Report Viewer — Documentation

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Report Viewer — user guide

Report Viewer opens an ATML report from NI TestStand and shows it as a readable document. There's nothing to configure and no license to apply: install it and open a file. The screenshots use synthetic demo data (product BDB-100), with Report Viewer 1.1.1.

Which reports it opens

TestStand's native, lightweight report: ATML XML IEEE 1636.1, which the station writes when the report format is set to ATML (Configure → Result Processing). You don't need a results database, or TestStand installed on the PC where you open it. It doesn't read HTML, text, or XML reports that aren't ATML.

Opening a report

Three ways, whichever suits you:

• Open report… from the toolbar, or Ctrl+O, and browse to the XML file.
• Drag the XML file from Windows Explorer onto the window.
• Right-click the file in Windows and choose Open with → Report Viewer. Handy if you open reports often: set it as the default application for those files and a double-click is all it takes.

The Recent… list keeps the last eight reports you opened, which is usually exactly what you want when comparing a failure against the previous run.

Reading the report

The header gives you the run at a glance: the sequence that ran, start and end time, duration, the overall result as a color badge, the operator, the station, the test socket, the unit serial number, the product, the unit type, the run, and the step totals: how many passed, how many failed, how many total.

The table has one row per test step:

• Name: the step name as it appears in the sequence. Steps that produce several measurements are listed separately.
• Lower limit and upper limit, with units. A maximum-only check shows just the upper limit; a minimum-only one, just the lower.
• Result: the measured value with its unit.
• Comparison: how the value was evaluated — range [LSL–USL], maximum (≤), minimum (≥), equal to, and so on. This is what tells you whether an empty limit column is missing data or simply doesn't apply.
• Status: passed, failed, error, skipped.
• Additional results: extra values the step reported besides its main measurement.

Finding what failed

Two controls, and they combine. Search steps by name filters the table as you type. Failures only hides everything that passed and leaves the steps that failed or errored. The counter on the right always shows how many rows you're viewing out of the total, so you know whether a filter is hiding more than you think.

With Failures only, 44 steps come down to the one test that failed, with its limit and comparison.

In a report with over 900 steps, turning on Failures only is almost always the first thing to do.

Several runs in one file

If TestStand writes in append mode, one file carries several runs. Report Viewer separates them and puts a selector above the table (for example, "Run 5 of 10", with each run's serial number and result), so you see one unit at a time instead of a mixed table.

Incomplete reports, or files that aren't ATML

If you open a report TestStand is still writing, Report Viewer tells you so ("The file is incomplete… open it again once the test has finished") instead of showing a half-finished table. An empty file, a binary file, or one that isn't an ATML report is also rejected with a clear message.

What isn't shown

Setup and cleanup SessionActions — opening instruments, waits, housekeeping tasks — are excluded on purpose. A TestStand report contains hundreds of them and none is a test result. What's left are the four step types that actually measure something: NumericLimitTest, NI_MultipleNumericLimitTest, PassFailTest, and StringValueTest.

That's also why the header's step count may not match what TestStand reports: this table counts test steps, not sequence actions.

Themes

The button on the right of the toolbar switches between light and dark. The choice is remembered.

When you need more than one report

Report Viewer is a viewer on purpose: one report at a time, no statistics, no export. If you need to compare hundreds of runs, calculate a measurement's capability, analyze which steps are driving your failures, or produce PDF and Excel reports, that's Report Analyzer, which reads exactly the same files.