly secure datacenters.
• Web APIs(HTTP based & Zoho CloudSQL) to tightly integrate and interact with your business applications
• Zero Maintenance cost & Low cost
• Real-time collaboration by sharing data and reports in read or read-write modes with your friends and colleagues

Also check out the Video on Zoho Reports Overview 

2. Who should use Zoho Reports?

Follow this link for a detailed discussion on Who should use Zoho Reports?

3. What is the difference between Zoho Reports and Zoho Creator?

The key difference between Zoho Reports and Zoho Creator is in-depth reporting and analytics vs online custom database application creation.

Zoho Reports enables you to easily create powerful and sophisticated reports with your data by creating online reporting applications. It enables you to slice & dice your data for in-depth visualization and business intelligence. Zoho Creator enables you to quickly create a powerful online database application to collect data and trigger work flows through forms and scripting.

Zoho Reports could act as a convenient back-end reporting/analytical database for your application needs. You can get data into Zoho Reports through manual data entry or bulk load data from files or upload data stored in your local databases (like MS Access, Oracle, SQL Server & MySQL) or schedule for periodic upload of data or push data from your application through Web API (HTTP based) for reporting and analysis. Here the crucial difference is that, while Zoho Creator offers a hosted programming environment (with a DB backing), Zoho Reports offers a powerful reporting layer (backed by an analytical database) for your application data.

Zoho Reports will also support full-fledged relational modeling (similar to relational/analytical databases) very soon. It currently supports minimal relational modeling functionalities through Lookup columns. With lookup columns you can relate one table with another. It also offers cascade-on-delete functionality whereby when a row in the parent table is deleted, it will automatically delete all the related rows in the child table(s). Click to know more on Zoho Reports Relational Modeling Capabilities.

The other key difference is that Zoho Reports embraces SQL, and supports all major dialects of it. This enables users to do sophisticated querying on the data for creating powerful reports. We will flesh out this functionality even further in future updates. For further details on the difference between Zoho Creator and Zoho Reports, refer to the following blog post :

4. How to choose between Zoho Reports and Zoho Creator?

Please read the FAQ #3 before you read further. If you require a quick application development environment, with forms, scripting, workflows and basic reporting, opt for Zoho Creator. If you require a powerful online reporting and analytics service with an inbuilt database support, opt for Zoho Reports. Zoho Reports also supports Web based APIs using which you can build your own forms and push/update/pull data into Zoho Reports from any of your applications.

5. Will there be an integration between Zoho Reports and Zoho Creator?

We will be integrating the powerful report creation features available in Zoho Reports into Zoho Creator in a future update, making it easy to create reports on the data your application generates in Creator.

As a first step we have enabled support for periodically importing your Creator application data into Zoho Reports for reporting and analysis. Refer to this link to know more on the first level integration with Zoho Creator.

GUI level integration of making report creation features of Zoho Reports available within Zoho Creator would be done in the near future.

Zoho Reports will continue to be offered as a separate Online Reporting and Business intelligence service focusing on enabling users to create powerful reports and do in-depth analysis of their data. To Zoho Reports, Creator is just another source of data on which it would enable powerful reporting through a tighter integration mechanism.

6. Any other integration plans of Zoho Reports into other Zoho Services?

In the future, we plan to offer more advanced reporting functionality for Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects via Zoho Reports. We have already integrated Pivot Table feature of Zoho Reports into Zoho Sheet. Currently we are working on the next level of Creator integration as mentioned in FAQ #5. Interesting integration plans with other Zoho Business applications is also in the roadmap.

7. Can Zoho Reports be used as an Online Database?

8. What are the file formats from which you can import data?

You can import tabular data from the following file formats:

• Excel Spreadsheets (.xls)
  
• CSV (Comma Separated Values),
• TSV (Tab Separated Values)
• Any tabular data in text file format
  
• HTML files
  
• MS Access (.mdb) files
• Web URL which generates data in CSV format
• Zipped files in any of the above file formats (except .mdb files)

You can also copy-paste data from all the above file formats as well as from spreadsheets (Microsoft Office Excel , OpenOffice Calc, StarOffice) files to import the data into Zoho Reports.

