TABLE OF CONTENTS

• What are Prompts?
• Types of Prompts 
• Report Example

What are Prompts?

Reports in Analytics are templates with prompts. The prompts are a way to filter the report’s results before you run the report.  (You can also filter the results of your report after you run it by creating a view filter. For instructions on how to do this, see the Creating a View Filter in Analytics technote).

One thing you want to remember about prompts is that you do not have to make selections for all prompts-only those policies you want to limit. If you do not make any selections for a prompt, all available elements (for that policy) will be included in the report’s results. For example, for this Item Library Code elemental prompt, if you do not select any library codes (move the codes from the “Available” to “Selected” pane), all item libraries will be included in the report’s results.

Because I did not make any selections in the prompt below (left the "Selected" window blank) all item libraries will be included in the report's results:

Tip: You can jump to certain prompts by using the index. Just click on the prompt you want to use:

Types of Prompts 

There are four type prompts in Analytics: Elemental, Qualification, Value, and Object.

Elemental: This prompt provides a list of options you can choose from. The example below shows an elemental prompt for Item Library Code.

Qualification: Instead of selecting from a list of elements, for a qualification prompt you select a certain operator or condition (e.g., “Greater than”, “Between”, “Less than or equal to”) and a certain value of an attribute to include in the report. This type of prompt is used mainly for number ranges, such as date and call number ranges.

For example, for the Shelflist/Weeding List (Qualification Prompts) report (Shared Reports > Item-bibliographic > Item Lists > Weeding List/Shelflist Reports), you are prompted to select a certain date or date range for the second prompt Item Created Date. 

If you want to exclude items created after January 1, 2018 from the report’s results, you would select, for Item Created Date, “Less than or equal to” December, 31, 2017 or “Less than” January 1, 2018.

You can also create two conditional statements for a date range. To select Fiscal Year July-June 2018 for a circulation report, you have three options.

Use two conditional statements:

• “Greater than or equal to” 7/1/2017 and “Less than or equal to” 6/30/2018
• “Greater than” 6/31/2017” and “Less than” 7/1/2018 

Or one conditional statement using the operator “Between”:

• Between “7/1/2017; 6/30/2018”.

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In order to add a condition or operator, either move the conditional statement template from the “Available” pane to the “Selected” pane, or click on the filter (funnel) icon. To change the operator, click on the default operator “Equals” and select a new operator from the drop-down menu. To enter a value, click on “Value”. You can either enter the date in this format “7/1/2017” or use the calendar gadget:

*For more information about using operators in Analytics, visit Microstrategy’s help page on operators: https://doc-archives.microstrategy.com/producthelp/10.10/FunctionsRef/Content/FuncRef/Operators.htm

Value: With value prompts, the condition or operator (“Greater than or equal to”, “Less than or equal to”, etc.) has already been selected. Just a value needs to be entered. In the example below, the operator is “Less than or equal”.

I can either use the calendar gadget to select the date or enter the date manually in the field using this format “1/4/2020’.

Object: Object prompts allow you to select which objects you want to include in the report. With object prompts, you cannot filter the selected policies (Item Type, Home Location, User Profile, etc.) on the prompt page. However, you can always filter a policy after you run the report by creating a view filter.

The example below is from the Circulation (Select report objects) report (Shared Reports > Circulation Statistics > FY JUL-JUN). Looking at the report’s description, only Station Library and the metric (number of circ transactions) are included in the report. 

To add more objects, I need to use the prompts. Prompt 1 includes item and user policies. I want to include User Profile and Item Category 2 in the reports results. (There are also elemental prompts and qualification prompts I can use to further limit my results for this report) For two of the elemental prompts, I selected Station Library ‘BHN’ and Fiscal Year ‘2019’).

Report Example

To further demonstrate how to use prompts, I am going to use the Shelflist/Weeding List (Value Prompts) report as an example (Shared Reports > Item-Bibliographic > Item Lists >Weeding List/Shelflist Reports). I am creating a shelflist of items with the following criteria:

• Campbell County Library System
• Juvenile nonfiction books 
• Dewey range 600s 
• Exclude discards from report’s results.
• Include only items that have not checked out in the last five years.
• Publication date is 5 years ago or older.
• Exclude items that have been added to the collection since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2020 (7/1/2019).

The Shelflist/Weeding List (Value Prompts) report has 18 prompts. However, I do not need to make selections for all prompts-only those I wish to filter the selections.

1. Prompt 1 is an elemental prompt for Item Library Code. I want the entire Campbell County Library System. Therefore, I will select CAMP and CAMP-WRIG. I can select library codes by either double-clicking on the code or selecting the code and clicking the “Add” icon.

   

2. Prompt 2 is an elemental prompt for Item Collection. Item Collection is the Analytics term for “Item Home Location”. I do not want to limit the results of this report to certain item collections. Therefore, I will leave the “Selected” pane blank.

   

3. Prompt 3 is an elemental prompt for Item Status. Item Status is the Analytics term for “Item Current Location”. I want to exclude discards from my report. Discarded items have a current location of DISCARD. To exclude discards, first, I will move all selections from the “Available” pane to “Selected” pane by clicking this icon.

   

   Next, I will move DISCARD back to the “Available” pane by double-clicking on it.

   Note: This same filter can be created by using a view filter instead.

4. Prompt 4 is for Item Last Checkout Date. This is a value prompt with a condition of “Less than or equal to”. I want items that have not checked out in the last 5 years. So, I will enter today’s date 2/27/2020 minus 5 years, which is 2/27/2015.

