TUG Stats & Reports Fall Meeting

September 9, 2008. 14:00-16:00 (2-4 PM)

Room 208, McLaughlin Library, University of Guelph

Minutes

A. Approval of Minutes from last meeting.

The minutes of April 15th were approved.

B. Approval of Agenda

The agenda was approved as circulated with the addition of item I, “Next meeting.”

C. Business Arising and Announcements

Budget (Ron)

The TUG Exec accepted the TSR Group budget for the 08/09 fiscal year.

Library Data mart development at UG (Ron)

Guelph is investigating new ways to improve collecting/reporting data in the management of the library’s daily operations. The end product could be the dashboard solution that would help to create a multi-faceted push approach to enable managers to maintain statistics at the click of a button. A report could very well incorporate statistics from other data sources, such at HR. In the immediate future, the Footprints database is being looked at as one of the software that could be used to help analyze user questions at the Information desk. It was noted that UW and WLU are also categorizing questions users ask at their Information desk(s) as well.

Training

Gail and Bill’s experience in being given the opportunity to recreate the TUG Impromptu environment in Cognos 8 has been invaluable. It was suggested that permission to continue to test in this environment would be a great benefit. It was also noted however that formal training in Cognos 8 by the vendor would at this time not be pursued until more definite plans to migrate to Cognos 8 by the TUG libraries are established.

A project that Gail and Bill can be developing are reports from Verdi and Primo using the Cognos 8 environment.

It was agreed that skills need to be maintained otherwise they will be lost. Migrating to a new system like Cognos 8 requires resource commitment; migration is not a conversion. Another learning curve for Bill and Gail is that Architect is being dropped at the end of Series 7. The effects of this on the TUG reports are being evaluated.

Other avenues that the group will maintain awareness of are: Cognos user days in Toronto, ExLibris Analyzer, the Eluna group conference, and regional user groups relatively close to Ontario.

D. Discussion of needs and/or opportunities (Gail, Bill Vera)

Gail will post a message to the Voyager-L listserv to get in contact with libraries that are using Analyzer. Both Gail and Bill will be devoting time in developing their skills in Cognos administrator. A future consideration for the system administrators of the TUG reports and cubes team is to bring on board a system administrator from Laurier.

E. Review of Existing Reports Project (Gail)

1) Progress and outstanding issues update

TUG reports users have been mandated to review Impromptu reports for the possible migration to Cognos 8. Reports review will consist of identifying reports that are being used, not being used, changes that are needed to reports to make them more user friendly, reports that are similar and can be merged. It was suggested that reports could be made more searchable by creating metadata tags for them.

F. UW/TUG Test server migration update (Gail)

1) Migration plans for Cognos 7 test server to IBM Blade

The intention is to move the test server to the IBM blade by early January. If this does not work out, then a new server will be the option. The ultimate goal would be to have a development server, test server and a production server.

2) Update plans for Cognos 7 software to next MR release on test server

Release 7.4 MR2 has been available for some time. An upgrade for the TUG libraries is planned. If Release 7.4 MRs 7.3 is not available, the suggestion has been made to move ahead with MR2 on the test server and then the production server.

G. Training Team updates ( ALL )

Sam Gibbon and Jonathan Sutherland comprise the Waterloo team. Vera has given training to new staff at Laurier. At UG, training is given as needed.

H. Cognos Updates

1) Cognos Forum highlights, insights, etc. (Gail)

The Team reviewed Gail’s complete report. Here are some of the highlights that were noted: Firefox 2.0, Vista , IE7 are supported for the release of 7.4 MR2. Series 7.5 will be available by mid-late October 09. New in Cognos 8.4 is Report Studio Express. It is designed to be used with Powerplay cubes or other dimensionally modeled datasources. It appears to be a web interface with many of the capabilities of PowerPlay client “reporter.”

2) C8 Discovery Project (Gail, Bill, Ron)

Gail and Bill have been very grateful for being able to recreate the TUG cognos environment in a Cognos 8 version. It was noted that in order to keep up with the knowledge that was acquired further testing and mock-up in Cognos 8 will have to be maintained. Ron will inquire about extending our guest privileges on the Guelph server.

a) Report comments/feedback (review and revise)

TSR reviewed the document. Further editorials will be submitted via email. Gail and Bill’s efforts were applauded. Ron will submit the report to Allen Bell who in turn will present the report to the TUG Exec.

b) Discussion of next steps (discussion revisited)

Discussion will be revisited once feedback is received from TUG Executive.

3) WLU adoption of C8 status / update (Vera)

C8 has been approved however no money has been budgeted.

4)      UW and C8 status / update (Gail)

Gail reported that there was no movement on campus to discuss purchase of Cognos 8.

I. Next meeting

Will be tabled for early January 09