Evergreen Reports
Available Report Templates
Other Resources
Evergreen Reports
Available Report Templates
Other Resources
With the exception of transit list and cash reporting, reporting within Evergreen is quite different from many reporting modules out there. It is designed to be as flexible as possible, to allow users to gather any type of data that is stored in the ILS database, and to design their own report queries.
The flip-side of this power and flexibility is that reporting in Evergreen is a somewhat complex operation. Out of the box, Evergreen does not have any specific types of reports set up; a user or administrator must create report templates from scratch. Also, reporting within Evergreen returns exactly the information that is requested, but does not turn it in a “pretty” form. Evergreen returns the data as an Excel spreadsheet, bar or line graphs, and/or comma-delimited files. It is up to the user to use this data to create documents as desired.
To streamline day-to-day reporting tasks, Evergreen allows sharing and reuse of user-created templates for reports. For PINES, many commonly used reports have been set up by Evergreen administrators and made available to all PINES libraries.
See: Permissions
Evergreen reports are divided into three components:
Templates generically define the type of report that will be generated and what sort of information will appear in it. In a template, the columns to be displayed in the report and types of filters are defined. In other words, a template defines the kind of question that is being asked.
For example, one may wish to retrieve a count of new items added to a certain library branch in a given time interval. The template would specify that the requested data pertains to ‘creation date of copies’ and the filters are ‘by organizational unit’ and ‘within time interval’. The template would most likely not contain the specific library(ies) and date interval to be searched; these parameters would, instead, be specified by a report.
Reports are created from a template to define a specific query for information. Report creation is the step in which the user selects the options allowed by the template to gather a specific set of data. To continue the above example, one such option could be a list of libraries that could be chosen. Other options that might be defined here are the start and end date of the time interval.
Continuing with the example used above, if the same information is desired for a different library or date/relative date, a new report can be created from the template with the proper parameters. A report can be thought of as the specific question being asked; this question is derived from a template that defines the type of question being asked.
Output is the result of a report, containing the requested information – this is Evergreen’s answer to the question. The Output can be in the form of Excel spreadsheets, CSV (comma-delimited) files, or HTML. The Excel or CSV file formats allow the user to download the data and manipulate or format it with a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel or Open Office. The HTML format presents the data visually as a bar graph, table, or line graph.
To open the Reports interface, click on Reports from the staff client home page.
In the Evergreen Staff Client, the components are organized into a group of folders by type; these folders are named Templates, Reports, and Output. Subfolders are created under each of these to organize the user’s reports.
Every user has a group of these folders called “My Folders”; this group of folders is under the user’s control and is always accessible to the user. These folders reside permanently on the Evergreen server, so are accessible from any workstation.
My Folders contain the user’s folders and reports components; Shared Folders contain folders and report components shared by other users.
Both employ the same general organization with the three components stored in their respective folders.
It is generally recommended that the user create organizational subfolders and that a subfolder created for any one of the components should have a corollary subfolder of the same name under the other two components.
For example, a user may create a group of templates to gather circulation statistics. S/he can create a subfolder under “Templates” called “Circ Stats.” S/he should also create a “Circ Stats” folder under “Reports” and “Output”, and store reports and outputs created from the Circ Stats templates there.
This is optional, but is a good practice to keep related components organized.
In the reports creation process, the user’s templates are always stored in a subfolder of the user’s ‘Templates” folder; likewise, reports are always stored in a subfolder of the user’s “Reports” folder and outputs are always stored in a subfolder of the user’s “Output” folder. The location is specified at the time of creation, which will be covered below. Report components can be moved to other folders after creation, which will be covered in the Folder Management section of this document.
Depending on permissions, the user may be able to share folders within various organization levels (local branch, local system, or consortium level). A user can also see any folders that are shared with his/her organizational unit.
Shared folders can be used to disseminate useful templates so other organizations can benefit from your work. They can also be used to make specific reports and/or results available to other Staff Client users.
Viewing/Managing Folders: Folder Management
Subfolders contain a folder management interface. Clicking on the small page icon displays the subfolder contents as well as offering a management interface at the top of the display. The “Manage Folder” option allows for creation, deletion, sharing, hiding and changing the current subfolder while the “Manage Folder Contents” option gives the user options for managing the templates, reports and output in contained in the subfolder.
Components may be moved from one folder to another, as well. To do this, check the box next to the component to be moved. Then, select “Move selected template/report/output(s) to a different folder” from the dropdown menu.
PINES staff have created numerous pre-made templates that you can run without having to build your own templates or alter any settings. These staff are located under Shared Folders > Templates. In some cases, PINES staff will provide a 'path' for you to follow to run a specific template such as:
Shared Folders > Templates > terran > Help Desk > Bills > Daily Cash Report
You may also use browse through lists of existing reports. Good places to look for reports are:
You may also use the search function at the top of the screen. We recommend typing in your keywords into the Template Query box but leaving the All Fields and All Folders dropdowns as-is:
A sample list of reports will look something like this:
Once you find a report template that you wish to run, check the box to the left of it, choose 'Create a new report from selected template' at the top of the page, and click Submit. This will open a form with a few fields to fill in:
Notes on common parameters:
Notes on recurrence:
If you wish to create a recurring (repeating) report:
For example, to run a report every Monday morning on the previous week's activities:
1. Click on My Folders > Output (then your subfolder name(s)) to see the list of your reports that you have already run, that are currently running, and that you have scheduled to run in the future.
2. Pending Reports (reports which are currently running or which are scheduled to run in the future) appear in the top section, and completed reports appear in the bottom section.
3. View your completed report by checking the box next to the report, choosing 'View Report Output' at the top of the page and clicking Submit.
If you chose the default report output options, you will see a page with links to Tabular Output (HTML, viewed in the browser screen) and to Excel Output. Most people prefer to view the results in Excel because they are able to take advantage of Excel’s sorting and calculating functions to further organize data and create charts.
The one small issue with using Excel is that it does not know how to display long numbers such as barcodes properly, so you may see columns of data that say “5.07E+13” or similar. To format these numbers correctly, see: Formatting Long Numbers in Excel
If you find a template that you like, we recommend that you clone (copy) it to your own folder so that you can find it more easily next time you want to use it. (You can also modify templates during the cloning process, but that is covered in Advanced Reports.)
To clone a report template:
The report template will open in the template editor view. If you do not wish to change anything about the template, you will only need to click the Save Template button. (Changing the Template Name and Template Description will not change anything about how the report runs, so they are safe to change without understanding the template editor.)
Once the template is saved, you will be able to run it from your My Folders > Templates folder.