1. Ad Hoc Reports Best practices, Full Text Search, Exception Reporting and Using for Data Imports
Hello, and welcome to the “Ad Hoc Reporting - Best Practices, Full Text Search, Exception Reporting and Using for Data Imports” session. My name is Nicole Farmer, and I’ve been a Solution Specialist at Digital Measures for just over five years. I personally think that Ad Hoc Reports is one of the most under-utilized features of Activity Insight, so I hope today’s session will help make it more useful to you as you work with your data and administer Activity Insight.
Nicole Farmer
Digital Measures
Welcome

2. Agenda Overview of the utility Best Practices Full Text Search
Exception Reporting
Data Imports
I plan to cover the following topics in this session:
I’ll give an overview of the feature, walking through each step and its options and clarifying how the option changes the output of the report
I’ll walk through a couple of best practices in using Ad Hoc Reports
I’ll cover Full Text Search and how to format your queries to get the results you expect
I’ll walk through using Excel features and functions to build Exception Reports off of ad hoc data.
Many of you may have built exception reports as custom reports, but using Ad Hoc reports lets you dynamically change what you are checking for, which may better align with your use or need for exception reports as a data quality/review tool.
And finally, I’ll cover using Ad Hoc reports as the basis for data import files.
Given the new CSV Imports feature, which enables you to instantly import some of your files, this use of Ad Hoc Reports can be even more beneficial for your users. I’ll cover what’s important to keep, and what to remove when using ad hoc results to update data.

3. Overview of Ad Hoc Reports
New Feature! User Attributes
First, Middle and Last Name columns
as a separate column
Secondary identifiers
Index values (most recent…)
College
Department
So – on to our Overview of ad hoc reports.
All users with Work Requests should have received an announcement on Friday letting you know about some changes we’ve made to Ad Hoc Reports. We have heard a lot of support for enabling you to consolidate ad hoc files across screens. We’ve taken the most cited use cases and added user attributes and the option to include User Index values to your ad hoc report output.
This changes the “Select the Data to Include” pop-up, as well as the result of the file format options a bit. We’ll cover those in more detail when we get to those steps.

4. Overview of Ad Hoc Reports
Step 1: Select the Instrument to use.
Step 2: Select the date range to use.
All Dates
Each step when running ad hoc reports either changes the data that gets pulled into the report, or how that data is displayed.
Step 1: Select the Instrument to use. This step, for most of you, will be a single instrument and you won’t have the option to change this selection. For those of you with access to multiple instruments, you will want to make sure you are querying the right database, and click “select instrument” after you’ve made your choice.
Step 2: Select the Date Range to use. Activity Insight uses record start and end dates to determine which records are eligible for each ad hoc and custom report run. Ad hoc, by default, will include only those records whose Record Start and End dates overlap the date range selected. Ad Hoc reports will also include Undated records to ensure that these records are not lost or missed as part of your queries.
Of note, this date range defaults to Jan – Dec of the current calendar year. You are able to set custom default dates if you find yourself constantly needing to run these reports by your academic year, or fiscal year. If you do put custom dates in place for Ad Hoc, they will no longer update dynamically, so you will need to let us know via Work Request when you’re ready for us to roll ahead to the next year’s date range.

5. Overview of Ad Hoc Reports
Step 3: Select the data to include.
Include the most recent…
Common Items
Restricted Items
Step 3: Select the data to include. This pop-up is where you see the effects of our recent enhancement. In general, this pop-up controls the output of your report – what you see in your report results. Understanding the customizations in place for your instrument will help you navigate this pop-up most efficiently, as you will know which selections you need to make to get the data you need in your output.
This is the “Select the data to include” pop-up from one of our demo instruments. You can see that by default, all checkboxes are selected.
The “include the most recent…” list will include all indexed fields in your instance of Activity Insight. If you are wondering which fields you have indexed, you can see them in the “Select whose data to include” pop-up, or in Users and Security when you create a new user account. They are also included in the Download All Users file available from Users and Security.
In the case of this demo instrument, only my College/School and Department fields are indexed, and appear here. Leaving these both selected will ensure that these index values are visible in my report output for each user, and remove the need for me to grab that data from Yearly Data or the Download All Users file and merge it into the report results I want to review.

