Alma Analytics : a whole new world of data extraction Janet Lute ILS Coordinator Princeton University Library jelute@princeton.edu IGeLU 2014 Oxford, England

Summary Lots of interest in reporting out of Alma Huge differences between how this is handled in Alma versus current ILS’s Using Voyager as a point of comparison Design Analytics – Oracle Business Intelligence Dashboards & widgets Resource Management Sets and exports

Oracle Business Intelligence OBI for short, and built into Alma No separate license Access controlled from within Alma Reports can be run for Acquisitions, Fulfillment, Inventory, Users Bibliographic reports use Set Management OBI is a data warehouse, data will be refreshed nightly

Analysis – aka – writing a query More than one subject area can be selected Mouse over at the lowest level to see useful hints on the field Joins are pre-determined More Subject areas to come

From the Criteria Tab, fields can be added to Selected Columns by drag and drop Fields can be sorted and/or filtered, etc. Click to the right of the field name From the same drop down, Column properties can be edited; here we changed the currency format for Invoice Line Total Price

Results Tab Results of the query compared to the voucher in Voyager Some additional fields added; report given a title

Another example showing a filter based on the Allocated funds for expenditure in FY12 Selected five fields; three had criteria attached To edit a filter: highlight the line and select the pencil icon Note that dropdown for value gives the choices available

Select the Results tab to view the results Initially you appear to be missing data. Where are your expenditure figures? Layout is accessed via the edit icon (pen) for the Pivot Table Critically important area and initially hard to locate.

From the Excluded area drag up the values that you need to display Fund Transactions is dragged into the Measures area Fiscal period and transaction type are not needed in the display

A lot of “display” editing is done from this area; the resulting changes display immediately in a preview frame Before Click on the sigma symbol by Fund Name and you can alter the positioning of the subtotals and the column label becomes After Select Done from the top right to exit Layout

The ‘happy dance’ slide This display shows part of the result This can be exported in a variety of formats The data for this particular report closely matches the same report run directly from Voyager Spreadsheet extract shows xls output from Voyager queries using reports.mdb. Astrophysics total matches exactly; Biology total differs by 21 cents (rounding)

Results Tab To add a graph, access the New View icon on the menu and drill down. From the previous data, I created a pie chart to show expenditure at the Allocated Fund level Graphs have their own Layout area This is the result; if you mouse over the slices it will give more detail including the expenditure figure

Circulation statistics for physical items Many date fields from the Loan date area – may not need both Year Desc – is 2013 – select for display Select Filter from the Date Key This dialogue box will appear, many operator choices “is between” will include only records where the data in the column is between the two values in the filter.

From the Results Tab, the Layout shows the sum of loans Produces this result. Note that figures are very low as we are not in Production

Once the report is edited to your satisfaction Save the analysis to the /Shared Folders/xxx University/Reports In addition save to /Shared Folders/xxx University/Dashboards

The Dashboard can be viewed on the Alma Opening and can be made role dependent Alma Menu > Administration > Analytics > Configuration Menu > Analytics Objects List > Select or Add an Analytics Object Here I pointed to the Circulation Statistics report, added this as a widget and added the appropriate roles to enable viewing From the New Analytics Object screen you may preview your object

From the Alma home page, you can Add the widget Dashboard is the whole screen Widget is an object on the Dashboard

Reports can have a prompt applied so that users may select the area appropriate to them such as fund, location, date range For the expend by reporting codes report, I created a column prompt for the Allocated fund (Fund Ledger Name) Preview Icon brings up a list of funds, here we selected 1407 Engineering

Report Output formats Reports can be exported as: pdf, excel, PowerPoint, web archive, csv, tab delimited, xml You can print a report Reports can be scheduled to run at specified times Icons for these actions on the Results menu bar

Bibliographic elements Metadata does not have a subject area of its own Bibliographic data is included in each subject area Not all fields but does include the types of fields needed to enhance reports

Managing Sets within Alma Bibliographic data can be managed with sets: Itemized set – results are saved but the data is static Logical set – results are determined by a query that updates the results each time it is run Permissions based Public versus Private sets Set content includes authorities, Physical, electronic titles, packages etc.

Add contents to Set brings up the Repository Search

Filtered on Books 17 results Select Done From the Manage Sets Screen you can perform other actions that can alter the size/contents of your set Once the set is established you can use it to manage your data. This is a separate area so permissions may not be the same

This example uses the set to withdraw the items, and manages this with a five step wizard From Main Menu > Administration > Manage Jobs > Run a Job Select the radio button adjacent to the job you want to run and select Next Choose the set name you require, in this case ‘Set for IGeLU 2014’

Exporting Record Sets Create a job to Export a set of records Select a set Parameters: I chose XML format but could have selected Binary

Job will run asp or as scheduled Job will run asp or as scheduled. Result can be managed from Manage Exports, there for 30 days Download the file In this set of records, an example of the first part of one record is illustrated

Finally. Every Alma screen of results has a Tools option Currently this defaults to Excel only Literally dumps the results of that area, but can be very useful

Sharing My Folders – working copies of analysis etc. Shared Folders have three parts Alma – Ex Libris provided reports in various areas. Can be saved and used by anyone. Community – place to post reports that you want to share with the user community Your own Institution – place to publish analysis for use locally

What is Missing? Need more documentation with good examples OBI doc especially is very jargony Need the ability to import a table of data and use this in queries Crucial data elements are not there yet

Questions or Comments jelute@princeton.edu Copy of this presentation will be made available through IGeLU jelute@princeton.edu