9. How to upload/push data from in-house and hosted applications into Zoho Reports?

Refer to the solution page "How to upload/push data from in-house applications" for details.

10. How to upload/push/import data periodically into Zoho Reports?

You can periodically upload/push/import of data into Zoho Reports through any of the following supported means:

• Setup periodic import of data from Web URL based CSV data. Read for more details.
  
• Use CSV Bulk Uploader tool and setup periodic schedules.
• Use Zoho Reports API and push data from your applications as and when data changes or as bulk. Read for more details.

11. Any restriction on the size of data that could be imported?

Currently Zoho Reports (which is in Beta) allows you to import files with maximum 100,000 rows or a file size limit of 3 MB at a time. It will restrict it based on whichever condition is met first. A table in Zoho Reports can contain a maximum of 500,000 rows. If you wish to upload more than 100,000 rows or a file more than 3MB at a time, you can use the CSV uploader tool.

We will incrementally increase this limit through constant observation and tweaking of Zoho Reports service usage and performance. If you find these limits are constraining to your application needs, mail us your requirements to support at zohoreports dot com, we will definitely help you.

Very soon we will be releasing the Pricing plan for Zoho Reports, which will support larger data sizes depending on the plan opted. We will continue to offer a liberal free edition for small scale reporting needs. Stay tuned...

12. How to upload large data into Zoho Reports?

If you have large amount of data (greater than 1MB) to be uploaded into Zoho Reports, loading them using the Web Graphical Interface of Zoho Reports, might not be the best way. As the upload happens over the Internet, slow or unreliable network connection might cause failures or interput the large data upload.

In these cases, we recommend the following mechanism:

• Use CSV Bulk Uploader tool. This tools does a smart upload by splitting the data into smaller manageable segments and uploads them in sequence into Zoho Reports. This tool currently supports upload data in CSV, TSV or any tabular text file formats.

You could also Zip the file and upload, as long as the Zipped file content size is less 3MB and containing not more than 100000 rows. CSV Bulk Uploader tool does not have this restriction. But the overall limitation of having a maxium 500,000 rows in a table still applies. Please refer #11 for more details on Import data size restrictions.

13. What type of reports could be created in Zoho Reports?

Zoho Reports supports a wide variety of report creation options, which includes:

• Charts: Allows you to create any type of chart/graph
• Pivot Tables: Allows you to create a powerful view with data summarized in a grid both in horizontal and vertical columns (also known as Matrix Views)
• Tabular Views: Allows you to create simple table views with column grouping and sub-totals (aggregation)
• Summary View: Allows you to create a view with summarized values and grouping We are planning to add many more reporting options in the future.

14. Does Zoho Reports support SQL (Structured Query Language) Querying?

Yes, Zoho Reports supports full-fledged SQL based querying of your database. It understands SQL SELECT Queries written in any of the well-known database dialects including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, Sybase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Informix and ANSI SQL.

You can use SQLs from any of the below methods: 

• From the Zoho Reports User Interface, create Query Tables to execute SQL SELECT queries in Zoho Reports. You can then generate reports over the Query Table created. Check out this video on Creating Query Tables 
• Use Zoho CloudSQL API to execute SQL SELECT queries on Zoho Reports. You could use Zoho CloudSQL API when you want to integrate Zoho Reports within your own applications.

15. What are the SQL Dialects supported by Zoho Reports?

Zoho Reports supports SQL written in a wide variety of popular database dialects. It currently supports Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2, Sybase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Informix and ANSI SQL database dialects.

16. Does Zoho Reports support Web (HTTP) APIs for adding, updating and querying the database?

Zoho Reports supports a comprehensive HTTP based Web APIs using which application developers could add, update and query/fetch data in the database created in Zoho Reports. Using these APIs users could push/pull data from Zoho Reports from/to their own applications enabling easy integration. This would effectively enable Zoho Reports to be a convenient reporting database framework for your applications.

Zoho Reports also support Zoho CloudSQL API technology, which enables users to interact with their business data stored in Zoho Reports through familiar SQL language. Users can access the data in Zoho Reports using CloudSQL from both other cloud applications as well as from traditional in-premises software.

