RE: Web management reports

["Ericsson, Paul" <PEricsson at onconcord dot com>]

Hi Alan --

No need to apologize about the "bit of a rant".  These are good points that you make, and a frustration that we share at our library.

OPAC searches
We did talk with the helpdesk and increased the size of the file to store the searches for 40 days. This give me a few days after the end of a month to get the stats done for that time period. But this is not perfect and I still end up with workarounds, as the web management report only gives daily details for the most recent 9 days, and then the last entry on the chart (that pesky 10th fetish) bundles the rest of the month. So, I am still stuck with precisely timing the day that I run the report so that I capture the stats from the 1st of the month forward. (Know what I mean?)  If only every month had the same number of days, my workaround would work easier....   

ugh.....

User functions
So far, we are only doing OPAC holds, which we did on our prior system, so everyone thinks of this as a ho-hum thing, and it is not a stat I've been asked to produce.  But when we start OPAC renewals soon, I am sure that I will be asked to provide stats on the new service.  In my preliminary planning, I've been assuming that I would address this through the "Statistic Groups" that are defined under "Logins". We recently expanded some definitions of the Stat Groups, and so far are pleased with what this layer does to enhance our stats. Up until now, we had one Stat Group for both Main and Branch buildings and Adult and Children's circ desks. That was not giving us the depth we needed. Again, I haven't worked out all the details, but this function shows promise for producing OPAC function statistics through the web management reports.

Annual Reports
>From my monthly reports downloaded from III Web management reports, I save them to Excel, and then manually cumulate these onto a separate spreadsheet for the summaries that my Library Director, Library Board, and City Manager. For sure, I am not prepared to learn vba or any other tools. As much as I'd love to get this step automated, I just don't have the time to learn and keep up the skills for developing this kinda stuff.

Millenium Statistics
Just have to tack on a final mini-rant of my own - I'm just struggling with learning this "Millenium Statistics" tool. I'm hoping with time and experience I will become more adept at it, but for now, it is a tool I find challenging to use. Other staff here refuse to learn it,  just based on the appearance of the interface. They were used to a prior system that churned out canned, basic, public library, reports. Those days seem to be gone....

Thanks for following up your rant with an enhancement request.

Paul
	___________________________________________

	Paul Ericsson
	Adult Services Supervisor / Automation Coordinator
	Concord Public Library    http://www.onconcord.com
	45 Green St.     Concord, NH 03301     603 230-3697
	pericsson at onconcord dot com
	___________________________________________
		

 



-----Original Message-----
From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org
[mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org]On Behalf Of Brown, Alan
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 11:09 AM
To: innopac at innopacusers dot org
Subject: Web management reports


Is it me or does anyone else feel that the statistics generated from web
management reports could be a lot better? Even compiling monthly circ
stats has forced me to learn vba so that my spreadsheets can import and
compare data for different branches. What I find really frustrating is
the promise that some of the options provide.

Patron searches  - I should be able to find the number of opac searches
per month/year (except the default is 10 days) I have seen some
discussion about how to change this number (option 38 INNOPAC SYSTEM
OPTIONS (OPAC options)), but has anyone come up with a reasonably
straightforward method of extracting monthly/annual figures from this?

I have recently been asked to provide information concerning the use of
the web OPAC to renew books, and place holds. Great Web Management
Reports has an option called "User Functions" where you can view this
information .......... however again it is a report on the last 10 days
activity. What is this 10 day fetish? Is there an option to change this?
Option 38 would seem obvious - or even 39, but this does not appear to
be the case.

This has turned into a bit of a rant, sorry about this, I will write
that enhancement request. In the mean time can anyone explain any method
of getting monthly/annual User Functions and Patron Search figures? I am
prepared to do some downloading and number crunching - but not every 10
days.

Any help would be appreciated

Alan Brown
Library Systems Liaison Officer
Bury Metro Libraries
Resource Services
Textile Hall
Manchester Rd
Bury BL9 0DG
0161 253 5877
http://bury.gov.uk/libraries


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