6. Overview of Ad Hoc Reports
Common Items and Restricted Items
Looking more closely at this pop-up, if I expand the “Common Items” menu, I see an expand/collapse for each Screen within Activity Insight which is shared or used by all colleges. Expanding each of these screens will give me a list of all common or shared fields which I can select or exclude from my report results.
If a screen contains a DSA (Dynamic Sub-Answer), that “field” can be expanded and specific fields from within the DSA can be included or excluded from your report output as well.
After the Common Items, you will get an expand/collapse for each value that controls which screens and fields display. In most cases, this means you’ll have one expand/collapse for each college within your University, as long as each college has put in place college customizations (either restricting a screen or field from that college, or adding a screen field just for that college).
If you also have a Journals Instrument, you will see an expand/collapse for each Contribution Type on your Intellectual Contributions screen. This is because the contribution type determines which fields are available for the record, in the same way that a user’s college determines whether they see fields related specifically to a college.
Once you have determined the data that you want to appear in your report, make sure to select Save at the bottom of the pop-up.

7. Overview of Ad Hoc Reports
Step 4: Specify text for which to search.
Step 5: Select how the data should be organized
Step 4: Specify the text for which to search. Step 2 selected the date range from which to pull records; Step 3 selected the fields you wanted output in the report, and this, Step 4, lets you refine the records selected for the report. Search enables you to search records for specific key words or phrases. All fields for a record, including the contents of Stored Files will be included in the search.
We’ll talk more about Full Text Search later in this session.
Step 5: Select how the data should be organized. This step lets you pick how your data is grouped, and how often a user’s data might be repeated in your results.
This screen shot shows our default options. Let’s start with the most basic grouping and work our way up. If you select one report per:
Individual: Your results will be in alphabetical order by faculty name. Each faculty member will appear in your report one time, with all their records for the report displaying together.
If you chose to have one report per:
User Account Enabled? Setting: your results would be in alphabetical order first by Enabled/Disabled status, and then by faculty name. Each status would get a heading (in the Word or PDF file formats). This option will only yield different results from the Individual option if you run the report on Enabled and Disabled Users. Otherwise, the alphabetical sort would be the same.
Department: Your results would be in alphabetical order first by Department, then by faculty name. Each Department could get a heading (in the Word or PDF file formats). If a faculty member were in more than one department on their most recent Yearly Data record, their data could appear once for each of their department appointments. All their records would, in some cases, be duplicated (or triplicated, etc.) across the report overall.
College/School: Your results would be in alphabetical order first by College, then by faculty name. Each College/School could get a heading (in the Word or PDF file formats). If a faculty member were in more than one College/School on their most recent Yearly Data record, their data could appear once for each of their College/School appointments. All their records would, in some cases, be duplicated (or triplicated, etc.) across the report overall.

8. Overview of Ad Hoc Reports
Step 6: Select whose data to include
Our next Step is Step 6: Select whose data to include. This step has two parts:
Selecting users based on an index value in the “Click here” pop-up portion of this step; and
Selecting Enabled/Disabled accounts
This “Click here” pop-up on this step will show you all the indices you have on your faculty data, as well as an “Individual” option. Indices can only be placed on fields which use defined option lists. This is typically Drop Down List fields.
Of note – index options only appear in this pop-up if they are in use. So, if you have a drop down list value that was newly added, it will not appear in this pop-up until you’ve used it on at least one record.
Our base instrument has College/School and Department setup as indices, so these appear here. Selecting the link for any of these headings will expand the display to show you a list of the options.
If you make changes to the default of “all users”, make sure to select Save from the bottom of this pop-up.
Control + down arrow/End button will be your friend in some cases.
So will Control F to let you search for specific users if you need to run an ad hoc report on one person.
The Enabled/Disabled selection will default to Enabled Accounts only. You can update this on a per-query basis, but this default cannot be changed at this time.

