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TUG Statistics and Reports Group Meeting

Minutes 

October 10, 2006 – 2:00-4:00 p.m.
University of Guelph Library, Beckman Seminar Room

Present: Vera Fesnak (Recorder), Alan Gale, Bill Halahan, Gail Sperling, Linda Teather (Chair), Ron Ward

  1. Membership Change
    Ron was given a warm welcome as Guelph’s new TSR member and Alan was thanked for his contributions to TSR. The group’s mandate and operational practices were briefly reviewed. The roles of Chair and Recorder normally rotate in the Fall but members agreed that Linda and Vera would continue in these positions until Spring 2007.

  2. Agenda Review
    The Agenda was approved with one minor change. Cognos 8 was added.

  3. Minutes of April 10, 2006
    1. Approval
      The minutes of April 10, 2006 were approved

    2. Business Arising
      • Implementation of report request form and database: Bill will continue to work on the technical problems identified with the report request form and database. Linda will draft a message to TUG staff for TSR's approval.

      • ERM usage data for Guelph and Laurier: At UG data is extracted automatically once a week. At WLU Vera will investigate what stage they are at with extracting ERM data usage.
        WLU person to add/update accounts: Linda Cracknell has been designated as the WLU person to add/update accounts.

      • Meeting with TUG Executive, March 8, 2006: TSR will work with the TUG Executive to determine an appropriate way to obtain input to the trainers at each institution.

      • Expenditures for 2005/06: Linda submitted the final version of TSR's cost sharing report in April.

      • Message to Training Team: A message responding to the Training Team’s report was sent in May.

      • Testing Procedures for new releases: Linda and Gail will draft testing procedures for TSR’s review.

  4. Cognos server & client software upgrade plan
    Gail and Bill reviewed their revised upgrade plan. A bug found in 7.3 MR3 supports their recommendation that TUG skip this release and proceed to 7.4. Gail and Bill will upgrade the test server to 7.4 next week. Once data is migrated successfully from the production server to the test server, the Training Team will be able to login into the test server where they will be able to run and save any reports on Impromptu and PowerPlay for testing purposes and to assess the staff training and documentation updates needed. If the test is successful, TUG could move to 7.4 on the production server after the MR1 release in early 2007.

  5. Cognos Forum 2006 Report
    Gail highlighted areas of great interest to this group from her detailed report on Cognos Forum 2006. Of particular interest to this group for future in depth analysis is Analysis Studio (Cognos 8 version of PowerPlay); Framework Manager; and Endeavor's product Endeavor Analyzer.

  6. Training Team update
    The Chair of the Training Team is Vera. She will call a meeting of the group to determine next steps, including the training needs of the trainers and how those might best be met (e.g. in-house follow-up training in report building using the desktop clients). One of the training team members is near retirement, UG is down by one trainer and training team members at Laurier may change in near future.

    The TSR member from each institution will initiate the appropriate process to address these membership issues.

  7. Endeavor Analyzer
    Gail and Bill concurred that the Group would need to see exactly what Analyzer consists of and the cost before an informed decision on whether Analyzer would be a good investment for TUG. The packages are somewhat restrictive for anyone who is used to having complete access to the database tables. An on-site demo would be worth the time.

    Linda will communicate this interest to TOMG. It might be possible to expand a site visit to include a demo of the new public interface and Meridian.

  8. Cognos 8
    Cognos 8 is a total redesign as it allows for development of reports on the web. The licensing structure is complex and has at least 4 categories.

    The status of Cognos 8 planning in each institution’s main campus computing department was queried. Vera reported that plans are already underway at WLU with investigating various reporting and assessment tools. At Guelph, CCS is evaluating the campus commitment regarding Cognos 8. At Waterloo, there are no short to medium term plans to do anything about Cognos 8; IST will evaluate the role of Cognos at UW before support for Cognos 7.x ends in 2010. Options for TUG if only one or two universities acquire a Cognos 8 site license need to be assessed.

  9. TUG ERM Working Group input
    The TUG ERM Working Group sent out a message to various TUG groups requesting input. TSR’s response was prepared by email, with primary input from Gail.

  10. Cognos seminar, Oct. 11
    Gail Sperling and Susan Arruda subscribed to the Cognos web seminar on the highlights of release 7.4.

  11. Next meeting date
    Linda will call the next meeting in late November or early December. Location: WLU.

Future agenda items:
- Review terms of reference of TUG Stats and Reports Group and the Training Team
- Preparation of budget proposal for 2006/07
- Report Request approval process