Drafts, Publishing and Versions
The builder saves your work as you go, so you never lose a change. What you save is a draft: the people who run the report keep seeing the published report until you click Publish. Each time you publish a change, the builder keeps a version you can go back to.
Watch the short video, then read how it works below.
| Menu | Reports > Report Builder > a report > Edit |
| Permission | Build reports and manage own custom reports and views (your own reports); Manage all custom reports and views (anyone's) |
| Feature | Report Builder |
What you see depends on your role. If the menu, a button or a setting on this page is missing, ask your administrator to give you the permission listed above or to turn on the feature. Only administrators can turn features on and change site settings.
Drafts save as you work
The builder saves your changes as you work, from the first change to a new report. The words next to the title say Saving…, then Draft saved, and you can close or refresh the page at any time. If a save fails, they say Not saved, and the builder tries again with your next change.
Saved changes are a draft: people who run the report keep seeing the published version until you click Publish.
- A new report you have not published yet is listed first on the Report Builder page, with a Not published badge. Click Edit to keep working on it, or choose Delete from its actions to throw it away. Only you, and the people who manage every report, can see it. It cannot run until it is published. Use the Status menu in the header of the list to show only published reports or only the ones not published.
- In the builder, a bar above the tabs says when the report is saved as a draft and was never published, with a Delete draft button.
Publish
Click Publish at the top, or press Ctrl+S.
- The builder checks the title and the sharing settings first. A report without a title is not published.
- It then checks the design. A report with problems, such as a join without matching columns, is still published, and the builder lists the problems. Until they are fixed, the report shows them instead of running.
- When the report changed since the last version, a new version is kept, and the builder says Published as version and its number. When nothing changed, it says so and keeps no new version.
After publishing, Run report at the top opens the report as people see it.
Unpublished changes
When a published report has a draft, a bar above the tabs shows that it has Unpublished changes, who made them and when. People who run the report still see the published version.
- Click Publish at the top to make the changes live.
- Click Discard changes to go back to the published version.
Versions
Each time you publish a change, the builder keeps a version.
- Click Versions at the top to list them, with who published each one and when. A version restored from an earlier one says so.
- Click Preview to see a version.
- Click Restore to copy it into the draft. Check it, then publish it to make it the report people run.
Restoring never changes what people run until you publish. Old versions are removed after a while; your administrator decides how many are kept.
Work on a report with others
Two people can open the same report, but only one change can win, so the builder protects your work:
- When someone else changed the report since you opened it, your next change is not saved and a yellow bar says who changed it. Click Reload their changes to see their version (your unsaved changes are lost), or Keep mine to save your version over theirs.
- When someone else is saving the same report at that moment, the builder asks you to try again in a moment.
- When real-time updates are turned on for your site, the builder also shows the initials of the others who have the report open (point at them to see their names), warns that your changes can conflict, and tells you as soon as someone saves, publishes, discards changes, restores a version or deletes the report, with a Reload button.
Views save directly
Reusable views have no drafts or versions: click Save to save a view, and reports that read it use the change at once.
Next: Reusable views.