CiviReport allows creating reports from templates with specific display columns, filters and grouping rules. Each template covers a general reporting area - for example: Donor Report (Summary), LYBUNT (Last Year but not this Year), etc.

For example, your organization might need a report which summarizes donations year-to-date grouped by Country. You create this instance from the Donor Report (Summary) template. In the template, you set the Group by Column to be State / Province, and the Filter to be Receive Date = This Year. You can assign a specific title and description for this report - "Donations by State - Year to Date". Then click "Create Report" to save your report instance. (For Drupal and Standalone installs, you can also set a specific permission to access each report instance - for example I might require "access CiviContribute" permission for this report).

• Relative date ranges - You can configure a report instance with relative ranges, including This Year, Previous Year, This Month, This Quarter, etc.
• Bar and Pie Charts - Most reports allow you to view the data in a table OR as a Bar chart or Pie chart.
• Print (from HTML) and PDF formats - Reports to be viewed and printed in a print-friendly HTML format, or downloaded as a PDF file. You can customize report headers and footers (including adding organization logos, importing a customized CSS file, etc.).
• CSV Export - Most reports allow you to export data as a CSV file for further manipulation in a spreadsheet application.
• Add report results (contacts) to a group - Many reports include a button to "Add these Contacts to Group". This enables users to take various actions on the results (e.g. send email, create mailing labels) by navigating to that group. (I suspect we will extend this to include direct support for these other actions from the reports in phase 2).
• Automated report delivery - You can configure reports to be delivered to one or more recipients via email (in the report "Settings" section). Your site admin will need to create and schedule a cron task to invoke the new CiviReportMail.php script.