The Active Roles reporting solution leverages Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) as a platform for managing, generating, and viewing reports.
Through the use of SSRS, Active Roles delivers enterprise reporting functionality that combines the strengths of Web-based features and traditional reporting. The use of Reporting Services provides a way to centralize report storage and management, enable secure access to reports, control how reports are processed and distributed, and standardize how reports are used.
A comprehensive collection of report definitions, referred to as the Active Roles Report Pack, are published to the report server, a component of Reporting Services. Installing the Report Pack creates published reports that can be accessed through Web addresses (URLs), through SharePoint Web parts, or through Report Manager, a Web-based report access and management tool included with SSRS.
Opening a published report from the report server generates the report in a format suitable for viewing. This action is referred to as rendering a report. Rendering a report also occurs upon subscription, when the report is delivered to an e-mail inbox or a file share in an output format specified by the report user.
The reports that can be generated once the Active Roles Report Pack is deployed are instrumental in change tracking audits, directory data monitoring and analysis, and assessment of Active Roles security and policy configurations. The reports fall into these categories:
- Active Roles Tracking Log Check what changes were made to directory data through the use of Active Roles, who made the changes, and when the changes were made.
- Active Directory Assessment Examine the state of directory data, such as properties of users, groups and other directory objects, group membership lists, and contents of organizational units.
- Administrative Roles View details on who has access to what data when using Active Roles, and what changes administrative users or groups are authorized to make.
- Managed Units View details on the Managed Units defined in the Active Roles environment, what policies are applied to Managed Units, and what users or groups have administrative access to what Managed Units.
- Policy Objects View details on what administrative policies are defined in the Active Roles environment, where particular policies are applied, and what policies are in effect on particular objects and containers.
- Policy Compliance View details on what data in the directory is not compliant with Active Roles policies that are in effect, and what policy rules are violated.
Reports are built on data prepared by the Active Roles Collector. For details about the Active Roles Collector, see Collector to prepare data for reports later in this chapter.
You can generate and view reports by using Report Manager, which is part of SSRS. For instructions on how to generate and view reports, see Working with reports later in this chapter.
The Active Roles Collector allows you to collect data from computers running the Administration Service and store it in an on-premises or Azure SQL database, making the data available for reporting.
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NOTE: The Collector is installed as a separate component of Active Roles. |
Data for reports is collected from the following sources:
- Active Directory The Collector accesses Active Directory through the Administration Service. Reports built on this data provide detailed information about domains, accounts, groups, and other Active Directory objects.
- Active Roles configuration database Reports built on this data provide detailed information about who can carry out what actions and to which directory objects using Active Roles, as well as information about the policies defined by Active Roles.
- Event log on computers running the Administration Service Reports built on this data provide detailed information about actions performed, the success or failure of each action, and object properties that were modified using Active Roles.
The scope of data that the Collector can retrieve from Active Directory is restricted by the access rights of the user account under which the Collector performs the data collection task. Therefore, reports based on Active Directory data only include information about the objects that the Collector is permitted to access in Active Directory.
For example, suppose the Collector performs a data collection task under the user account that is not permitted to access user account properties in Active Directory. As a result, the Collector will not be able to retrieve data related to user accounts, and reports will not display any information about user accounts, including the number of user accounts.
Starting the Active Roles Collector wizard
To start the Active Roles Collector wizard
- Depending upon the version of your Windows operating system, click One Identity Active Roles | Active Roles Collector and Report Pack on the Apps page or select All Programs |One Identity Active Roles | Active Roles Collector and Report Pack from the Start menu.
When started, the Collector wizard displays the Select Task page where you can select one of the following the tasks to perform:
- Collect data from the network Collect data and events from the computers running the Administration Service, and store the collected information in a database server to make the information available to the report server.
- Process gathered events Export selected events to another database server, or delete obsolete information from the database.
- Import events from an earlier database version As the current version of the Active Roles reports is only compatible with the database of the current Collector version, you need to import events from the database of an earlier version to the database of the current version if you want to use those events for reporting.
- Deploy reports to Report Server Setup only installs the Active Roles report definitions to the local computer. To use the reports, you need to publish them to your SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Report Server.