TUG Statistics and Reports Group Meeting

Minutes

April 15, 2008 - 10:00 a.m.-12:00 noon

University of Waterloo, Porter Library, Room 407

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

A. Approval of Minutes of December 11, 2007

The minutes of December 11, 2007 were approved as revised.

B. Approval of Agenda

The agenda was approved with two additions: End-User Testing under item G.1.b and Year-End Expenditures Report under item H.

C. Business Arising and Announcements

The Group welcomed UW’s new TSR member, Richard Pinnell. Richard gave the group a summary of his background and experience related to statistics and reports.

D. Review of Existing Reports

TSR will implement a review of existing Cognos Impromptu reports, partly to make conversion to a new system more efficient and effective and partly because, after several years of operation, a review should be undertaken in any case. The goals of the review include identifying reports that are/are not being used, changes that would make reports more effective, and reports that are similar and could be merged with different run options.

Next steps:

• Compile a list of the reports currently being used (Gail)
• Identify appropriate people to review reports, provide rational for reports, prioritize changes needed, etc. (TSR, TUG Managers, Functional groups)
• Identify factors by which to assess reports (Gail, Bill, TSR)
• Draft reviewer’s comment form and review process (Gail, Bill)
• Inform TUG Managers about review via tugmanagers-l, with local follow-up (Ron, Vera, Richard/Linda)

Proposed timeline:

• Soon: inform TUG Library Managers about the review project
• Early June: implement review process
• Late Summer/early Fall: conduct follow-up meetings with reviewers

E. Training Team Updates

WLU: Vera conducted a best practices session for three librarians. A refresher session for staff is planned. Vera will provide further training for new Training Team member, Matt Tales.

UG: Ad hoc training sessions are being offered as needed. Training Team recruitment is on hold until future direction is set regarding Cognos 8.

UW: Sam Gibbon has joined the Training Team. An additional member with Collections/ Acquisitions background should be appointed soon.

The Training Team Chair is on sabbatical and another team member will be appointed as Chair.

It was noted that Impromptu client training should no longer be needed for Training Team members unless TUG stays on Cognos 7. To assist new Trainers, Gail offered to work with the group on cube content. In the short term, individual training for new Trainers will be managed locally.

F. UW Library Server Migration Update

The reports servers are slated for migration to UW’s Blade server configuration in 2008.

G. Cognos Update

1. C8 Discovery Project

a) Progress and Outcomes Update

The Cognos 8 software is still running on UG’s CCS server and access is expected to continue for another two months. Bill and Gail reported on recent successes and their work with Cognos Support on problems such as calculations that span multiple tables. Next they plan to take some Framework Manager converted packages and recreate the joins. Both noted that the lack of formal training has been a hindrance in this project; for the most part, their learning has been via self-discovery.

b) Next Steps

The TUG Executive Committee has requested a recommendation for TUG’s post-Cognos 7 direction in the Fall. TSR will work toward a recommendation based on factors including importance, viability, ease of migration, functionality, and timing. Costing issues should be considered by the TUG Executive after TSR’s recommendation has been submitted. Gail and Bill will document their preliminary thoughts based on the Cognos 8 Discovery experience.

One option to explore further regarding Cognos 8 access is the Ex Libris Analyzer product. TSR will ask the ELUNA (Ex Libris Users of North America) 2008 attendees to obtain further information. Linda will try to find out who TUG is sending to ELUNA this year.

Bill and Gail will set up some end-user Analysis Studio testing with a limited group of users.

2. WLU Campus Adoption

The purchase of Cognos 8 for the WLU campus was approved by the Board of Governors but budget issues have delayed the implementation. Training has not yet been scheduled.

3. Training Updates

a) V.8.3 Launch

Bill and Gail attended the Cognos 8.3 launch in Toronto on January 15. They noted that Cognos is making it easier to publish cubes by incorporating Transformer functionality into version 8 and using metadata.

b) Cognos Forum 2008

Before the meeting, Gail forwarded the list of sessions she was able to register for at the Cognos Forum in May. TSR members will review the list and contact her if sessions they wanted her to attend are not on the list and she will investigate whether or not changes are possible. She was asked to try to obtain information on using dashboarding to make a system more user-friendly and proactive.

H. Additional Items

1. Year-End Expenditures Report

The Group identified expenditures to be added to the year-end report. Linda and Ron will obtain General Ledger expenditure values for these.

I. Next Meeting

Ron will call the next meeting. Location: University of Guelph.