BCA - Customizing Reports
About
This article and video tutorial (currently in draft) cover customizing report grids to fit your library's needs. You can bookmark the BCA login page for easy access later. If you don't know your BCA login, please open a help desk ticket.
Adding and Removing Attributes
To begin customizing a report, first you must select a report and answer any relevant prompts. In this example, the report, "Circulation Statistics - MONTHLY" from the Shared Reports > Circulation Statistics folder, includes a prompt for Station Library. For more information about answering prompts, please refer to the article BCA - Single-Prompt Reports or BCA - Multi-Prompt Reports.
After clicking Run Report at the bottom of the prompt page, you will be presented with the default grid. In this case, the monthly circulation statistics report includes attributes for the home location, month, and year and a metric that counts the number of circulations. However, in the Report Objects pane you can see several attributes available to add to the grid.
If the Report Objects pane is not visible, you can display it by going to the Tools menu and selecting Report Objects.
To add a report object to the grid, you can double click it in the Report Objects pane to add it to the last position. Alternatively, you can drag it from the Report Objects pane to the desired position. A yellow line will appear on the grid to demonstrate where the attribute will be inserted.
Repeat this process until all desired elements are visible on the grid. As you can see in the following screenshot, the grid now includes icat1, icat2, and home location. To remove an undesired field such as home location, right click it's heading and select Remove from Grid.
Rearranging the Grid
In addition to adding and removing items from the grid, you can rearrange the order in which the elements appear. The easiest way to rearrange is to grab and drag elements by clicking on the heading. A yellow line will appear demonstrating where the item will be inserted.
Alternatively, you can reposition your data using pivot buttons. Pivot buttons can be used to:
- Move a field to the columns;
- Shift a field right, left, up, or down;
- Page by a field;
- Remove a field from the grid.
Hovering over a pivot button will reveal a tool tip that describes the button's purpose. All the tasks that can be completed with pivot buttons can also be achieved by dragging or right clicking.
As demonstrated in the screenshot below, fields can be presented as either rows or columns. You can change the orientation by dragging the field or using the Move to Columns pivot button. In this example, icat2 was reoriented as a column.
To convert all rows into columns, you can use the Swap Rows and Columns tool on the Data tool bar. To convert them back to the original state, click the button again.
Sorting Data
Users also have the option to sort their data using either the Sort Buttons (accessible via the Tools menu) or by right clicking a field heading and selecting Sort or Sort Grid. Sort allows you to sort the entire grid in either ascending or descending order by the selected field.
Sort Grid, also known as Advanced Sort, allows the user to sort the grid in ascending or descending order based on a combination of multiple fields.
You can read more about Sort and Advanced Sort in BCA - Navigating Reports.
Adding Filters and Conditions
Sometimes you might want to focus on particular data. For example, you might want to examine circulation statistics for adult materials in all formats. This can be accomplished using a View Filter. To add a View Filter, you can right click the field heading and select Filter On. Alternatively, you can select Add View Filter Condition from the Data menu.
If you select Add View Filter Condition from the Data menu, you will be prompted to select the field upon which you wish to filter. All fields in Report Objects are eligible. In this case, we will filter on icat2.
Upon selecting the filter field, you can build the filter based on either a selection or a qualification. If you are choosing a finite list of elements such as one or more item cat policies, use Select. You can select elements by double clicking or using the arrows. You can also choose whether the selected elements should be "in list" (included) or "not in list' (excluded).
Once you have selected your elements and whether to include or exclude them, click Apply. Your filter will automatically apply the changes to your grid. To remove the filter, click the X beside it in the View Filter pane. If you have multiple view filters and you want to remove them all, you can click Clear All.
If you would like to limit your report based on a field that has many possible entries such as call number, you can use a qualification view filter. Apply your filter using the same steps as above but choose Qualify instead of Select. For example, to limit your report to call numbers from a particular section of your collection, choose the qualification "Begins with" and enter the call number prefix or the beginning digits, as appropriate.
To hone in on the adult 700s section, this report uses "Begins with 7". Click apply to filter the data. To remove the filter, use the X or Clear All.
Showing and Editing Totals
By default, many reports include totals. You can turn off or edit total display to suit your needs. To access Show Totals, use the Data menu.
To fine-tune the total display, use the Edit Totals tool from the Data menu.
You can use Edit Totals to define whether to display subtotals, totals for rows and columns, and more. In the example below, the report is configured to display totals for both rows and columns.
Renaming Fields
If you're sending the report to a party not familiar with BCA terminology, it can sometimes be helpful to rename fields to make them easier to understand. To rename a field, right click its heading and select Rename.
In this example, icat 1 was renamed to Item Format.
Saving Customizations
After applying all your customizations, you will want to save the report as a personal view if you intend to use it again in the future. Creating a personal view will save the format and customizations while allowing the data to update. You can read more about creating and updating a personal view in BCA - Saving Reports.
You can also create an email subscription that will preserve your customizations. Please read about subscriptions in BCA - Subscribing to a Report Using Email.
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