Reporter 5: Getting the Right Data to the Right People at the Right Time
Arielle Cox
Your data drives everything about your rental business. That’s why you need robust, easy-to-use tools for tracking, analyzing, and improving your performance.
In the coming months, InTempo will be rolling out Reporter 5 – our most extensive reporting tool yet. From better security tools and more easily customizable dashboards to AI-driven natural language queries, take a look at the newest features you can expect from InTempo Reporter.
A New Homepage Layout
The new homepage layout lets you quickly find exactly what you’re looking for – be that a report, a data set, a data source, or a job. Use folders and tags to organize various types of content and put your own content right at the top to eliminate time-consuming scrolling.
On the right side of your home screen, you’ll have a news panel and a visuals panel.
The news panel will display alerts, such as User X changed a report that you own. A notification icon tells you how many changes have been made so you can keep a closer eye on updates.
The visuals panel will show you the charts, graphs, and tables that you've decided are most useful for your day-to-day needs. Pin whatever you’d like to your own personal dashboard, and it’ll be featured on your home page when you log in.
More Custom Templates
In the current version of Reporter, a report is a query that's sent off to the database and comes back with results. When you leave that page, the results are gone.
In Reporter 5, any final deliverable product is considered a report. This includes the ad hoc queries that you know and love from Reporter 4.
If you have a PDF export, that’s also a report. So are dashboards – a collection of several different visuals that draw insights across lots of data sources all at once.
Every other type of report pulls its data from data sets. On that note: let’s talk about the difference between an ad hoc query and a data set. Both of them are built the exact same way. Both reach out to InTempo (or any other data source you have connected). They request data and bring it back to show you. With an ad hoc query, it keeps that data for about an hour, then removes it. Once it expires, you have to run it again. A data set, on the other hand, keeps that data indefinitely. It’ll still be there the next time you open up that data set.
On that note: you may need to refresh that data if it’s been sitting for a few days, but you can also tell the system to refresh it on a regular basis – be that every day, every week, every 12 hours, etc. From there, you can use this data in dashboards and templates without waiting for it to re-run.
Predictive Insights
In your editor screen, you can bring up a list of all the available data fields from InTempo. Choose the fields you want to feature; from there, Reporter 5 will predictively determine the clearest ways to display the visuals. You may not, for instance, know that you want a pie chart or a bar chart; Reporter 5 will show you your options and let you make adjustments from there. The drag-and-drop interface is extremely intuitive so you can build custom reports without extensive coding.
Easy, Secure Sharing
When you create a report to present to your executive boards or your customers, Reporter 5 lets you easily share an external link. The end user doesn’t have to have a Reporter license. You can also send zipped, password-protect files directly to an FTP server as a more secure means of communication.
Consolidating Data from Multiple Sources
Reporter 5 makes it easy to pull in data from sources outside of InTempo Enterprise. You can pull legacy data from Unidata or Universe databases; SQL databases; or even Excel spreadsheets. If you’re working with third-party software that doesn’t give direct access to their database, Reporter can connect to their APIs and pull that data down. Upload a new source directly into your workspace and start pulling data from it right away.
Enhanced Security and Access Management
Reporter 5 brings you a newer security model. You can see which user(s) have access to each table, field, and dataset, and also determine which user(s) get to create dashboards, build queries, and schedule jobs. The administrative side is very intuitive and simple.
AI-Driven Queries
Reporter 5 introduces an AI-powered assistant that you can ask specific questions about the data you’ve given it. For instance – you can ask how many pieces of equipment you have, or which machines are currently out on rent. The system won’t factor in anything you haven’t specifically told it.
It's all cumulative. As you ask questions, it will remember everything you’ve discussed with it. However, you can also ask it to forget your conversation and start from scratch.
Reporter’s AI conversations are user-specific. User A in Texas will only be able to ask about data sets they have access to, and the same for User B in North Carolina. Each user’s instance will be unaware of conversations the other is having. This way, you don’t have to worry about AI putting your confidential data in the wrong hands.
One potential use case for this in the future? Helping customers answer their own questions to free up your Sales Team for different work. For instance: you can give Reporter a list of all your contracts and a PDF of your Terms of Service. The customer can ask it “what happens if I return my equipment late?” Reporter would be able to look up how many different pieces of equipment the customer has on rent, multiply that by your late fee policy, and tell the customer what it would mean for them specifically. Passing data down to customers is an exciting way to take advantage of the power of AI.
Learn More About the Latest in Rental Analytics
Whether you’re currently on Reporter 4 and looking to upgrade or brand new to InTempo Reporter entirely, we’d be happy to walk you through the latest options in rental reporting. Check out the deep dive we took into Reporter 5 at the InTempo Connect Enterprise User Conference, or request a one-on-one demo here.