9. Overview of Ad Hoc Reports
Step 7: Select the file format.
Step 8: Select the orientation and paper size
Step 7: Select the file format for your report. This defaults to Microsoft Word.
I personally only ever run ad hoc reports in the Raw Data, Comma Delimited file format, as I find it much more useful in answering the types of questions I would typically take to an ad hoc report.
The single vs. multiple files per screen lets you choose how DSAs are handled in your report output. Do you want a single row per record, with additional DSA rows adding to the number of columns in the file? Or do you want a separate file for your DSA fields, so that you get one row in the separate file per DSA row?
For me, this depends on the data that I am specifically reviewing. If I am running an ad hoc report to see which collaborators don’t have the user selected from the User Reference field, I don’t want to review 20 sets of User Reference DSA columns. I want a single set of columns, so I would choose to have the User Reference DSA in its own file. I could then merge any information from the main record into my DSA record file so that I have a full picture of the record and can find it to update it (either in Manage Data or using an import file).
The Raw Data, XML option can be useful if you need to work with data in the same format as it appears in our API.
Word, PDF and HTML file formats are better formats for displaying the data, but not necessarily working with it.
Step 8: Select the orientation and paper size. This is exactly what it sounds like.

10. Overview of Ad Hoc Reports
Review parameters selected.
Change link
More Information link
Once you select Continue after Step 8, you get the second screen of the ad hoc report utility. On this screen, you get a chance to review the parameters you have selected. If you need to change or revise any of them, you can do so my selecting “Change” next to the parameter. This can be really useful if you need to run a report multiple times, tweaking either the dates, fields, users, etc. as you refine the output that you want.
The “More Information” links from the first create a report screen are also available here. As you work with each parameter and step, these links can be helpful in understanding and reviewing what each step affects in your report.

11. Overview of Ad Hoc Reports
Comprehensive report vs. Selected report
The final section of this screen determines the output of your report. Your first choice is whether you want a Comprehensive Report which includes data for all users selected in Step 6, or whether you want to refine that data based on your Organize By selection.
If you choose a Comprehensive Report, you have two options for how your data is displayed in the report.
Option 1: You can get “one separate report” per organize by option. This means that your faculty users will be grouped by your selection (College/School, Department, etc.) and those units will get their own heading. For Word and PDF reports, this means a page break between College/School values. For the Raw Data, Comma Delimited reports, this means your GROUP column displays the name of your grouped by selection, and sorts users by those values.
Option 2: You can get “one report with every” organize by option. This means your faculty are simply sorted alphabetically in the report. It’s a single, comprehensive output.

12. Overview of Ad Hoc Reports
One report per
One report for every
To demonstrate what I mean for the One Report per vs. One Report for Every, take a look at these report headers. This is the Word file format – and you can see that while both show that they are run by College/School, the “one report per” option indicates that the report is for the College/School of Administration. The One report for every header does not specify the college, since faculty from all colleges are displayed together.

13. Overview of Ad Hoc Reports
Selected report
If you choose a refined report instead of a comprehensive report, you are selecting the specific College/School(s), Department(s), etc. which should appear in your report output. You will automatically get a page break and header in your report if you select more than one college/school, department, etc. This option can help you run sub-sections of a report individually. This can be helpful if you hit a record limit, or want to be able to have separate files for each of the units rather than a single file report with page breaks.
Organizing by College, and then selecting the specific colleges you want to include in each run of the report can be done as a simple step here, rather than updating your Select whose data to include selection.
Once you have walked through all of these steps and made the selections needed for your report, you can select Build Report at the bottom of the screen and your report will generate.
There are a couple of errors which you could hit after selecting Build Report:
As I just noted, you could hit a record limit. By default, this is 20,000 records. If you do hit a record limit, try running a Selected report for a sub-set of your data.
If you get a “no data exists” error, this means there are no results for your criteria. Try expanding your date range as a first step to see if what you are looking for exists.

14. Questions?
That covers each of the steps in Run Ad Hoc reports, and how the affect your report output. Are there any questions on the steps or their results?
Thank You

15. Best Practices File formats Uses for Ad Hoc Reports
Finding relevant faculty and/or activities
Data review
Data updates
Now that we have a thorough understanding of the ad hoc report utility, we can talk about best practices.
First, let’s talk about file formats. As I noted earlier, my preferred ad hoc report file format is the Raw Data, Comma Delimited option. This lets me work with the data I pull out of Activity Insight in a Microsoft Excel file (or Open Office, or other spreadsheet program). This makes the table formatting of the data much easier to read and work with. The other file formats have their uses, but don’t enable a lot of work with the data in the report.
There are a few key uses of ad hoc reports which I plan to cover:
Using Full Text Search to find relevant faculty and/or activities
Using ad hoc reports to review existing data and determine if updates are needed
If updates are needed for reviewed data, turning your report into an import file and loading that into Activity Insight
These are three some of the best use cases for ad hoc reports that we see regularly from our clients and ourselves.

