SCILS

South Carolina Information and Library Services Consortium

SCILS Reports Policy
Approve 4/22/2008

General information

• Anyone can run reports, but there are some issues that can cause problems for others schools if not followed. Read and understand the Report Policies before running any reports.
• Do not run reports off the “Scheduled Reports” list because there is the potential to accidently delete it off the scheduled reports list. The report would then have to be recreated.
• Reports appear on the Finished List based on the login under which the report was generated. The Admin login is the only one that can see all the reports.
• If there are any problems or questions, contact the SCILS System Librarian.

Properties (Session Settings)

Application to view/print reports

This is defaulting to Wordpad which is fine for most reports. If you are printing something that needs formatting changes, then use the gadget to change the address to where your Word application is located.

Setup & Schedule

You can just ignore these settings.

View, Print, or Email Finished Reports

In general, you want to keep the first 3 checked. The exception is if you are printing a report, you may not want the “Log,” especially when printing a “Notice” report.

Format Page

Default settings are usually fine for all but Notice reports. On notice reports, the page length usually has to be shortened to something around 50, but it varies depending on printer.

Default Settings

o   Page Length-the total number of lines to print on a page. The default value is 72.

o   Page Width -the total number of characters to print across a page. The default value is 80.

o   Top Margin-the number of lines from the top that will be left blank when printing the report output on a page. The default value is 3.

o   Bottom Margin-the number of lines from the bottom that will be left blank when printing the report output. The default value is 0.

View, Print, or Email Finished Notice Report

• The Recipients option applies only to reports that produce notices, such as bill and overdue notices reports.
• The email address of the user to receive the notices must be defined in the EMAIL field in the primary address in the user record.
• The Allow Emailing of Notices check box must be selected in the Report Policy wizard for the Send Notices Automatically and Recipients options to be used effectively.

All

Selecting All automatically sends email notices to users who have an email address in the EMAIL field of the primary address of their user records, and prints paper notices for users who do not have email addresses in their user records.

Only Those With Email Addresses

Selecting Only Those with Email Addresses automatically sends email notices to users have an email address in the EMAIL field of the primary address of their user records. No paper notices are produced for users who do not have email addresses in their user records.

Only Those Without Email Addresses

Selecting Only Those without Email Addresses automatically prints paper notices only for those users who do not have an email address in the EMAIL field of the primary address of their user records.

Choosing reports

You can consult the Sirsi help screens to choose a report to run, but your greatest resource will be consulting with the SCILS System Librarian.

In general, reports that most users will need to run are:

·         A “Count” reports looks how many there are meeting your criteria

·         An “Import”  for getting bibliographic records or authority records into the database

·         A “Label” report for spine/pocket labels (*****Critical that this report has item barcodes entered**** Or with no selections, this report will cause the Report Server to crash)

·         A “Notice” report for overdues or serial claims

·         A “List” report to find items that meet your criteria. (*****Critical that this report has selections chosen**** Or with no selections, this report will cause the Report Server to crash)

·         A “Statistic” report to collect data

There are monthly reports that are run on the 1^st of the month that should cover routine statistical, count, and list report needs. If the routine reports do not meet your school’s information collection needs, contact the System Librarian to set up additional reports. Routine monthly reports need to be set up so they don’t conflict with other monthly reports.

Overdues are run every Thursday for everyone in the Consortium.

Several reports are password protected to keep all but the administrator from running them as they could damage the database.

Templates

Templates are reports that have been set up and saved with some or most selections already chosen on them.

• The user may only need to change a few things or nothing to get the output they desire.
• Always check to see if there is a template to run the report needed.
• The System Librarian sets up templates for all the routine reports.
•  Do not save every report as a template.
• Templates should also be cleaned up when no longer needed for a temporary project.

Basic Tab

Report Names

Require:  All report names should have your school’s name or initials at the beginning of the name.

This name displays in the finished or scheduled report lists. It is also the name displaying in the new report or template list. The maximum number of characters and spaces that can be put in a report name is 30.

Title

This title displays on the first line of each formatted page of the printed report. The date and time that the report was produced follows the title. The maximum number of characters and spaces that can be put in a title is 80.

Report Description

This field describes the report results. The default value describes the report if it is run without making any changes to the selections or output options. The maximum number of characters and spaces that can be put in a description is 80.

Footer

When used, this field displays on the last line of each formatted page of the printed report. It can be used to record a date or range of dates that a report covers. Footers are optional. The maximum number of characters and spaces that can be put in a footer is 80.

Note The use of footers is not supported for reports that generate notices. For notice reports, the Footer field does not appear in the Basic tab.

Problems

General

If have a problem with a report:

• If there is a problem, DO NOT delete the problem report off the Finished List.
• The Systems Librarian cannot diagnose problems for reports that no longer exist.

Report not appearing on “Finished Report” List

Most reports should take less than 5 minutes to run and appear in the “Finished Report” list.

• DO NOT re-run your report.
• If you run a report that hasn’t shown up in 10 minutes, contact the SCILS System Librarian by phone.
• If are not able to reach the System Librarian on office phone, contact cell phone.
• It could be a problem with the report you ran, or it could be a problem with a report generated by someone else in the SCILS consortium.

Reports “error” under Status

Only a few reports have the potential to error out: Bibliographic and Inventory Loads.

Both of these reports have to have information uploaded to the server to run the report against. If the report is run without the upload occurring or if the report is run 2 times by mistake, the report will error out.

Error “File Empty”

This message means that the box next to the “View Log” is not checked. Some reports, such as a “Count” report, show information in the log that does not display in the results part of the report. Check “View Log” to eliminate this error.

Right Report Won’t Come up

Only one report can be viewed at a time unless the report has been saved under a different name to the computer. If you click on a second report while another one is being viewed, it will only launch the report that was first being viewed. Close or save the report to hard drive to view another report.

Deleting Finished Reports

Rules to follow when deleting finished reports

• Do not delete any report if you were not the person who ran it unless you are 100% sure no one needs the report any longer
• Do not delete the monthly statistic reports unless you are 100% sure that the information has been captured. Some monthly reports CANNOT be recreated at a later date.
• Do delete reports that you run and no longer need.
• Do save any reports that are needed for archival purposes to a disc, flash drive, and/or a hard drive for long term storage

Rules that the SCILS System Librarian follows when deleting finished reports

• Old reports are deleting routinely.
• Monthly Reports are not deleted if they are in the current fiscal year or calendar year. For example: the minimum of reports in September 2007 would be reports from January 2007 though they may be retained longer.
• Each school gets a minimum of 2 emails warning of upcoming deletion to have time to save any reports to their own computers.
• Reports that are not statistic reports may be deleted at a faster rate based on the type of report.
• Reports that would not be a priority for retention are Load Bibliographic reports, Overdues, and Labels.
• Reports that would be given priority for retentions are Inventory Reports and List Reports.
• If you are concerned about having access to any particular report, save to your hard drive.

 Some information from Sirsi help documents is used in this policy.

Approve: 4/22/2008