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 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 from the list. Once a managed report is selected from the list, the method enables the user to generate a new ad hoc report from the selected managed report. Generating this new ad hoc report includes automatically extracting all or part of the metadata from the selected managed report to build the new ad hoc report. A corresponding computer program product and apparatus are also disclosed herein.