NFIRS EDW Training Video Complete textof Segment 2 - DRAFT
NFIRS Data Warehouse Application and Workflow: Scheduling Features
Our objective with this video series is to introduceyou to the NFIRS Data Warehouse reports and the Business Objects application that serves as its interface.In the first training video, we reviewed the interface and the general workflow including the basics of locating reports and saving the output. For a written guide of that information including steps for use, refer to the NFIRS Data Warehouse Quick Start User Guides.
In this segment, we’ll take a closer look at thescheduling featuresthat offer handy report format and delivery options;features that arenot available in the existing NFIRS Summary Output Reports Tool, or SORT.
In Business Objects, there are two ways to run a Standard Report: the first is to use the “View” action,” which runs the query while you wait. Now, if the report is on a large data set or the query is complex and you use the View action, your session could time out before the report completes; so the betterway to run a report is to scheduleit. Scheduling allows you to close the program, retrieve the report later, and also allows some other options up front.
When using the NFIRS Data Warehouse, the USFA recommends schedulingall reports for better performance and convenient report retrieval. The only exception to this rule will be when you want to use some special Business Objects features that we’ll explain in a future video.
So let’s take a look first at the quickest way to schedule – that is, opening the least amount of Scheduling options and accepting default settingsto save time and clicks of the mouse. Then, we’ll walk through otherscheduling options.
For the demo, I’ve already logged in to the NFIRS DW and we will start at selecting a report to run.
In the Incidents folder, let’s select the Incident Counts report and right click on it. Select Schedule. The Schedule window will open, and you will see the options in the left sidebar. Now there’s only two options that you’ll need to change or make selections in, and those two are the Prompts, and the Destinations. Theother options either default to a desirable condition, or they cannot be modified by NFIRS users. So,the quickest way to schedule a report is to accept the default nameand click on the Promptsoption, click on Modify, and fill out the parameters for the report.
The first training video gave a demo of entering prompt values, and detailed stepsare available in the Quick Start User Guides.
What you need to remember in terms of scheduling, is after you select all the prompts, scroll down and click the Apply button.Do not click Schedule yet. Instead, scroll up. Take a quick look to be sure that the prompts are entered as Iintended them to be entered and I didn’t make any typos. And then I’ll click Destinations.
You’ll use the Destinations option to choose the delivery method for the completed report. Please note that for the NFIRS DW, you cannot use the Default Enterprise Location, or the FTP Server, or File System options. You will either choose the BI Inbox (Business Intelligence Inbox) or the Email. And let’s save the email for later. I would strongly suggest you get used to seeing the size of some of these reports,and decide the best format for them, before you start using email to deliver your reports.
So let’s choose the Business Intelligence Inboxas our destination,uncheck the “Keep an instance in history,”and the easiest way to select your account - which you will need to do – is put the name of your NFIRS Data Warehouse account in the Find Title field, and use the Find icon. Select your account nameand then move it to the right under Selected Recipients. In the bottom right, click the Schedule button, and the History window will open. There’s really nothing you need to do here. You’ll see the status of your report, and depending on how many reports are in queue, you’ll see it change from Pending to Running, and then it will run, and eventually it will go to Success. You can just close this History window by using the X in the upper right hand corner, and you’ll be returned to the main screen.
You’ll find your completed report on the Home tab and just as a reminder let’s take a look: we’ll click the Home tab, and this is the Business Intelligence Inbox, My Inbox, here, and this is the completed report. It is a link;you click on it, and it will open and show you the report. This is the Web Intelligence format for the report. And again, just as a reminder, to export this report, you will use this icon and one of the selections PDF, Excel, CSV, or txt; and that will vary depending on the report you are running.
That’s the quickest way to schedule a report: accept the default “Instance title;” or report name; make the necessary entries in the Prompts to determine the parameters for the report data;and in Destinations,chooseBI Inbox and the Web Intelligence format. After you review the completed report, you can “export”it if you wish to keep it.
