Providing assisted business analysis to users

PROVIDING ASSISTED BUSINESS ANALYSIS TO USERS A method for providing assisted business analysis to users is disclosed herein. In one embodiment, such a method includes providing a list of one or more predefined managed reports (300) to a user. Each predefined managed report has specific metadata associated therewith. The method further provides functionality to enable the user to select a specific managed report (300) from the list. Once a managed report is selected from the list, the method enables the user to generate a new ad hoc report (700) includes automatically extracting all or part of the metadata from the selected managed report (300) to build the new ad hoc report (700). A corresponding computer program product and apparatus (200) are also disclosed and claimed herein. Apparatus 200 List Module Report-Selection Module Presentation Module 20p6 Report Generation Module 208 Data-Selection Module Style-Selection Module Extraction Module Interface Module Fig. 2