TUG Statistics & Reports

Update to the Steering Committee, January 2005

Since the TUG Statistics and Reports Group (TSR) last reported to the Steering Committee in February 2004, much has been accomplished to further develop and refine the TUG statistics and reports infrastructure. TSR’s work during the past year included:

Completing work on a web-accessible reports request form and status database and developing a procedure for staff to request a new report. Links to the procedure and to the request form and database have been added to TSR’s web page (http://staff.tug-libraries.on.ca/trellis_reports/). The form and status database will go live after they have been demonstrated to the Training Team at that group’s next meeting.
Implementing a reports listserv (tugreports-l) to announce the availability of new or revised reports or PowerPlay cubes and to communicate system-related information from the system administrators.
Maintaining the Cognos production and development servers. Several operating system patches and Cognos software maintenance releases were installed. The latest new release, version 7.3, has been installed on the development server and testing is underway. Since this release brings several of the features of the desktop application to the PowerPlay web, we’re eager to bring it into production and planning is underway for a February/March upgrade of the production server to 7.3.
Taking advantage of the efficiencies of the web interface. Moving to the Cognos web environment not only enabled our staff to view and run Cognos reports via a user-friendly interface, but it has also brought efficiencies to staff workstations support in our IT departments. When we migrate to Cognos 7.3, software installs will be required only on the few staff workstations identified as development or backup stations.
Acquiring software to automatically build, archive and publish cubes. Cuberunner was tested with good results and was subsequently purchased and installed in December 2004. There is a workload advantage for the system administrators, of course, in automating much of the cube maintenance work and this enables us to accommodate more specialized requests. To this end, the cube archiving schedule is now under review with some of the functional groups.
Enlarging the database to include data from other sources. Gail Sperling consulted with the ERM project developers, built a prototype ERM data cube and will be working further with them to confirm the validity of the data extraction and interpretation.
Raising awareness of TSR’s work and TUG’s reports environment by issuing an update to TUG staff, summarizing TSR’s first two years (see appended report).

Training remains a significant activity for TSR. Action was taken on training for the Cognos system administrators, the TUG Reports Training Team and TUG staff. In addition, efforts were made to promote our use of the Cognos business suite among the Endeavor and Cognos user communities. Some of the highlights:

In April 2004, Gail Sperling presented a session on “Using Cognos PowerPlay to Create Statistical Reports” at the EndUser conference in Chicago . She also presented a poster session on Impromptu reports. Both were well-attended and generated interest from Endeavor staff and attendees from other Endeavor sites. [We were pleased to read Endeavor’s recent announcement about the purchase of Cognos ReportNet for use with Meridian . A subsequent announcement indicated that this is the first phase and that, as Endeavor staff gain experience with Cognos, its use should expand to other products.]
Bill Halahan attended the Cognos Technical Forum in Orlando in June 2004. This was the second time a TUG Cognos system administrator attended this major technical conference and once again it proved to be very valuable for both the contacts made and the information derived from the ‘nuts and bolts’ discussions. TSR recommends that TUG continue to support attendance at this valuable conference and has included this item in its 2005/06 budget proposal.
Phase 2 of the TUG Reports Training Team’s training was completed by an external trainer from ThoughtCorp. A full day session on Impromptu Report Writing was conducted on Oct. 6 th, with a follow-up half-day session on Dec. 16 th. While the training was arranged for the Training Team as part of TSR’s ‘train the trainers’ plan, 14 TUG staff members benefited from the training. We were able to include six additional staff members who had some previous experience with Impromptu, as well as Bill Halahan and Gail Sperling as resource people. The ThoughtCorp trainer did an excellent job, used our data, and left the Training Team with good documentation.
The Training Team has almost completed preparing a PowerPlay training program for TUG staff. The session is planned for February/March.
Two program proposals were submitted to the 2005 Cognos Technical Forum planners. Unfortunately neither was accepted. TSR will continue to seek opportunities to demonstrate beyond TUG the value of Cognos applications in a library setting and the effective Cognos infrastructure TUG has developed.

Looking ahead to 2005/06, the TUG Statistics and Reports Group recognizes the need to refresh our server configuration. Server load is increasing steadily as the Training Team’s work increases the TUG staff complement of Cognos users and as the database of cubes and reports grows. The current development server is an older UW server which was used to prototype when we started to develop the TUG Cognos reports environment and it has become very unreliable. The production server was purchased in 2002 and serves us well but we need to move forward with a multi-year hardware renewal plan. As reflected in our 2005/06 budget proposal, we recommend purchasing a new production server, converting the current production server to a development server, and retiring the current development machine.

Other activities which should have TSR’s attention in the coming year include investigating possibilities for integrating statistical data from other sources; supporting the work of the Training Team; monitoring Cognos developments, including Endeavor’s plans for using Cognos ReportNet; and continuing to enhance the TUG Cognos reports environment.

Linda Teather
Chair, TUG Statistics & Reports Group
January 19, 2005

Appendix: “Update on TUG Statistics & Reports Activities”

[report to TUG Staff, November19, 2004]

In June 2002 the TUG Statistics & Reports Group was formed and TUG began using business intelligence software applications developed by an Ottawa-based company called Cognos. Business intelligence applications enable organizations to gather, store, analyze, and provide access to data, with the broad goal of facilitating better decision making. Probably the best known Cognos products we use are the Impromptu report and query language and the PowerPlay online analytical processing tool.

The role played by Cognos for TUG has been focused on mining the TRELLIS system databases for information, adding greatly to what is possible using TRELLIS’ Voyager reports software.

Gail Sperling and Bill Halahan have done a superb job of managing the Cognos software and developing a large number of reports addressing management information needs that are unavailable directly from TRELLIS. Cognos has recently moved towards offering web-based versions of its applications and we have found this environment to be easier for staff end users and workstation support staff, and have been preparing over the past two years to gradually upgrade software and spread expertise among TUG staff.

Some of the major accomplishments over the past two years include:

Migration of all Cognos reports to the more user friendly web-based environment called Upfront
Completion of documentation for all reports
Creation of accounts and security profiles for report users and creators
Creation and training of a “TUG Stats & Reports Training Team”. Members are Alan Gale and Scott Gillies (UG); Linda Cracknell & Vera Fesnak (WLU); Susan Arruda & Baiba Turner (UW). This team received customized Cognos training from ThoughtCorp, a Toronto based company, and has since developed and conducted TUG staff training on the Cognos web environment.
Members of the Training Team will act as resource persons for local questions about running or developing reports.

In early 2005, the Training Team will conduct staff training on Cognos PowerPlay web interface for TUG managers and staff. In addition, we will be exploring the feasibility of integrating data from other sources (e.g. VDX) into the Cognos web infrastructure.

For more information about our work, see the TUG Stats & Reports Group’s web site at http://staff.tug-libraries.on.ca/trellis_reports/

Our thanks to all the staff who have helped deepen TUG’s capacity in reporting and management information through supporting the Cognos project.

Ron MacKinnon, Joanne Oud and Linda Teather,
TUG Statistics and Reports Group

Last updated: May 31, 2006