Decisions Blog

3.1 Beta Testers needed

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:

Area

Report

Library Performance

010 Active Borrowers

020 Outstanding Reservations

030 Loan History

040 ILL summary

050 Missing Summary

060 Annual Summary of Loans (grouped)

070 Loan Site for Prism Renewals

Operational Management

110 Daily Issue profile

120 Cataloguing

130 Stock Rotation

140 Fines and Charges

Purchasing

210 Purchases grouped

220 Order committed but not arrived

230 Popular titles

240 Order items not subsequently loaned

250 Works with Outstanding Reservations

Reference

310 Serials

320 Types and Sites

330 Fund List

Stock Management

410 Missing Stock Summary

420 Stock List for a Shelf Range

430 Under Used Items – Overview

440 Under Used Items – Action List

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

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5 Responses

  1. Sandra Cromey Says:

    Interested in trying out all the Library Performance reports and 110 (daily issue) and 140 (fines and charges) reports for Operational Management.

    Sandra Cromey

  2. Tony Griffin Says:

    Hi, John

    Yes, I’d be interested in participating, not least to see how the standard reports are set up, as I find most reports are adaptable for similar queries.

    Regards,

    Tony.

  3. Lionel Says:

    Particularly interested in Active Borrowers & loan history but also comparing some of the others with results we get from CollectionsHQ. We will be upgrading to 3.1 in a few weeks

  4. Lisa Watson Says:

    Hi,
    We would be interested in participating in the beta test.

  5. John Hardy Says:

    Hi folks,

    The test pack is now ready: unfortunately there has been a problem getting the zip files past the various mail servers but I think everyone who volunteered should by now have had at least the documentation. Please let me know if not

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