[OPEN-ILS-DEV] ***SPAM*** RE: Report Templates

[Anne Andres]

Thanks so much Jason,
WOW......it worked.

In your 4th paragraph
"In pane 1, expand the Items entry by clicking the expand-tree icon
(should look like a plus sign in a box) Select Circulation Modifier In
pane 2, select Name In pane 3, select Raw Data Add Selected Fields (Name
should show up in pane 4 below Copy ID) In pane 4, select Name Alter
Display Header Enter "Circ Modifier" as the column header",
I could not find "Name" in pane 3 so I chose "lowercase" because it
seemed similar .....and it seemed to work.
Hope that was right.  - at least the figures seemed correct and the
Circ.Modifiers were listed.

Thanks again

Not sure if I can tackle 2nd template: Counts by title, and counts by
volumes or units for each Circ. 
Modifier.....still seems Greek to me, but your reporting tips are useful
.....demystifies some of the definitions.

Anne

 

-----Original Message-----
From: open-ils-dev-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org
[mailto:open-ils-dev-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of
Jason Etheridge
Sent: 11/16/2009 7:47 AM
To: Evergreen Development Discussion List
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-DEV] Report Templates

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 3:12 PM, Anne Andres
<Anne.Andres at columbiabc.edu> wrote:
> Sorry to write the discussion group on this.....but are any of you
willing to share a few major report templates?

Anne, I'm not a reporting guru, but I can give it a shot.  I'm going by
the development branch, so there may be some differences with your
particular version of EG.

Common steps to start folks off:

Staff Client -> Local Administration -> Reports Templates -> Test (or
some other folder you created.  it's useful to create the same folder in
Reports and Output)-> Create a new Template for this folder

> The major template I need is:
> 1) Item count by Circ Modifier and Shelving Location.

Database Source Browser -> Sources -> Item Select Item again (this time
in the list with the white background, not the menu, and not the
expand-tree icon) In pane 2, select Copy ID (to get a count, you have to
count something unique, such as the internal ID for an entity) In pane
3, select Count Distinct Add Selected Fields (Copy ID should show up in
pane 4 in the lower left, in the Displayed Fields tab)

Reporting Tip: The default state of a reporting query is to produce
matching rows from a table or combination of tables.  The Count and
Count Distinct transforms will summarize that data by counting
occurrences of unique values in the fields you specify.  If you display
just Copy ID (Raw Data) and you have 1000 items, then your report will
have 1000 rows of data.  But if you display Copy ID (Count), then you'll
just get one row of data, showing a count of 1000.  Other fields
specified as Display Fields will break-down or subdivide that total.  So
if you display Copy ID (Count) and Is Reference (Raw Data), then you'll
get up to two rows of data (because Is Reference may be either True or
False), each with a count, where
the two counts will add up to 1000.   Count Distinct is safer than
Count unless you know what you're doing, because otherwise certain types
of queries involving multiple tables may count the same rows multiple
times.  Count Distinct helps prevent that.

Reporting Tip: Too many display fields in a "Count" query may produce
unwieldy results.  What you end up counting is unique combinations of
values across all the display fields.  So for example, a count of Copy
ID and Is Reference may produce two rows, while Copy ID, Is Reference,
and OPAC Visible may produce 4 rows, and Copy ID, Is Reference, OPAC
Visible, and Holdable may produce 8 rows, and so on (multiple the number
of possible values for each display field).

In pane 1, expand the Items entry by clicking the expand-tree icon
(should look like a plus sign in a box) Select Circulation Modifier In
pane 2, select Name In pane 3, select Raw Data Add Selected Fields (Name
should show up in pane 4 below Copy ID) In pane 4, select Name Alter
Display Header Enter "Circ Modifier" as the column header

Reporting Tip: Generally, whenever you're interested in displaying
something  you see in Pane 2 and the datatype is "link", you should go
back to pane 1 and find the field there in the source browser and use
that instead.  In this case, Circulation Modifier from pane 2 would have
worked, but only because it uses the display value as a "natural key" to
link to a separate circulation modifier table.

In pane 1, select select Shelving Location In pane 2, select Name In
pane 3, select Raw Data Add Selected Fields (Name should show up in pane
4 below Copy ID) In pane 4, select Name Alter Display Header Enter
"Shelving Location" as the column header

Reporting Tip: By renaming the column headers, you can make your output
less ambiguous, since by default the column headers match the field
names, which may be duplicated across different sources and tables.

In pane 1, re-select Item at the top of the list (this should reset the
fields listed in pane 2 to the those directly on the Item table) In pane
2, select Is Deleted In pane 3, select Raw Data In pane 4, select the
Base Filters tab In pane 3, Add Selected Fields (Is Deleted should show
up in pane 4) In pane 4, select Is Deleted Change value Select Cancel
from the pop-up dialog

Reporting Tip: Fields you enter into the Base Filters tab may be used to
reduce the rows you're listing or counting.  You get to set specific
values when you later schedule a report based on templates, but may also
pre-select certain values for filters within the templates themselves.

Reporting Tip: Evergreen does not truly delete data by default, and
often simply flags the data as deleted.  So be aware of such fields as
Is Deleted and Active, and filter on them accordingly.

In pane 4, enter a Name and a Description for the template Save

> 2) and Counts by title, and counts by volumes or units for each Circ. 
> Modifier

If someone else doesn't volunteer for this one, I'll come back to it
later.  Your general strategy here is probably to count Items again.

Hope this helps!

--
Jason Etheridge
 | VP, Tactical Development
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts  | phone:
1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)  | email:  jason at esilibrary.com  | web:
http://www.esilibrary.com

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