Tutorials » Setting Up Website Advertising Using Microsoft AdServer - Creating Custom Reports

Creating Custom Reports
As well as the standard reports, it is also possible to create your own custom reports using Report Writer, and add them to the array of reports produced by the Adrpt.vbs script. As a simple demonstration we shall create a basic advertising report for an individual customer. From the Start menu click Programs, Microsoft Site Server, Analysis and then Report Writer to open the application. You'll see before you a Report Writer dialog; check 'New Report Definition' and then click OK. You will then be presented with a Calculation Inventory in the left-hand pane of the window, and a blank Report Definition on the right-hand pane.

Then by highlighting individual calculations and copying them, you can paste them into your new Report Definition in the right-hand pane. In our example we shall choose the 'Daily Ad Statistics' and 'Advertisement Breakdown' advertising calculations.

Now, as we intend to produce this report for just one customer, we need to set up a filter in our definition. The way to do this is to right-click on the words 'Report Definition' at the top, and click on Properties until you see the Report Definition properties dialog. In the lower half of the dialog is a section to build a new expression for the current filter with three drop-downs. The first one is entitled Dimension, and we need to expand this one and select 'Advertiser'. The second drop-down determines the operator and this we leave as it is on the 'equals' sign. The last 'Value' box will now contain values for all advertisers known to Ad Manager. We shall select DevGuru. Once we have created the filter expression, we just click 'Add' then OK to apply it.

Then, in the Report definition we need to do a bit of editing. First expand the Advertisement breakdown calculation, expand Row Dimensions and delete Advertiser by right-clicking on it and selecting delete. (As we have set up a filter to only include data for one particular advertiser, we don't need an Advertiser dimension in the report.)

We shall, however, add a date dimension here instead of an advertiser. To do this right-click on Row Dimensions and select New Dimension. In the Dimension Properties dialog, expand Advertising Requests, expand Time, select Date and click OK. The Date dimension will now appear under Row Dimensions.

We now need to alter the Advertisement dimension so that it is sorted by dimension rather than First Measure. Right click on the Advertisement dimension and select Properties. On the Advertisement properties dialog, select the Details tab and in the second drop-down entitled 'sort by', select 'Dimension', and click OK.

And that's it. Now go to the File menu and click on 'Save As' to bring up the 'Save Report Definition As' dialog, enter a name for it, and click Save to have it saved in the default Custom folder in Microsoft Site Server\Data\Analysis\Catalog.

All that remains now is to edit the Adrpt.vbs script to include this new Report Definition. Open it up in an editor and find the end of the configurable section where you will see the 'arrReports' array defined. Simply add the name of our new report, 'devguru.mfa', to this array:

      arrReports = array( _
            "SiteServer\AdServer.mfa", _
            "Advertising\AdvertisementDetail.mfa", _
            "Advertising\AdvertisementPlacement.mfa", _
            "Advertising\AdvertiserDetail.mfa", _
            "Advertising\AdvertisingOverview.mfa", _
            "Custom\devguru.mfa" _
            )

Then next time you run the Adrpt.vbs script, your custom report will appear along with the others looking something like this:

Summary
In summary, the AdServer component combined with Ad Manager make an easy and convenient way to set up and administer advertising on a web site Comprehensive reports can be produced using the VB scripts included with Microsoft Site Server, and these can be scheduled to run automatically using Task Scheduler. All the various elements that go into setting up advertising can easily be customized and even Ad Manager, given that it is an ASP application, can be modified and expanded to meet your particular needs. All that remains now is to get yourself sponsored.


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