Infinite Campus Ad Hoc Reporting Basics May, 2012 1
Overview The Ad hoc Reporting module allows a user to create reports and run queries for various types of data in Campus. Ad hoc queries may be used to find data relating to students, staff, all people and courses. These queries may be exported from Campus or used to filter canned reports throughout the product. In addition, a tool is available in the Ad hoc module to create form letters and complete a mail merge using fields from the Campus database. Basic Ad Hoc Vocabulary Filter - A selection of fields used to generate other custom reports like mailing labels, etc. Query - Think of it as a question or an inquiry about a specific topic. For example, I am inquiring about all of the 11th grade girls who have birthdays after the 15th of March. Field - It will return data that is specific to the information that has been populated in that field elsewhere in campus. For example, the grade field will only populate with the grade level nothing else. Table - The data that is collected by the query is organized into a table made up of rows and columns. Think of this as the answer to your question (query). Column - Each field that is selected will get a column on the table such as a column listing the birthdates of all of the students. Ad Hoc Vocabulary Explained The nurse stopped by the office and said she needs a list of all 11th grade girls who had a questionable scoliosis screening or were referred after their first screening. You can create a query (ask a question) in Campus to get this information. Now that you know what the query (question) is you can put together the fields (information) you need. The fields (information) you need are the student s gender, first name, last name, grade, screening name and screening status. These fields will then form a filter or selection of fields. 2
Navigating to the Filter Designer 1. From the Index, expand the Ad Hoc Reporting and select the Filter Designer option. 2. Existing Ad hoc filters will list in the Saved Filters window. The first filters on the list will be the user s personal Ad hoc Filters. The bottom of this window will have shared filters-- Ad hoc queries that have been created and saved to a particular user group. 3. A user may copy a filter as the starting point of a new query, or to modify that existing query. To copy a filter, select the filter in the list and click Copy. Click OK when the message appears that the filter has been copied. Then, with the new filter still highlighted, click on edit. On the next screen, take out the words Copy of and either name the filter something different or leave the rest of the name and scroll to the bottom right and click on next. On this screen, scroll to the bottom and click on SAVE. This will save the filter to your user account. You can then make any changes you want and the original filter will remain available for others in the district to copy. Saving and Organizing your queries 1. From the main Filter Designer screen, select Create a new Folder. 2. Give the folder a name and save it. If you want to create a folder within a folder, you would create the main (parent folder) first and the create a new folder and name the new folder and choose the Parent Folder you wish to put it in. 3
Now you will see that you ve got 2 choices of where to place grade level queries. If you have existing filters that you want to move into one of these folders, highlight the name of the filter and click on EDIT and then scroll to the bottom of the screen and just under the SAVE TO: User Account it says Folder/ with a drop down menu where you can choose which of the two folders that you created to save the query. You can eliminate the steps above by saving your query to a folder when you first create the query. Writing your own query 1. From the main Filter Designer screen, select the first radio button Query Wizard. 2. Select a Filter Data Type - Student, Census/Staff or Course/Section. 3. Click the Create button. The screen will display items to select in order to create the filter. 4. Enter a Query Name for this filter. The Query Name should be task descriptive. 5. In the All Fields table, expand the headers to select the fields to be included in the filter by clicking the field. This will move the field to the Selected Fields list. If you don t know where the data is, use the Filter by field by entering a word and click on Search. This will bring up list of headers that contain possible fields to find the data. Example: type in the word Grade and a list of all the places where you can find grade will appear in the All Fields list below. To bring back all fields, simply click on Clear and they will return. 6. Users may determine the sequence in which the fields will appear in the output. They may also determine the sort order of data: ascending or descending. The column header may be renamed and alignment, formatting and length may be adjusted. 7. Click Save & Test and the query will run and the results will appear in a separate window. 4
