Online Program

Dynamic Report Generation Using R (302838)

Keywords: Dynamic Report Generation, R, Reproducible Research, Startups

The purpose of this poster presentation is to outline a process and methodology as to how R can be used to create dynamic, easily reproducible reports that increase day-to-day efficiency in delivering client or internal reports. Using this free tool, analytics teams are able to replicate report templates each month by re-running R scripts periodically while only required to refresh the original data set. Different outputs can be generated, such as PDF or HTML, using packages within RStudio such as Knitr, in this case. This type of process not only allows for improved production and work flow but is available at no cost while replicating capabilities of popular analytics tools such as Tableau. We will apply this process using publicly available retail sales data from the U.S. Census to analyze industry year-to-year, seasonal, and monthly trends of client-relevant industries. We will create one example report from 2012 and refresh the data to the most current month to illustrate this process.