question Re: Exporting Visual Task Board to Excel in SPM forum

Exporting Visual Task Board to Excel

kendall_lin — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 17:13:03 GMT

Hello,

What is the best and quickest way to export a Visual Task Board to an excel or similar format?

Thank you in advance,

Kendall Lin

Re: Exporting Visual Task Board to Excel

dravvyramlochun — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 10:03:56 GMT

Hellokendall.lin

here is a way to export the board and lane definitions separate from your application. An administrator must navigate to the vtb_board table to view the list of boards. From a board record it's possible to export the board to an XML file that could be imported by an administrator in another instance.

Reference: Is it possible to export or print a Visual Task Board?

Re: Exporting Visual Task Board to Excel

kendall_lin — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 17:00:43 GMT

Hello dravvyramlochun and thank you for the information, but we are not trying to import into another instance or XML format.

I have managers of teams that are looking to export the visual task board into an excel format for quick analysis.

Any functionality out of the box that would accomplish this?

Thanks,

Kendall

Re: Exporting Visual Task Board to Excel

Sean Witt — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 20:58:01 GMT

Hey Kendall.

I agree with Dravvy, I think your best starting point is the database tables behind the Visual Task Boards.

So you could build a report containing all of the data elements that you want to see against the vtb_card table; that can include any/all fields included on the VTB. The saved report is then available for export out to Excel like any other ServiceNow report.

An example is included below...

Sean

Re: Exporting Visual Task Board to Excel

kendall_lin — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 21:04:06 GMT

Hello sean.witt@careworkstech.com,

Thank you for the response. I think I understand the workaround now. Can you correct my understanding below as appropriate?

Create a report (only admins can do this?) from the VTB_Card_Table
Import into existing instance as list report
Export list to Excel

To get around the admin having to do this, is it possible to automate the creation of this report and schedule publish / delivery of the report?

Thanks for all the help,

Kendall Lin

Re: Exporting Visual Task Board to Excel

Sean Witt — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 21:26:16 GMT

Hey Kendall.

Out of the Box, anyone with a license (i.e. a fulfiller with the ITIL role) can create a report. So in a clean install, those licensed users could write this report against the vtb_card table without assistance from an admin.

Once a user creates the report, it is visible to them in a section called My Reports, and they can run and export it to Excel or PDF at any time.

if your environment has been secured in a way that limits access to report writing, you would need an authorized report writer to create the report. That report could be shared with either:

1) Individual user(s)

2) Group(s) of users

3) All users

Reports can also be published to a dashboard, or scheduled for email distribution to a defined list of recipients.

So there are a bunch of options, it just depends on how your instance has been setup, because that will define who can do these things. But writing the report and sharing/setting up distribution is quick and easy (less than 1 hour of work). So as long as you know what fields you want on the report, and can track down an authorized report writer, this should be a quick win for you.

Sean

Re: Exporting Visual Task Board to Excel

kendall_lin — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 21:29:42 GMT

Hi sean.witt@careworkstech.com,

thank you again. I will try that. I was confused as dravvyramlochun initial reply specified that a system administrator would need to create the xml extract.

Based on your response, it looks like creating a report based on the vtb_table does not require that access level.

Thanks,

Kendall

Re: Exporting Visual Task Board to Excel

Sean Witt — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 21:41:46 GMT

Good luck...if you run into questions or problems let me know. As long as you have the access needed, you should be able to quickly build the report. I can show you on screen/step by step from a Personal Development Instance if you end up having trouble.

Sean

Re: Exporting Visual Task Board to Excel

kendall_lin — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 21:51:40 GMT

sean.witt@careworkstech.com,

Thank you for the offer. Got it figured out. Did not know VTB Cards were available through the report creator. Still not clear on some of the fields available (i.e. Label 1, Label 2, etc.), but with some experimentation I was able to get the report I needed created, scheduled, and sent.

Thanks again,

Kendall Lin