View api docs @ http://zohoreportsapi.wiki.zoho.com
Zoho CloudSQL docs @ http://zohoreportsapi.wiki.zoho.com/Zoho-Reports-CloudSQL.html

17. Does Zoho Reports support Relational modeling?

Yes, Zoho Reports supports relational modeling of your database. There are some limitations currently, which would be addressed incrementally to provide a powerful relational modeling capability in Zoho Reports. The following are the important capabilities that are currently available:

• You can create tables which have lookup columns between them. This helps you to create parent-child relationships
• Zoho Reports supports cascade-on-delete i.e. when you delete a row in the parent table, it will automatically delete the corresponding rows in the child table(s)
• You can join tables using SQL Query table feature (Video on Creating Query Tables)

18. Does Zoho Reports support Web forms or Can we use Zoho Creator Forms for add/update/delete of data into Zoho Reports?

No, Zoho Reports does not support inbuilt Web forms for data addition or modification or deletion in its database. It also does not support the use of Zoho Creator forms for data addition or modification or deletion directly into Zoho Reports.

But, with the first level of integration done with Zoho Creator, it is possible to collect data using Creator forms and sync that data into Zoho Reports for reporting and analysis. Refer to this link to know more on the first level integration with Zoho Creator. Also read question #3 to #5 to know about Zoho Creator integration.

You could also build your own Web forms (plain HTML forms or using any Web scripting languages) and push the data collected in these forms into Zoho Reports using the powerful Zoho Reports API. Also refer question #16 on Zoho Reports HTTP API

19. Can I share my data and reports created in Zoho Reports with other users?

Yes, you can share your data (tables) and reports created in Zoho Reports with other users. Use the Share option within Zoho Reports to share your tables or reports or entire reporting database to others users. You need to provide the user email ids (who have a Zoho Reports account) and set the necessary permission (Read or Read-Write) to the objects being shared.

You can also make a reporting database public for anyone to access it in a Read-only mode (no permission for editing). You can do this by setting the Access option (provided against each database listed under your "My Databases" tab in the home page) of the corresponding database to Public.

Note: While making a database public please choose whether to list the database under "Zoho Public Databases" list. If this is done anyone can view your reporting database. Hence exercise caution.

Click here to Take a tour on Collaboration and Sharing features in Zoho Reports

20. Can I allow others to edit the data in my database?

Yes you can allow other users to edit the data in your database. Follow the instruction below to do the same:

• Select the Table whose data that you would like other users to edit (add, modify & delete data)
• Select the "Share -> Share this View" toolbar option
• Provide the list of user email ids to whom you want to provide read-write permission to this table. (Note: Users should have a Zoho Reports account registered with this email id)
• Select the Permission as "Read Write"
• Provide the necessary email message for notification
• Click on "Share" to share your table to the users for editing (add, modify & delete)

21. Can I embed the tables & reports created in Zoho Reports into my Website, Web Application and Blogs?

Yes, you can embed Tables and Reports created in Zoho Reports in your website, web application or blog. Follow the steps below to achieve the same:

• Select the table or report that you would like to embed into your Website or Blog
• Select the "Publish -> Embed in Website/Blog.." option
• By default when you embed the view into your Website or Web Application or blog, it would prompt for users to login with Zoho Reports login id to view the embedded view. Also users to whom you have shared the view (Using the Share option) would only be able to access the view embedded, on successful login.
• If you would like the embedded view to be accessible by anyone without login, then click on the link "To access this view/table without login Click here..."
• Copy and paste the code snippet provided in the text area below into your webpage or blog html content to embed this view

22. What are the browsers supported by Zoho Reports?

Zoho Reports has been tested in the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 6 and 7
• Firefox 2.x and Firefox 3.0

The above browsers have been tested in the following platforms:

• Windows XP and Windows Vista
• Mac OS
• Red Hat and Mandrake Linux OS

23. What is the best viewed screen resolution for Zoho Reports?

Zoho Reports is best viewed in 1024 * 768 screen resolution and above.

24. Can Zoho Reports be accessed from handheld devices like IPhone, Blackberry, etc?

No. Currently Zoho Reports has not been tested in handheld devices like IPhone, Blackberry etc. We will be supporting these devices in the future.