This document outlines the methods and processes used to get data and reports from the Colleague database.
At Carleton, we use SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) as our primary reporting tool for Colleague. When you hear the term 'SSRS', you can think of it as a system used to extract data in various ways. When you go into SSRS, you'll see a collection of reports and spreadsheets that are pertinent to your position in the college.
We use the SSRS tool 'Report Builder' to write reports that you can run. We design the reports to do a lot of the data massaging for you, so that you'll just need to enter the parameters and run the report. These reports can have all sorts of parameters (e.g. you can be prompted for a date) and the reports also have various output methods (printed to the screen, PDF, Excel, etc). All Report Builder reports run off of the Colleague ODS, which is not the 'live' Colleague database. The ODS is built every night from Colleague data - so when you run a report, please just know that it is pulling from yesterday's data in Colleague. We do this to simplify reporting and to make it faster.
We also build template spreadsheets for you in SSRS, if you prefer to work in Excel for certain projects. Whenever you need a spreadsheet, you should pull up a template, make your modifications, and save it under a different name. We try to simplify the underlying Colleague data for you in the spreadsheets, while still leaving you lots of opportunity to extract a wide variety of data. We have documentation in this wiki specific to each template, so please review that prior to creating a new spreadsheet.
To get into SSRS, pull up Internet Explorer (don't use Mozilla Firefox) and go to collreports.ads.carleton.edu\Reports. You'll see a screen that look something like this:
Within each office, we've identified specific subject areas to help organize the reporting and security. If we take a quick peek at the 'Accounts Payable' folder, we see this:
In here, you can see the two types of reports.
SSRS Report Builder: Example: 'Draft Inactive Vendor Report'
Reports of this type are SSRS Report Builder reports. You can run them by double-clicking on them. They will open in an SSRS screen. If there are parameters in the report, you will see prompts.
Excel template: Example: 'Template - Check spreadsheet.xlsx'
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