Working With Prompts - Analytics Overview Module

This is the second section of the Analytics module to the Alma Overviews course. The video is at the top of the page, followed by the script.

In this video, you'll review:

Next, let’s explore other types of report output and prompt options by looking at a different report: the Acquisitions ACQ – Expenditure Transactions (Purchases) – Flexible input report. Using the prompts for this report, you can look at expenditures by bibliographic characteristics, by library, by fund, by date, and many other criteria.

Multiple Values

For example, a selector might want to look at what has been spent so far in FY19 for materials in either Arabic or Persian.

1. Open the prompt for MARC Language Code
2. Scroll down to the language code for Arabic, ara, tick the tickybox next to it, and then we want per for Persian.
3. Scroll all the way to the bottom and...
   1. You might notice that the list only goes to the J’s. For very long lists of options, you can click on More/Search area to see a longer list with a complete set of options.
   2. Click More again to see the full list.
   3. Scroll down until you find per.
   4. We can add it using the right arrow key.
4. Click OK when done.

Now that our language codes are set, we will go back and enter the TUB for Law, 265, and the current Budget Year, 2019.

Date Prompts

This report also has Date prompts. We can also limit to materials purchased during a specific time period. The easiest way to limit by date is to click on the calendar icon and select the month, day, and year.

To look for materials purchased in December 2018:

1. Look at the prompt for Transaction Date Between DATE and DATE
2. Click the first calendar icon to choose a start date
3. Choose the previous month from the month drop down list
4. Change the calendar year if necessary
5. Click on the 1st day in the calendar
6. Don’t change the time.
7. Click OK

Now, click the second calendar icon and go through the same steps to choose the end date of the month, December, 2018, on the 31st.

At this point, we’ve entered prompts for language code, TUB, budget year, and a range for purchase dates. With all of my prompts entered, I click on OK and the results are returned that meet my criteria. There is a list of titles, and you can scroll through and see what’s been purchased.

Searching for Prompt Values

Let’s go back to the beginning to see how we can search for prompt values, rather than scrolling through long lists. Close my current report and go back to Acquisitions Expenditures Transactions to get back to the prompts page.

1. Click on the POL Vendor Code
2. Select Search to open a box where I can search for values.
3. In the dialog box, you can either
   1. Use the search box at the top to find the text you’re looking for.
      
      1. In this case, since vendor codes are in all caps, you can type in BLACK or BLACKWELL and leave the box next to Match Case checked. For other searches, you might want to turn Match Case off.
      2. You could also scroll through the list and see where that gets me, but we happen to know that there are thousands of vendors, so we’ll go ahead with search.
      3. Click on Search, and it finds a number of things, including the Blackwell vendor codes.
   2. Use the list to scroll through and find the terms you’re looking for.
      1. [Not spoken: Click on the binoculars icon to hide the search box and give you more space to work.]
      2. Alma will bring up a set number of terms into this larger box to scroll through and choose from. If you need to see more, click on More at the bottom.
      3. Highlight more than one code by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on the options you want to choose. So we can choose all of Blackwell by holding and clicking.
      4. Use the single right-facing arrow to add them to your list of prompts.
   3. You can also select the entire range using the double right-facing arrows.
   4. Once selected, individual terms can also be removed individually or completely using the left-facing arrows.

Input a List of Identifiers Obtained from a Search

Another way to use prompts is by entering a set of identifiers obtained in an Alma search, such as MMSIDs or barcodes. Let’s try this out by looking for a small list of physical item records.

1. From the persistent search bar choose Physical Items as your search type
2. Choose Keywords as the criteria
3. Type in banana boat as the search terms
4. Click Search. We get 38 results.
5. Once the results are displayed, click on the Export icon, and I can now see that I get two options:
   1. If you see a choice between Excel (current view) and Excel (all fields), choose the “all fields” option, to make sure that MMSIDs are included in the file.
6. Open the downloaded Excel spreadsheet after export completes. The search results export includes MMSIDs (way over here on the right), which you can copy and paste into an Analytics prompt.

With the MMSIDs copied, open the report titled RES-Physical titles with bibliographic, holdings details - Flexible input.

1. Open the MMSID prompt
2. Click on the down arrow, and without waiting for the prompt values to populate, select Search. The Select Values window opens.
3. This time we will provide our own selected values.
   1. Click on the pencil icon to edit
   2. Place your cursor in the Edit box
   3. Paste in the list of MMSIDs from our Excel file
   4. Click OK to save the list.
4. Now we click OK to get a report of the bibliographic records, with more details than we were able to obtain from the Alma search results list.

The same approach can be used for Barcodes, Order numbers, Aleph record numbers, and other types of unique identifiers. The maximum number of values you can input this way will vary depending on the criteria you choose. For barcodes, the maximum is 9,999. For other identifiers, there doesn't seem to be a consistent limit.

Different reports will have prompts related to the data that they’re reporting on. Before running any report for the first time, review all the prompts for it and see how you can customize the output to be precisely what you need it to be.