16. Full Text Search Uses for this feature How it works
Searches ALL fields for records on the selected screen(s)
Output is restricted to the fields selected for display on the report
Reviewing each of these key uses for ad hoc reports, I will first outline Full Text Search. This feature was designed as an administrator tool to enable you to find users or records which meet your search criteria, so that you can answer the one-off question, “Do we have anyone doing anything with X?”
Full Text Search will take your search terms, and look through every data point on each record included in the report. This includes the data stored in files that have been uploaded to Activity Insight.
When the report output generates, only the fields selected in Step 3: Select the data to include will display for the records which match your search criteria. This is important to remember, as perhaps the search terms were found in the attachment on the record, or the abstract field. This would make the record eligible for the report, but the search term might not be in the title or the position/role field which you are displaying in the ad hoc results.

17. Full Text Search How it works continued
Using quotes to specify phrases
Using AND or OR
Using parentheses
Using asterisks
The actual Step 4 in ad hoc reports, Specify text for which to search, allows for the following advanced search tools:
phrase matching using quotation marks around the specific phrase
AND/OR logic using those commands
AND/OR with grouping using parenthesis
and wild card searches using an asterisk at the end of a partial word

18. Full Text Search How to use it. Ethics
Philosophy AND (Ethics OR Metaethics)
Ethic*
Ethic
Ethical
Here are some examples of using those advanced search tools. I could search for:
Ethics
Philosophy AND (Ethics OR Metaethics)
Ethic* (to return any records which contain words that start with Ethic – Ethic, Ethical, Ethics)
I should note that the relatively new Search field on Summary Screens is an additional use of our Full Text Search framework – entering a Search Term on Summary screens will work in the same way that Full Text Search in Ad Hoc Reports will work, though it is refined to the User and Screen on which you are running the search.

19. Questions?
Any questions on how to use Full Text Search?
Thank You

20. Exception Reporting Define your questions Determine your logic
What are you trying to find?
Determine your logic
How will you know if you’ve found it?
Determine fields and display
Which fields do you need, and what’s your base level?
The next key use of Ad Hoc Reports is Exception Reporting. An Exception Report is a report designed to tell you which records are MISSING data for specific fields, or has INVALID data based on data in other fields. Most Custom reports are designed around pulling data that MATCH specific requirements. Exception reports, in contrast, are designed to find records which will NOT meet the match criteria of your reports because of bad or missing data.
While we can build exception reports as Custom Reports, these work best when you have set and defined questions or checks in place that don’t change. Ad Hoc Reports can be a much more flexible tool for exception reporting because you can edit them in real time, and modify your logic as needed or change what you want to look at and review.
Exception reports will use the Raw Data, Comma Delimited file format for ad hoc reports. The logic for targeting specific records comes from Microsoft Excel formulas (or Open Office, or other spreadsheet applications).
The first step in writing an Exception report is to define your question. What are you trying to find? An example could be: Which publications have out-of-date Current Status values?
The second step is to determine how you will know if you’ve found it. Using our example, we could check all publications with a Date Published, which have a Current Status not equal to “Published”. We’d also want to check publications with no Date Published, with a Date Accepted and a Current Status not equal to “Accepted”.
The next step is to determine what your report needs as the base level. For my example, I need the publication record. I don’t need Author information – just enough data to identify the record and review my Date/Status question. Since the publication itself is the base of my report, I can run the ad hoc report for a single file per screen.

