Evergreen Reports Interest Group Meeting - 2012 Evergreen International Conference

April 25, 2012; 1:00-2:30

1. Introductions
2. About the Reports Taskforce
3. Template Sharing (Galen Charlton)
4. How many sites are writing their own SQL reports?
5. Sharing/Q&A/Divide into topical discussion groups (see below)
6. [Added] Wire frames for Reports development
7. Large Group Sharing: highlights of small group discussions

• 30+ attendees
• Variety of new/investigating and experienced

• A brief overview of the Reports Taskforce was provided (basically this).
• People interested in following the work of the Reports Taskforce were encouraged to join the mailing list and/or email reports@evergreen-ils.org for more information.

Not too many people appeared to be using SQL currently, but there was an interest from many in learning more about this option.

• Newbies/Investigators (Jenny Turner, PALS; Shae Tetterton, ESI)
• Staff Client Report Ideas/New in 2.2 (Jess Venturo, Biblio)
• SQL (Amy Terlaga, Biblio)

• See them here
• Pines and Emerald Data Systems hope to begin work on a reports interface project this summer.
• Primarily for upper level management to be able to get/view reports more easily.
• Link to wireframes.
• Hope to be done by March 2013.

(Led by Jenny Turner, PALS; Shae Tetterton, ESI)

• Q/A about reports: sources come from database tables; perhaps it is time to redesign to prevent recursive-ness within the client report writer; important to learn how to kill reports. A few sites have issues with the reporter "stopping up;" need to restart it periodically.
• Learn SQL vs. learn the reports writer in the client
  • SQL is powerful, but puts the onus for reports on the person that knows SQL. Also requires DB access.
  • Learning the reports writer allows you to empower staff to run/clone own reports.
• Shortcomings of the report writer
• "Best" documentation: Sitka has great training videos; current users suggested looking for "text" fields when building reports and following instructions for building a specific report (from another library) to begin to learn and understand the structure of the writer. Pivot tables training in Excel has been handy for some library staff.

(Led by Jess Venturo, Bibliomation)

• Hold/copy ratio sources are new in recent past
• Orphan volume reports
• Ideas for requirements/improvements:
• Modify existing reports without cloning (could be permissions driven to allow some people to make direct changes, others to clone)
• Save name of report with report

(Led by Amy Terlaga, Bibliomation)

• 3 libraries/people running SQL with others interested
• "Package" of shared reports for SQL
• JasperReports as a possibility
• Documentation on database schema