Reports Basics

 

Using reports wizards in Sirsi is relatively simple. There are a few basic steps to learn:

• Setting your properties
• Creating a New Report
• Saving your report
• Scheduling your report to run on a regular basis, or once

 

The Properties screen comes up the first time you use a reports wizard, and you can access it also by right-clicking on any of the reports wizards:

 

 

---

 

Using the Wizards:

 

Schedule New Reports

Schedule New Reports is where you start when creating your first report, or when creating a new report:

This Wizard gives you a variety of "Template" reports that you can use to start making your own reports.

There are several buttons in this wizard:

Set Up and Schedule allows you to take a report, edit it and set it up to run at a certain schedule (monthly, weekly, daily, or once).

 

View Allows you to view the setup of a report, without running it or editing it.

 

Modify allows you to modify an existing report. This replaces the existing report with the modified one. Note: you can only modify your own template reports. You're not able to modify the basic templates, but you can Duplicate.

 

Duplicate allows you to create a copy of a report, which you can then modify and save or run.

 

Remove removes a report from your templates.

 

Ownership doesn't work for us.

 

Close closes the window.

 

There are various tabs that contain different kinds of report templates you can use:

 

Templates is where reports you have saved are stored. If you haven't saved any of your own reports, this tab won't appear.

 

Acquisition contains reports using data from the Acquisitions module (orders, vendors, invoices etc.).

 

Acquisition load contains reports used for 9xx ordering.

 

Bibliographic contains reports using bibliographic, call number, and item data.

 

Bibcustom contains custom reports created by WYLD using bibliographic etc. data.

 

Circulation contains reports using circulation data (checkouts, holds etc.).

 

Circcustom contains custom reports created by WYLD using circulation data.

 

Custom contains custom reports created by WYLD.

 

Request contains reports using data from the Request module.

 

Serial contains reports using serials control data (predictions, issues received, serials controls, vendors)

 

User contains reports using data about our users.

 

When you look at the basic template reports, there are a list of Names, Source, and the date the report was added to the system:

 

 

"Source" is the short version of the name, and the technical name of the report in terms of the inner workings of Sirsi. This is significant to note, because techies often use the source name of the report, and because in the example reports on this site, the source is the name that appears for the report.

 

For example, for the report List Bibliography, the source is bibliography, and for the report List Entries from Catalog, the source is entrylist.

---

 

Display Scheduled Reports:

Once you've scheduled a report, it appears in the Display Scheduled Reports wizard. If you schedule it to run "Once", it disappears from here after it has run.

 

Buttons:

 

New transfers you to the Schedule New Reports wizard.

 

View Allows you to view the setup of a report, without running it or editing it.

 

Modify allows you to modify an existing report, including when and how it's scheduled.

 

Duplicate allows you to create a copy of a scheduled report, which you can then edit and schedule or save.

 

Remove allows you to delete a scheduled report.

 

Advanced has various features, most of which don't work for us.

---

 

List Finished Reports:

 

When a report has run, you can look at the email you get (if you set it up to send one) or you can look at it in the finished reports wizard

 

Buttons:

 

There are several buttons you can use in the Finished Reports wizard.

 

View allows you to view the results and/or log of your report. When you click on a report and hit the View button, it gives you the option of what you want to view:

 

 

Viewing the log can be helpful when you want to look at some of the details of why a report gave you (or didn't give you) a result. This is especially useful when the report ends in an error. However, if you don't need to diagnose something, it can be better to leave out the log to make things easier to read.

 

You almost always want to view the results, if there are any. In some cases, there will be no results, so you'll want to look at the log for clues. In the case or the Count Items report, the result you are looking for is in the log and there is no "result".

 

You definitely want to have "format report" checked, unless you're curious and want to look at the encoded goobleygook..''

 

Email allows you to email the results of the report to someone/yourself. If emailed this way, the subject line will be "Unicorn Report". This button gives you the same log/results/format options as "View" (see above).

 

Print allows you to print out the results of the report. This button gives you the same log/results/format options as "View" (see above).

 

Remove allows you to delete the report from the Finished Reports list.

 

Ownership doesn't work for us.

 

Close ''closes the wizard.

 

---

 

Creating and Saving a New Report

 

Yo Create a new report you can do one of two things:

• Start from scratch with one of the basic templates
• Modify or Duplicae an existing report

 

Either way, when you start working on the new report, the first tabyou work with is the Title information:

 

This is where you can choose a descriptive title for your report. If possible, titles should begin with the Sirsi name of the library. For example, "ALBY Item List". You can also select information that will show in the header and footer of the page in the finished report. This can be useful if this report is being sent to someone else and you need to leave notes for them. However, you should try an example report to see how these notes will appear so you can make sure they will be effectively visible.

 

The next Tab is criteria. Depending on the report, you will have a choice of different criterial to limit to the results you want to get:

 

Next, you may have a tab to select how to sort the results. This will be very important to usability, so you should select a way of sorting that is most useful to the situation (For example, by call number for a list of items to be pulled from the shelf):

 

The last part of setting up the report itself is to select the output options. Here you select what details about the items will show in the results. This is very important to having the results you want to work with (For example, if you're looking at issues with the 300 field, you should include that in the list of MARC fields that will be shown):

 

This is Stephen's preferred output format for bibliographic reports:

This is the kind of result this output format produces:

658.314 L972F                            2000
ISBN: 0786866020
Personal Author: Lundin, Stephen C., 1941-
Title: Fish! : a remarkable way to boost morale and improve
results / by Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul, and John
Christensen.
CPY  ITEM ID           ITEM TYPE   LOCATION        PRICE     CREATED  #CIRCS
1    39092055377172    BOOK        NONFICTION     $30.00  10/16/2004       8
B F279                                   2004
ISBN: 1590710363
Personal Author: Favre, Brett.
Title: Favre / by Brett Favre and Bonita Favre with Chris
Havel.
CPY  ITEM ID           ITEM TYPE   LOCATION        PRICE     CREATED  #CIRCS
1    39092058364771    BOOK        BIOGRAPHY      $30.00  12/18/2004       5
CD MUSIC J RADIO DISNEY ULTIMATE JAMS    2004
Title: Radio Disney ultimate jams [sound recording] :
greatest hits from volumes 1-6.
CPY  ITEM ID           ITEM TYPE   LOCATION        PRICE     CREATED  #CIRCS
1    39092062171097    CDMUSIC     AV              $8.99  11/17/2005       1

 

 

When you're done setting up the report, you have a few options as to what to do next:

• "Run Now" runs the report now. It runs as soon as possible, and goes to Finished Reports when done. It doesn't email or save it.
• "Schedule" allows you to schedule the report to run monthly, weekly, daily, or just once. Here you have the option to email the result.
• "Save As Template" allows you to save your work without running the report or scheduling it to run. The report goes to your "Templates" tab, under "Schedule New Report" and you can then call it up later to edit it more or to run or schedule it.
• "Cancel" discards your work.