Making reports run against six months of data instead of the default one year when used in an automation policy

Products

• Client Management Suite
• Patch Management Solution
• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

How to make it so my report always runs against six months worth of data instead of the default one year for reports used in an automation policy?

Environment

ITMS 8.6

Resolution

In order to use the default "Windows Compliance by Computer" report in an automation policy, and it is using a release date from and to for one year, you would start by cloning your desired report as seen here:

Once the default report is cloned, you will want to right-click on the cloned report and choose to Export it.  The exported copy will be saved to the browser's download location.  

It's recommended to open the export XML file in a good text editor like Notepad++ or something else of your choosing.

You will want to do a find on the parameter: Release_Date_From

The search function will find this, but you want to look for a specific section that looks like the following:  <defaultValue>today-365</defaultValue>

<parameter>
                        <name>Release_Date_From</name>
                        <description>
                        </description>
                        <required>false</required>
                        <nullable>true</nullable>
                        <parameterType>PType-DateTime</parameterType>
                        <defaultValue>today-365</defaultValue>
                        <order>10</order>
                        <requiredParameters />
                        <configurationControlClassGuid>73bded50-f1aa-4ff4-a80e-a6c9e047d472</configurationControlClassGuid>
                      </parameter>

Change <defaultValue>today-365</defaultValue> to <defaultValue>today-180</defaultValue> for six months.

Search again and find the next occurrence.  There should be maybe two or three instances that you need to change.  

Once complete save the file and import it back to the console.  When viewing the report you will notice the Release Date From is six months back and the date for Release Date To is always the present day.

Now you can use this report in an automation policy to send out the results of just the last six months of data, instead of the entire year.  You can configure the rest of the fields to your liking in the cloned report.