Give yourself a little time to get accustomed to making the Prompt entries and selecting your account in Destinations. The Quick Start Guides contain detailed steps on entering dates, refreshing the pick lists, and searching for individual FDIDs. Get in the habit of checking the prompts details and clicking the Apply button before choosing the next scheduling option.
Now let’s look at a couple more scheduling features that will enhance your use of the NFIRS Data Warehouse reports.
When the Scheduling window opens, the first option in the list isInstance Title and it will be highlighted. This is the same as your report title, and you can edit it to be anything you want. The change that you make will show up in the completed report title area and it will also be in the completed report’s link in the Business Intelligence Inbox. This is a really handy feature. If you are running a series of reports, say, for each month or by each county, you can add that detail to the instance title and it will show up and you can distinguish each link and each report from one another very easily.
The next option is Recurrence. For most reports that you run, you don’t need to even open the Recurrence because you are just going to place them on the server in queue, so the default selection of Now is adequate. There is another feature though that you might consider, and that is run the report “Once.” Here you can select a specific date and time that the report will be generated.
Pleasedo not selectHourly, Daily, Weekly or Monthly.Your Inbox will become cluttered quickly and it takes up space on the server which affects performanceadversely. Really your best option is “Now,”which is the default, and therefore you don’t even need to open the Recurrence option at all.
If you have any questionsabout the options in there, please give us a call at the NFIRS Support Center.
The next option in the list is Prompts, and we already talked about that because for each report that you schedule, you must modify the Prompts or parameters.
As you gain experience with the NFIRS DW reports, you’ll find yourself using the Format selections more and more. The default selection is Web Intelligence, and that’s a good choice as you get used to the reports because you can always export the report in a PDF or Excel format later on after viewing it. The other two selections, CSV and plain text, will be available also.
There will be a few reports that you’ll want to select Microsoft Excel up front if you know you want that format; reports such as the Bulk Export, which can contain a lot of rows, is better specified right up front when you schedule than to try to export it with the Excel row limitation later on after viewing it Web Intelligence.
If you know you’re going to use email to deliver the report, then go ahead and schedule the report with the format for Adobe Acrobat. It will be able to select the report as an attachment and email it.
The next three options in the list, Caching, Events, and Scheduling Server Group, do not apply to NFIRS, so you will never have to open or use those options.
So that brings us to Destinations. You’ll always have to choose a selection in Destinations. You must not let it go to the Default Enterprise location, or you won’t be able to retrieve it. You must select either BI Inbox or Email. In the first part of this demo, we reviewed the BI Inbox destination. The other two selections in this list,FTP Server and File System, likewise do not apply to NFIRS, so you would never make those selections as a destination.
Let’s take a quick look at the email option. Uncheck “Keep an instance in the history.”In the “From” field, enter your email address. Usethe same email address as the one associated your NFIRS Data warehouse account. For the “To” field, enter the email address of the person you wish to send the report to; enter a subject, enter a message as desired, and depending on your screen resolution, you may needto scroll down to see the next few checkboxes.
Leave the Add Attachment check box checked, and check the radio button for Use Specific Name.Use the Add Placeholder drop down box to the right to select Title and just accept the default name the way it is and don’t modify it. This will ensure that the title that you specified for the Instance or the report will display.
The final step is to click the Schedule button over at the right. The History window will open, and you can track the progress of your report. Because you’ve scheduled the report, you’ll probably just close your application and return for the report later, or you’ll go back to the Standard Reports folder, choose another report, and schedule it to run.
As you can see, the Business Objects application has much to offer when running the 75 plus Standard Reports. You can adjust the report titles; schedule a report to run at a specific date and time; choose a format in advance, and email the completed report as an attachment to specific recipients - and copy your own email account.
We suggest you run a few reports using the Scheduling defaults to acquire the workflow,and learn the general output size and layout of the Standard Reportsnew to you. Refer to the Quick Start Guides for step by step instructions and info on more detailed features. We want to help you develop a consistent workflow, which in turn, will help us if you have questions about your NFIRS Data Warehouse reports. Then, watch the third video in our series on the types of reports available in the NFIRS Data Warehouse, so you gain an understanding of the various ways they “count” and presentdata for summary and analysis.
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