Power BI Grade Reports (Two in Production)

Owned by Richard Goerwitz
Last updated: May 18, 2020
2 min read

Grade Reports

Power-BI-based grade reports were deployed in April of 2017 as a replacement for printed reports previously produced by the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment.  Another grade report, this one more like an SSRS report, was set up in 2020.

They are accessed generally at http://app.powerbi.com/ and the first one (the 2017 grade report) specifically at:  http://go.carleton.edu/GradeSummary  The paginated historical grade report is only available at the longer URL:  https://app.powerbi.com/groups/f61736fd-78a2-4aae-aa5b-2bc61dcca9ea/reports/3acad731-6b0e-45a2-b23f-2f9ff1bbb5b6?ctid=236c6b92-f9e9-4b8a-93c8-9bad090ad9c5

All faculty can access grade reports.

The 2017 grade report goes against the data warehouse, specifically from the Faculty Grades multidimensional cube on dwcubes.ads.carleton.edu\production.  In order to get useful data from the Faculty Grades mdx cube, one must be a faculty member at Carleton and have actually entered grades into Colleague.  There is row-level security built into the back-end database.

The 2020 detail grade report is based on a tabular cube on dwtab.ads.carleton.edu\production, AcademicRecords-New.  It also has row-level security built into the back-end database.

The 2017 report shows all grades (including re-takes) given by the faculty member viewing the report, as well as aggregate grades for his/her most recent academic department (if providing this doesn't reveal other people's grades), and also aggregate institutional grades.  The 2020 report is more of a list, and it replaces a previous report done with WebAdvisor.

Platform

Grade reports are delivered using Microsoft Power BI, a cloud-based analytics platform available generally as part of Office 365.  Power BI cloud talks with our local MDX and tabular SSAS servers through a gateway (actually two gateways, a master and slave).  The gateway sits on SQLServer1-2016 and DWSQL-2016.

If reports need to be edited or fixed, this is done with Power BI desktop (free app).  The source code for the reports is in directories within \\protected.ads.carleton.edu\protected\Departments\ITS\ITS-Only\PowerBI-Projects.

Locations Available

Grade reports are available from any major browser on any major internet-connected platform (Windows, OS/X, Android, etc.).  There is also an IOS and Android Power BI app.

Where can I get help?

Submit requests for help to the help desk, and tag the requests as data warehouse requests.

Note that if a faculty member has trouble getting grade reports, the problem may be

  • Lack of internet connectivity
  • Current non-Faculty status (i.e., not included in AD Faculty group)
  • No grades available (e.g., new faculty member)
  • Unable to authenticate using Carleton's SAML provider (same issues as other logins - CHECK THIS FIRST)
  • Not licensed for Power BI (Helpdesk can't make this determination; assign to Richard Goerwitz or Les Lacroix and have them update FIM groups)
  • /wiki/spaces/itskb/pages/26119351 is down on /wiki/spaces/itskb/pages/26139125 or /wiki/spaces/itskb/pages/26119351 (Helpdesk can't make this determination; assign to Richard Goerwitz or Neal Weeg)
  • Gateway to data warehouse on SQLServer1-2016.ads.carleton.edu is down (Helpdesk can't make this determination; assign to Richard Goerwitz or Rob Alaima, and they can bounce the server or restart just the Power BI gateway)

Richard Goerwitz
Created:  2017-04-25