What is the easiest way to understand Virtual Report Suites & Report Suites

[dshrihari]

Im trying to wrap my head around the VRS & Report suite but not sure if i have understood the concepts completely. Is there any good use case that any of the community members can help me understand with?

Thank you

[jeff_bloomer]

Easy answer: think of a database and a SQL record set.  A Virtual Report Suite is essentially a filtered record set (SEGMENT) of your data you have provided to a set of users.  The idea is often to have separate security, etc. to protect your CORE Report Suite.  This is often done when you have users who you would prefer not have access or do not require access to the full report suite.
Make sense?

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

Virtual Report Suites also can be used for more than just "security" reasons, for organizations using a "global report suite" to track multiple websites, the Virtual Report Suites can be used to break this global suite into individual sites, or groups of sites that fall under a regional department, etc. 

This means that your users can either see the network as a whole, or get right into a sub-section of the content (i.e. Site A) without needing to spend time pulling in all the segments each time they want to report on it.... it's like a "quick filter" based on commonly used parts of your data.

• Individual Sites
• Groups of Sites that fall under regional groupings
• Platform (i.e Website vs App)
• Type of Content (i.e. group all content from all sites based on sections of the site - like "classifieds" for a news company - to support the division that deals exclusively with that content)

There are many ways to use virtual suites, even beyond what @jeff_bloomer  and I have mentioned.

But the bottom line is, the Virtual Suites use a segment or multiple segments on a "parent" suite...

If you were to create a Workspace and apply a segment, and create a virtual report suite and apply that same segment, the data returned by both sets would be identical (unless of course, like in Jeff's case, you customize which dimensions and metrics are available within the suite)

[jeff_bloomer]

Totally agree.  For organizations that used to have individual Report Suites and a Global Report Suite, there is no longer a need to do anything of the sort.  It's so much easier these days to create ONE Global Report Suite, and then segment your data as needed to then build your Virtual Report Suite(s) as needed to display your data to the individuals who need to see it in the way you prefer.  No need to fire duplicate server calls and rack up additional costs like so many of us did in the past!

[SrividyaVenkat]

Hi @dshrihari,

Report Suites are a designated locations where a company's data are processed and stored.

Let me quote with an example.

 Imagine you are working for a client who has branches in many countries.

If you are collecting the data of that client in an individual report suite based on the country then it is known as "Child Report Suite"

Child Report Suite - individual report suite 

Whereas, If you are working for the same client and storing all the country-wise data in a single report suite, it is known as "Global Report Suite" 

Global Report Suite - Refers to all client data stored under one report suite, unlike individual (specific) report suites. In global report suites, de-duplication is present. The process of sending data to report suites is known as Multi-Suite tagging.

Roll-up Report Suite:

Adding up 2 individual report suites.

Virtual Report Suite:

A new report suite was created based upon a segment definition that includes 'Real-time data' without needing Multi-Suite tagging.

Check out this blog https://terrynwinter.com/adobe-analytics-how-many-report-suites-are-ideal-for-a-company/

Thanks to @PratheepArunRaj for the best definitions given in laymen's terms.

Regards,

Srividya

[jeff_bloomer]

Also a good article.    

One of the most basic definitions I've found and still use in my trainings for Report Suite is this:
A report suite defines the complete, independent reporting on a chosen website, mobile app, set of websites, set of mobile applications, subset of web pages, subset of mobile applications, or any combination thereof.