How to build a business report using Quarto ?

Workflow Demo - 27/03/2024

Christophe Dervieux

1. Generic introduction to Quarto

2. Building a business report with Quarto

What is Quarto ?

Quarto is a new, open-source, scientific, and technical publishing system

• Computations: Python, R, Julia, Observable JS
• Markdown: Pandoc with many enhancements
• Output: Documents, presentations, websites, books, blogs

Artwork from “Hello, Quarto” keynote by Julia Lowndes and Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel, presented at RStudio Conference 2022. Illustrated by Allison Horst.

How it works ?

• Leverages multiple computation engines
• Uses .md, .qmd or .ipynb as source files
• Extends Pandoc universal converter
• Produces several output formats

How to start?

Look at Quarto Documentation website:

• Getting started: https://quarto.org/docs/get-started/

• User guide: https://quarto.org/docs/guide/

How to use?

Quarto CLI

Core component that drives Quarto rendering. This is the only thing you need to render plain markdown (it includes Pandoc).

• Add knitr to render documents with R
• Add jupyter to render with Jupyter kernels

This is a system level component that can be used with any tooling.

How to use?

RStudio IDE

RStudio IDE bundles Quarto and integrates with it.

How to use?

VS Code Extension

https://quarto.org/docs/tools/vscode.html

How to use?

Jupyter Lab

• As an extension

How to use?

Visual Editor

WYSIWYM editor
for Quarto

• VS CODE

• RStudio IDE

Demo

Let’s dive now into a demo of Quarto !

Our Use Case

🎯 Build a business report for stakeholders in enterprise context.

Steps

• Starting from a standard HTML document

• Adding some Quarto specific features to improve it

• Styling to match some style guide

• Publishing and sharing results

• Customizing some scheduled email updates

Watch Demo

Live report demo published on Posit Connect (preview on next slide)