21. Exception Reporting Run your query Write your formulas VLOOKUP
IF statements
AND/OR statements
Conditional formatting
Once you’ve built your report, you’ll want to delete or hide columns that will distract you as you write your formulas.
I often use VLOOKUP if I am merging data from two files together, or if I need to check a value on another worksheet to complete the check on the record.
IF statements tend to be the most useful Exception reporting formulas. These follow an IF X, then Y, else Z format, and can be nested to make more complex inquiries.
AND and OR statements enable you to check for multiple values or matches as part of your IF statements and can be helpful in consolidating your IF statement logic.
I use Conditional formatting to make records which need review pop a bit more. This also enables you to filter by cell formatting so that you are looking only at records which need review.

22. Exception Reporting Records missing an AACSB Classification value.
User information
Record information
AACSB Classification field
Let’s take a look at a few examples of exception reports we could run off ad hoc data. This first one is a fairly straightforward check – Records missing an AACSB Classification value.
For this issue, you will simply need to pull back enough data to be able to follow up with a faculty member or department liaison to ask them to update the record. This is an instance where the User Attribute enhancement for Ad Hoc Reports comes in handy. Each record will have faculty member information, and an address for contacting them. You can also determine which College or Department they are in, so you can follow up en masse for one of those units if that’s the process on your campus.
Along with the User Attributes, you will want to include record information such as Title, Journal/Publisher, and potentially Date Accepted and/or Date Published. This will help a user to identify the record they need to update.
Since you are checking for missing AACSB Classification values, you will want to include that field too.

23. Exception Reporting
For this report, once you’ve run your ad hoc report, you can just place a filter on the AACSB Classification column. Refining your display to just those records where this column is blank will display the list of records you want to review.

24. Exception Reporting
Grants which have a Start Date over five years ago.
What information do you want to check?
Status
Amount Awarded
End Date
As a more complex example, finding Grants which started over five years ago.
As part of this ad hoc report, you’ll want to think about the data which you want to review on grants which are more than 5 years old. Are you checking to see if they have an End Date? Have a valid Status? Have an Amount Awarded? If so, you’ll want to make sure you include those fields in the report output so that once you’ve found the records to review, you can actually review them in your report.

25. Exception Reporting
You can see here that I have one grant record which started just over 5 years ago. I can now review this record specifically to make sure it is as complete as I would expect given it’s lifespan.

26. Exception Reporting Start Date > 5 Years Ago? (readable):
If Start Date is not blank, then check if Start Date is less than Today’s Date minus 5 years (1826 days). If that’s true, answer Yes. Else answer No. Otherwise, if Start Date is Blank, answer No Start Date.
The logic I used for this query, in a human readable format is this:
If Start Date is not blank, then check if Start Date is less than Today’s Date minus 5 years (1826 days). If that’s true, answer Yes. Else answer No. Otherwise, if Start Date is Blank, answer No Start Date.

27. Exception Reporting Start Date > 5 Years Ago? (formula):
=IF(R2<>"",IF(R2<(TODAY()-1826),"Yes","No"),"No Start Date")
The actual formula can be seen here. Again, this is the formula I’ve plugged into my Excel spreadsheet. This type of Exception Report uses the raw data within Activity Insight, and the tools from Excel.

28. Exception Reporting Publications with invalid Current Status
Where Date Published or Date Accepted have values but the Current Status doesn’t align
Where Current Status has a value but the corresponding Date isn’t complete
For a more complex exception report, let’s go back to one of my first examples – Publications with an invalid Current Status.
To answer this question, we actually have to perform two tests.
First, check for publications with a value in Date Published or Date Accepted and confirm that their Current Status is either Published or Accepted.
Second, check publications with a status of Published or Accepted, and confirm that they have a value in the Date Published or Date Accepted fields.
These IF statements get a bit complex, especially since we are checking different things based on different statuses and sets of date fields.

29. Exception Reporting
In this output example, I’ve put conditional formatting in place on the “Valid Date?” column to highlight any result that contains “Missing” in the answered text.
I’ve highlighted the columns I’m working with in my formulas – I chose to use the calculated date columns, rather than the individual date fields because I only care that a date exists – I don’t care whether these records have all three date elements, just that they are dated.

