ms_xxx

Hi, in the past I have designed reports in Excel 2010 using a lot of fancy features such as - conditional formatting using data bars (visualizing revenue figures, etc.) - conditional formatting using icons (green check or red X, for boolean vars) - sparklines (introduced in Excel 2010) I don't believe it's possible to generate XLSX reports in iReports which feature all of these different formatting gimmicks that are offered by Excel, am I right? What do you guys think would be the best way to go if I want to continue using these really neat and fancy reports with all sorts of data bars etc., but still using a comprehensive BI solution that allows me to automate and scale it all?

That sounds somewhat promising, but also like a bit of a makeshift solution. Isn't there any (free) solution for this problem that is specifically designed for these things?

Hello, we'd like to implement a system which sends out email alerts based on certain changes in the database - for instance, if the revenue for a certain store drops below 50% of the 30-day average, we'd like to automatically generate an alert to the relevant decision makers, so they can check what's going on. (Fictional example, we don't have stores) Does JasperServer (or any other related tool) provide any functionality which could accomplish this? If not, is there any open-source solution which would be suitable? Ideally we'd like a user-friendly frontend to define the criteria and design the alert mails. Thanks. Max