Most Decisions customers develop a set of reports that meet their needs and are adapted to their own data and operating procedures. In addition, Decisions provides a high degree of flexibility in answering one-off queries such as Freedom-of Information requests. 

We have however long recognised that “standard” reports are helpful (even if just as “how-to-do-it” examples) and have for some years provided samples of reports that can be used to support CIPFA/SCONUL reporting, and reports for Bridge Pro customers on self service terminal usage.

We are now developing a set of Decisions reports in Web Intelligence covering a number of other common requirements which we would like to be able to make available to any Decisions users who would like to make use of them. These are ordinary Decisions reports based on standard universes so can be loaded, run, distributed and/or used as the basis for local variants, just like any other Decisions report.  The set we have so far are as follows:

One of the interesting issues with standard reports is that whilst all our customers use the same database tables, the detailed data stored in those tables may vary, as may the uses to which they are put. For example some customers may use the Sequence field for one purpose and some for others, some may use Dewey and some UDC – or both. Certain item types or borrower types may be special and so included or excluded. This implies a need for testing by a range of libraries.

So we are looking for folk who would be willing to take some or all of these reports for a test drive and report back on any errors or omissions and/or suggestions for improvement. If you would be willing to participate in this please add a comment below or email me. You will need to be on the later version of Decisions (3.1) and be happy about using Web Intelligence reports. We will provide instructions for loading the reports