30. Exception Reporting Valid Status? (readable):
If Status is not blank, Submitted, or In Preparation; And Date Accepted or Date Published have a value, then if Date Published has a value, check if the Status equals Published. If yes, answer Yes. Else answer No. If Date Published doesn’t have a value, check Date Accepted. If that has a value, check if the Status is Accepted. If yes, answer Yes. Else answer No. If Status is blank, Submitted, or In Preparation and Date Accepted and Date Published are blank, answer N/A.
Writing out the Valid Status? Formula is one way I double check my calculation logic – just to make sure it makes sense. The human readable version of this formula is:
If Status is not blank, Submitted, or In Preparation; And Date Accepted or Date Published have a value, then if Date Published has a value, check if the Status equals Published. If yes, answer Yes. Else answer No. If Date Published doesn’t have a value, check Date Accepted. If that has a value, check if the Status is Accepted. If yes, answer Yes. Else answer No. If Status is blank, Submitted, or In Preparation and Date Accepted and Date Published are blank, answer N/A.

31. Exception Reporting Valid Status? (formula):
=IF(AND(OR(L2<>"",L2<>"Submitted",L2<>"In Preparation; Not Yet Submitted"),OR(Y2<>"",T2<>"")),IF(Y2<>"",IF(L2="Published","Yes","No"),IF(T2<>"",IF(L2="Accepted","Yes","No"))),"N/A")
This is the actual formula that I used in Excel.

32. Exception Reporting Valid Date? (readable):
If Status is not blank, check if Status is Published. If it is, check Date Published. If that is not blank, answer Yes. Else, answer Missing Date Published. If Status is Accepted, check Date Accepted. If this is not blank, answer Yes. Else answer Missing Date Accepted. If Status is Submitted or In Preparation, answer N/A. Else answer Missing Status. Otherwise, if Status is Blank, answer Missing Status.
This is the description of the formula for Valid Date?.
If Status is not blank, check if Status is Published. If it is, check Date Published. If that is not blank, answer Yes. Else, answer Missing Date Published. If Status is Accepted, check Date Accepted. If this is not blank, answer Yes. Else answer Missing Date Accepted. If Status is Submitted or In Preparation, answer N/A. Else answer Missing Status. Otherwise, if Status is Blank, answer Missing Status.

33. Exception Reporting
Valid Date? (formula): =IF(L2<>"",IF(L2="Published",IF(Y2<>"","Yes","Missing Date Published"),IF(L2="Accepted",IF(T2<>"","Yes","Missing Accepted Date"),IF(OR(L2="Submitted",L2="In Preparation; Not Yet Submitted"),"N/A","Missing Status"))),"Missing Status")
And this is the formula.

34. Questions?
Do you have any questions about Exception Reports, and using Ad Hoc Report to review your data?
Thank You

35. Importing Data Create and/or Update records:
Based on exception report results
To populate new fields
Based on existing records
Ad Hoc reports already have the correct column headers for our import tools
Our final use case for using Ad Hoc Reports today is Data Imports. I’ll be briefly reviewing this topic at a high level the things you need to look out for, as Ryan will be working through creating import files for our new CSV Imports feature in the next session.
There are many cases for importing data into Activity Insight. The ones I want to focus on align well with ad hoc reports in that you first pull data out of Activity Insight via an ad hoc report, and then turn around and submit that ad hoc file as a data import file – using either our new CSV Imports tool, or submitting a data import work request.
A couple of good cases are:
Updating records based on exception report results.
Updating the Current Status value based on the Date value available for the record.
Updating the Dates for the record after reviewing the status.
Populating new fields, or blank fields. Updating AACSB Classification fields for publications where this is missing.
Creating new records based on existing records – backfilling Yearly Data records for prior years.

36. Importing Data Group User Identifiers Username UserID Survey_ID
Secondary ID(s)
Regardless of your use case, there are a couple things to review and understand in the Raw Data, Comma Delimited file format for ad hoc reports if you are going to be using your report for an import file.
Let’s start with the columns which should be explained and reviewed:
GROUP: If you run a Comprehensive Report with a Report for every group by value, this column will be blank. If you run a Comprehensive report with a Report per group by value, then this will contain the group by value (i.e., College Name, Department Name, or Individual’s name, etc.).
Username: Account username for the user whose date appears in that row. This can be used to identify the account for which you want to import data.
UserID: Internal account ID number for the user whose data appears in that row. This can be used to identify the account for which you want to import data, but is more often used to identify the account whose Username or Secondary ID needs to be updated.
Survey_ID: an additional account identifier that relates more to the screens and fields available to the user account. Likely never used by non Digital Measures programmers.
Secondary ID: an additional provided secondary account identifier for the user whose data appears in that row. This can be used to identify the account for which you want to import data, and is typically used when importing records from a source system on campus that uses this value as the user identifier

