Reporting Briefs Admin

URL: https://pentest.ws/reporting-admin

Reporting Briefs let you build, maintain, and reuse narrative content for your reports. Instead of copy-pasting from past documents, you can create a library of briefs that are stored directly in PenTest.WS. Each brief can be customized per engagement, making reporting faster, more consistent, and more professional.

Why Use Reporting Briefs

Reports are more than technical data — they need context and explanation. Reporting Briefs help you:

• Save time – Reuse standard sections across multiple reports.

• Ensure consistency – Keep executive summaries, scope statements, and methodologies aligned across engagements.

• Customize per engagement – Use default content as a starting point, then tailor it to the specific client or test.

• Centralize reporting content – Manage all narrative text within PenTest.WS, instead of scattered files.

Examples of common briefs include:

• Objectives & Scope

• Engagement Overview

• Methodology

• Testing Limitations & Assumptions

The Reporting Briefs Admin Page

The Reporting Briefs page lists all available brief templates.

For each template, the list shows:

• Title – The name of the brief (e.g., Objectives & Scope).

• Key – A short identifier used to reference the brief in reporting templates.

• Is Default – Indicates whether this brief is included by default in new Engagements.

• Default Content – The starting text for the brief, which can be edited per engagement.

• Actions – Options to edit or delete the brief template.

From this page you can:

• Create a new brief using the Define New Brief Template button.

• Edit existing briefs to update their default content.

• Delete briefs you no longer need.

Brief Template Details

Each Reporting Brief template has its own details page where you can configure the title, key, and default content for the brief. This is where you define what the brief will look like when it is added into Engagements.

Template Fields

• Title – The display name of the brief (e.g., Objectives & Scope). This is what appears in the list of available briefs when working in an Engagement.

• Key – A unique identifier used in reporting templates to pull in the brief’s content. For example:

{{HTML briefs.objectives || "*** MISSING OBJECTIVES ***"}}

In this example, if the brief with the key objectives is defined, its HTML content will be inserted into the report. If not, the placeholder text *** MISSING OBJECTIVES *** will be displayed.

• Is Default – When checked, the brief will be automatically included in all new Engagements.

Default Content

The content editor allows you to define the reusable text that will serve as the starting point for this brief.

• Rich text formatting is supported, including headings, bold, italic, lists, links, and code blocks.

• Images and inline elements can also be embedded.

• The text here becomes the default content that appears whenever this brief is added to an Engagement.

• During an engagement, the content can be customized without affecting the saved template.

Example:

The objective of this engagement was to evaluate the security posture of Client’s environment by identifying vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and other weaknesses that could be exploited by an attacker.

Actions

• Save / Update – Edits to the title, key, or default content are saved automatically to the template.

• Delete – Permanently remove the brief template from the system.

Tier Availability

Reporting Briefs are available on Pro Tier.