   
   

5. Prompt 5 is a value prompt for Catalog Publication Year, which I want to limit. However, the condition is “Greater than or equal to”, and, unlike qualification prompts, I cannot select my own condition. I want items that are 5 years or older; therefore, I will skip this prompt.

   
   

6. Prompt 6 is also a value prompt for Catalog Publication Year. This prompt has the condition I need: “Less than or equal to”.  I want items that have a publication date of 5 years or older. So, I will enter today’s date 2/27/2020 minus 5 years, which is 2/27/2015.

   
   

7. Prompt 7 is a value prompt for Item Legacy Total Charges. Item Legacy Total Charges is the total number of charges (Checkouts, Renewals) since the item was created. I do not want to limit this, so I will leave this prompt blank. 

   
   

8. Prompt 8 is a value prompt for Item Created Date. I want to exclude items that have been added to the collection since the beginning of FY July-June 2020 (7/1/2019). Because the condition is “Less than or equal to”, I am going to enter 6/30/2019.

   
   

9. Prompt 9 is a value prompt for Item Last Activity Date. I am only interested in checkouts and renewals; therefore, I will leave this prompt blank.

   Note: Here are the wizards that update an item’s last activity date:
   
   

   • Discharging Bookdrop Wizard
   • CheckOut Wizard
   • Discharging Wizard
   • Mark Item Lost Wizard
   • Mark Item Missing Wizard
   • Mark Item Used Wizard
   • Place Hold Wizard: The last activity date only applies to Copy level holds.
   • Receive Transit Wizard
   • Remove Item Hold Wizard
   • Remove User Hold Wizard
   • Renew Reserve Wizard
   • Renew Item Wizard
   • Renew User Wizard

10.  Prompt 10 is a value prompt used to create a call number range. The condition for this prompt is “Greater than equal to”. Therefore, this is start of my call number range. *Note: Analytics does not ignore prefixes; therefore, if your Dewey call number has a prefix, the prefix must be included. Campbell County uses the prefix “J” for juvenile nonfiction items. Therefore, for this prompt, I will enter “J 600” Analytics is both case and space sensitive, so I must be sure the “J” is in uppercase and there are no extra spaces before or after “J”.
    
    
    *Note: Because Analytics is space sensitive, if you have any extra spaces before, after, or in your call numbers on the item record, those items will not be included in the report’s results.

11.  Prompt 11 is also a value prompt used to create a call number range. The condition for this prompt is “Less than”. This is for the end of my call number range. Therefore, for this prompt, I would enter “J 700”.

12. Prompt 12 is an elemental prompt for Item Category 1. I do not need to exclude the report’s results by Item Category 1 policies. I will leave this prompt blank.

13. Prompt 13 is an elemental prompt for Item Category 2. I want to limit the report to juvenile items. This library system identifies juvenile items by Item Category 2 policy JUVENILE. Therefore, I will make this selection for this prompt.

14. Prompt 14 is an elemental prompt for Item Category 3. I do not need to exclude the report’s results by Item Category 3 policies. I will leave this prompt blank.
    

15. Prompt 15 is an elemental prompt for Item Category 4. I do not need to exclude the report’s results by Item Category 4 policies. I will leave this prompt blank.

16. Prompt 16 is an elemental prompt for Item Category 5. I do not need to exclude the report’s results by Item Category 5 policies. I will leave this prompt blank.

17. Prompt 17 is an elemental prompt for Item Type. Because I want to limit my results to books, I will select item type policies used for juvenile books: JUVBOOK and JUVPPK.

18. Prompt 18 is a call number value prompt like prompts 10 and 11. I do not need to use this prompt because I covered the call number range with prompts 10 and 11. I will leave this prompt blank.
    
    Note: Do not use the prompt “Item Call Number Begins With” with either the “Item Call Number Greater than or equal to” or “Item Call Number Less than” prompt. For example, to cover the “J 600s”, do not do this:
    
    
    
    
    Instead, for the call number range J 600s. Enter the range as shown below:
    
    
    An example of when you might use the “Item Call Number Begins With” prompt is a case in which the only identifier for a collection is a call number prefix. For example, maybe the only way to capture magazines is a call number that begins with “MAGAZINE”. In other words, magazines share the same item policies (Item Home Location, Item Type, Item Category 1, etc.) as other formats, so the only way I can select just magazines is to use a call number prompt. For this example, I would enter this:
    
    Note: When running reports in Analytics, it is always better to use item policies (home location, item type, item categories) to identify a certain collection rather than a call number prefix. The reason is that Analytics (as mentioned above) is case and space sensitive. Therefore, items with misentered call numbers (extra spaces, wrong case) will be excluded from your report’s results.

     

    
    Now, that I have put in my prompt answers. I can run the report by clicking the “Run Report” button on the bottom left-hand part of the screen:
    
    When you have your reports results, there may be extra columns in the grid you do not need. You can remove them by clicking on the “X” icon under the column header.
    
    
    Or by clicking or dragging the column back to the Report Objects window.
    
    
    Now, that I have removed Item Shelving ID from the grid. I can export and save my template. Below I provide brief instructions on how to this. For more information about saving and exporting reports, see the Analytics Training Guide for WYLD Libraries. This training guide is password-protected. Contact the WYLD Office for the username and password.

Exporting and Saving the Report

1. To export this report to Excel, click here  to access the Report Home drop-down menu.
2. Go down to “Export”. I do not want to export the formatting, so I will choose “Excel with plain text”.

To save the report in the My Reports folder, on the Report Home drop-down menu, select “Save As” I made the following selections under “Advanced Options”, so my current prompt answers are saved.