37. Importing Data Record IDs and DSA IDs Calculated fields
Flat file
Ancillary files
Calculated fields
Entered by this person?
ID: internal ID for the record within this file.
Of note, if you are working with a screen which has a DSA, and you generate multiple files per screen, the ID will always be the ID of the record WITHIN THAT FILE – not necessarily the record overall.
The first thing I do if I generate multiple files per screen is rename the ID columns to be more descriptive – Author ID, Department ID, etc. This is only helpful while reviewing the file, however. Import files expect “ID” as the column header for the parent record, and the correct DSA ID column header based on the field Code for the DSA.
PARENT_ID: internal ID of the record that is the next step up from the file you are looking at. Publication ID or Yearly Data ID using my last example
DSA ID: ADMIN_DEP_1_ID – internal ID of the DSA row. These are numbered in ad hoc output files so that you can identify the sets of fields which belong together. The next ADMIN_DEP ID column would be ADMIN_DEP_2_ID. This column is EXTREMELY important if you plan to UPDATE existing DSAs. Without this value (or a primary key defined for your DSA) our import tools assume that you are looking to ADD DSA rows.
When importing data to a screen with a DSA, you have the option of providing a “flat file” in which each record take up only one row, and DSA rows add columns to the file, or you have the option to provide the DSA data in ancillary files. The option you choose depends largely on the types of updates you need to make to the data, and the format that made the most sense in working with the data to update it.
Calculated fields: The most common here are date fields. Every Date field will get a START and END column, which will display the calculated system dates for the record. A Date Accepted of August 1, 2014 has an ACC_START and ACC_END of 8/1/2014. If the Date Accepted is August 2014, the ACC_START is 8/1/2014 with the ACC_END as 8/31/2014. These calculated dates are used to determine whether a record is eligible for a report. For import files, however, they need to be removed since they do not correspond to a specific field.
Entered by this person?: This field is a Yes/No response which lets you know if the user for that record is the Record Owner. Since all record updates need to happen via the Record Owner, any time you use an Ad Hoc report to update existing records you need to filter your report results to only include Owned records. Otherwise, the import will fail since the record won’t be found for the collaborator.
This column should be removed before you actually import the file, however, since this also doesn’t map to a specific field within Activity Insight.

38. Importing Data Linked Records
Making sure you work with the Owned record
FACULTY_NAME column contains User IDs for account which should be linked
Name Fields populate from ad hoc report
Another topic to be aware of as you work with your ad hoc results to create an import file is linked records. If you have linking enabled for a screen you are reporting on, as you turn that into an import file, you will want to make sure:
You are working with the owned record – or the record which is shared with other users, rather than a View Only copy of that record.
Make sure you populate FACULTY_NAME with the User ID of the user who should be linked to on the record. An ad hoc report will pull this back automatically – if you add collaborators, however, you should know that this is the value being used by Ad Hoc reports, and what we’d expect in having these values be consistent across the file.
Name fields (first, middle, last) for collaborators will populate from the user account, unless a maiden or alternate name is stored for the publication. From an ad hoc report perspective – all collaborators will have name fields completed.
Linked users will also have the FACULTY_NAME column complete. There won’t be a good way to track which users have alternate names vs. account names using these collaborator fields. This is ok, but know that the name field values WILL import and be stored on the linked record. This is most likely fine – and it ensures that if the user’s name changes in the future, that historical records are not automatically updated with the new account name

39. Questions?
Now that I’ve covered the columns to be aware of, and how to work with your ad hoc report results as you build data import files, what questions do you have?
Any questions about Ad Hoc reports overall? Anything that you’d like to know more about?
Thank You

40. Contact Nicole Farmer NFarmer@DigitalMeasures.com
Thank you so much for your attention and participation today. If you think of any additional questions or comments you’d like to share, you can contact me at
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