Operator Function Example Equals (=) An exact match of the user specified value. Student.Grade=12 will return all seniors Does Not Equal (<>) Will return all results that do not equal the user-specified value Student.Gender<>M will return all females or student s whose gender field is null. IN Includes Student.Grade IN 9,10 will return all 9th and 10 th grade students NOT IN Does not include LIKE Searches for the text string in the field A course with name LIKE this will return all history classes SOUNDS LIKE Phonetic search that searches for text that have similar sound pattern Last name SOUNDS LIKE Ball will return Bell and Boll > and >= Greater than (or equal to) Students 16 and older could be found with Student. Age >= 16. < and <= Less than (or equal to) Students with last names A through Lon could be found with student.lastname<lon IS NULL Searches for empty fields. StateID IS NULL will find all students without a stateid IS NOT NULL Returns all records that have data in the field. student.ssn IS NOT NULL will return all students who have a Social Security Number entered in Campus. Using the Selection Editor From the main Filter Designer screen, select the second radio button option, Selection Editor. Select Student as the data type. Click the CREATE button. Give the Selection a name and choose your Quick Search options if needed. Your students will be listed on the left side. Select the students from the All Students list on the left by highlighting the name and clicking the rightpointing arrow key. To remove a student from the selected students list, click the left-pointing arrow key. Click the Save button when finished. The new filter will be listed in the Saved Filters list on the main page of the Filter Designer feature. Using Ad Hoc Filters in Reports Many canned reports in the Campus application may be run for a particular Ad hoc filter. As an example, mailing labels may be run for an Ad hoc filter using Census > Reports > Mailing Labels. 1. From the Index, expand the Census folder by clicking the plus (+) sign next to the folder or by clicking on the name of the folder. 2. From the Index, expand the Reports folder by clicking the plus (+) sign next to the folder or by clicking on the name of the folder. 3. Select the Mailing Labels op on from within that folder. 4. Select your filter. 5. Click Generate Report to see a preview of your labels. 5
Data Export From the Index, expand the Ad Hoc Repor ng folder. Select the Data Export op on. Export a Filter in the Data Export 1. Select the Filter from the list of saved filters in the le hand window. 2. Select the Export Format in which to display the filter. HTML list report opens report in new Web window XML shows HTML coding values Comma Separate Values (CSV) Excel spreadsheet (MOST COMMONLY USED) Tab delimited Values Excel spreadsheet PDF Report 3. Click the Export bu on. The report will display in the format chosen. 6
Using Ad hoc Filters in Searches Ad hoc filters can be used as part of a search on the search tab. Student Ad hoc filters may be found in the student search, Census searches may be u lized when searching for a person, and course/sec on searches may be used when searching for a course or sec on. 1. Select the Search tab. 2. Choose the type of data to search for. 3. Select Advanced Search from the Search. 4. Select your filter from the list of Saved Filters and click Search. 5. Display results will appear on the le side of the Campus session. MORE ADVANCED OPTIONS 1. Open any saved query by highligh ng the query name and clicking on EDIT. Scroll down and click on NEXT. 2. Picking a field in the query that could have a result of one thing OR another like current students who are taking Spanish 4 and Honors English 4. 3. Click on the ADD bu on and it will add another data field with a drop down menu with a list of all the fields currently in your query. In this example, that field would be course number. Once you ve chosen the field you can then add the Operator and Value. 4. Logical Expression box is where you want to set the logic (by entering the line numbers above) with the operator as in the example just below the box. 7
5. If I just entered 6 or 8, I d get this warning: What this is telling me is that my query is NOT going to limit the results to ACTIVE students and students who are NOT dropped from either of these courses. 6. If I were to run this query as is, it would give me each student s name twice. Once with the first course and once with the second course. I only want their name listed one me because I already know what the 2 courses are. Click on NEXT to the Output Forma ng screen. You will see a checkbox field that says Output dis nct records. With this box checked, I d s ll get their names twice because the course name is unique (dis nct) for each record. By unchecking all but the student s number, last name, and first name fields, it will return each student s name once. That doesn t mean that it s not looking at those unchecked fields when the query is run. It s just saying I don t want those other fields to appear in the results. 8