Pardon the mess! The Support Center is undergoing construction.  


You are viewing an old version of this page. View the current version.

Compare with Current View Page History

« Previous Version 42 Next »

Operations

Reports

The root page ALEX:Reports could not be found in space Alexandria.

How helpful was this page? 

Tell us what we can improve.


Save as PDF

Saved Reports

Last Updated: $action.dateFormatter.formatDateTime($content.getLastModificationDate())

Saved Reports


Alexandria makes it easy to build your own frequently-used, custom reports. The Saved tab contains custom reports that you (or others) have created, saved, and shared.

Select a report from the Report Selection pane to populate the Selected Report pane below. Saved reports tabs—Overview, Selections, Options, Notification, Schedule, and FTP—contain settings that are essential to how your reports are ordered, organized, and presented. 

Saved reports can be run, modified, duplicated, or removed.

Saved reports only keep the selection criteria used to create the report, not the results of the report itself.

Toolbar

Lock/Unlock. Click the padlock to unlock the record for editing.

Actions

    • Duplicate Report. Should you want nearly identical settings for a custom-created report, this allows you to make a copy of the selected Saved report, give it a new name, and make whatever changes you require.
    • Delete Report. Permanently delete the selected saved report.

Switch Site. In a Central Union, click this icon to change the site you're working in.

Operations Management. Go to Operations Management to view and download your finished reports.

Support. Having trouble? This will open support documentation for this topic in another tab.

MultiExcerpt named Categories was not found -- Please check the page name and MultiExcerpt name used in the MultiExcerpt-Include macro

Report Selection Filters

Once you've selected a category or subcategory, the associated reports will be listed in the Reports Selection pane on the right. You can further narrow your the list of reports using filters. In some ways, these filters far surpass the usefulness of the Categories pane. In fact, you may find yourself never using the Categories filters again, preferring instead to use the All Reports category in conjunction with the filter bar.

Favorite. See the reports marked as Favorite.

Operator. See reports you (the current operator) have saved.

Filter. Enter a term to filter by report title.


Filters can be applied in various ways. For example:

  • To see only copy label-related reports, select the Copies category and type "labels" in the filter bar.
  • To see all types of label reports, select the All Reports category and type "labels" into the filter bar.
  • To see all shared label reports, select the All Reports category, select the Shared filter, and type "labels" into the filter bar.


Once you've sufficiently narrowed your filter criteria, scroll through the Report Selection list to locate and select the specific report you would like to view, modify, or run.

Create a Saved Report
  1. Go to Tools > Reports.
  2. With the Quick tab selected (default), use the Categories pane and report filters to locate and select the template you want to use.
  3. At the bottom of the Selections tab, click Create Saved Report.
  4. Enter a name for the new saved report (optional), then click OK.
  5. Modify the settings in each tab, then click Save.

Having trouble with a Saved report? It's possible that the template you used to create it has changed or was removed, causing problems with your saved report Try recreating the report with a Quick reports template. See Legacy Reports for more information.

Overview

The Overview tab serves as a report summary, including the title (e.g. Mrs. Smith - Overdues), report creator, usage notes (e.g. Run this report weekly!), and allows you to mark it as a favorite.

Settings

Name

Enter or edit the name of the report here (e.g. Dr. Linus - LOST books).

Created By

This information is automatically populated with the report creator's name and site ID code.

Notes

You can provide general usage notes about the report here (e.g. Report created for Marjorie - Run daily!).

Favorite

When this option is checked, the report is classified as a “favorite.” This is especially helpful if you find yourself running the same reports regularly.

Selections


The Selections tab is where you build the report to suit your needs. If you find some of your reports lacking the necessary selection information, try checking the Show Additional Selections box for more options. The settings in this tab vary per report.


Advanced Selections

Say you wanted to run a Loaned Items report for staff and middle school students only. How do you let Alexandria know to leave everyone else out? Some report selections have a dropdown menu with the option to include or exclude multiple policies. The logic of OR and AND NOT Boolean operators is used in these advanced selections.

Dropdown menu options:

  • Any Policy: All policies will be included.
  • Include: Only the policies you check will be included (OR). Patrons do not need to concurrently belong to all selected policies to be included.
  • Exclude: All policies except the ones you check will be included (AND NOT).

Once you select Include or Exclude, a Set button will appear to the right of the dropdown menu. Click on it to check the boxes of policies you want to include or exclude in the report, and click Set when you're done.


Relative Dates

When it comes to selections with time ranges, you can enter either date ranges or relative dates. With relative dates, you can choose a generalized time period (i.e. "two weeks" or "one month"), which makes it easy to save and schedule reports like notices.

Options

Choose the sort and format options here. The settings in this tab vary per report.


Schedule

Use these settings to schedule this report to run on a regular basis.

Settings

Schedule

Check this box to unlock the Saved report scheduling capabilities.

Frequency

This dropdown menu allows you to specify how often you would like to repeat your Saved report. You can select Once, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly from this drop-down menu. Secondary On options may dynamically appear, depending on your selection

At

Choose the time of day, including a.m. or p.m., to run the report.

Notification

If you want confirmation that your reports are being performed at the indicated times and sent to the appropriate people, check the Enable Email Notification box and provide email addresses in the fields below.

  • For example: johndoe@examplelibrary.com

You can provide more than one email address separated by commas.

  • For example: johndoe@examplelibrary.com,janedoe@examplelibrary.com

Settings

Enable Email Notification

Check this box if you want to enable email notification, sent upon report completion.

Email Notification and Download Link To

In this field, provide the operator email addresses that Alexandria will use to send confirmation emails, a link to the Operation Summary, and a link to download the report.

Email Notification To

In this field, provide the email addresses that Alexandria will use to send notification emails when the report has finished printing and a link to the Operation Summary; you can provide more than one email address separated by commas.

FTP

Alexandria can save finished reports to an FTP server. These options allow you to specify the (secure) FTP server address and uername/password credentials.


Settings

Upload Report to FTP Server

Check this box to set up your this option allow you to specify your (secure) FTP server URL and username/password credentials.

Protocol

If you'd like a more secure transmission that hides the username/password and encrypts the file content, FTP can be secured with SSL/TLS (i.e. “ftps://”). Be aware that the name “Secure FTP” can be confusing because it refers to two completely different protocols: “SFTP” and “FTPS”. Whenever the term Secure FTP is used, it is necessary to specify whether the SSH-based or SSL-based file transfer protocol is meant. Alexandria supports FTPS; the SSL-based file transfer protocol.

Host

Enter the host name or IP address of the FTP server without the URL protocol. For example, myserveraddress.com. Don't worry about including the URL protocol/scheme (e.g. “ftp://”) as this is automatically appended before the host name depending on your Protocol selection (above).

Port

While FTP typically runs over TCP port 21, FTPS (SSL/TLS) typically runs over port 21 or port 990. If you don't have permission to open multiple ports, both unencrypted FTP and encrypted FTPS will run over port 21.

Path

Enter the full path including directories and filename, such as /directory/subdirectory/filename.txt

Username and Password

Enter your FTP login credentials. If your FTP server is Provide a clear-text authentication and sign-in protocol in the form of a username and password. If your FTP server is configured to allow it, you can connect anonymously without having to enter anything


If you find yourself uncertain what an FTP server actually is, it's essentially just a software application that uses the File Transfer Protocol (i.e. FTP), a protocol used for sharing files over the internet. There are several FTP server software packages available that you can download and use for free.