Report History

AD Permissions Reporter automatically saves generated reports, allowing you to review past scans without having to regenerate them. This page explains how to manage your report history.

Accessing the History View

To access your saved reports:

1. Click the "HISTORY" button in the sidebar navigation
2. The History screen will display with your saved reports organized by profile

Understanding the History Structure

The History view shows your reports in a hierarchical tree structure:

• Reports are grouped by the profile that generated them
• Each profile appears as a top-level node in the tree
• Under each profile, reports are listed chronologically by date and time
• The most recent reports appear at the top of each profile's list

Loading a Saved Report

To load and view a previously saved report:

1. In the History view, navigate to the profile that contains the report
2. Expand the profile node if it's not already expanded
3. Select the report you want to view
4. Click the "Load" button in the right panel

The selected report will open in the report viewer, showing all the same data and views as when it was originally generated.

Managing Saved Reports

The History view provides several options for managing your saved reports:

Deleting Individual Reports

To delete a specific report:

1. Select the report in the tree view
2. Click the "Delete" button in the right panel
3. Confirm the deletion when prompted

Refreshing the Report List

If you've made changes to reports or if another user has added reports to the database:

1. Click the "Refresh" button in the right panel
2. The report tree will update to show the current state of the database

Report Storage

Understanding how reports are stored:

• Reports are saved in the application's SQLite database
• The database is located in the local application data folder by default
• Reports include all objects, permissions, and metadata from the original scan
• Loading a saved report is much faster than regenerating it

Auto-Save Feature

By default, AD Permissions Reporter automatically saves all generated reports. You can control this behavior in the Settings:

1. Click the "SETTINGS" button in the sidebar
2. In the General section, you'll find the "Auto save reports in report history database" option
3. Check or uncheck this option as desired

When auto-save is disabled, reports will only appear in the history if you manually save them.

Report History Best Practices

• Regular cleanup - Delete older or unnecessary reports to manage database size
• Naming conventions - Use descriptive names for profiles to easily identify reports
• Periodic exports - For long-term archiving, consider exporting important reports to external files
• Database backups - For critical environments, back up the report database periodically

Use Cases for Report History

Common scenarios where the report history is valuable:

• Compliance audits - Showing permission states at specific points in time
• Before/after comparisons - Examining permissions before and after major changes
• Incident investigation - Reviewing past permission states during security reviews
• Time savings - Avoiding the need to regenerate complex or time-consuming reports

The report history feature makes AD Permissions Reporter not just a reporting tool, but also a valuable historical record of your Active Directory permissions over time.