Introduction
The reports in Talis Aspire are designed to be flexible, allowing users to build their own enquiries, so they can drill down into their data to isolate and export whatever information they require for further analysis. This may be a list of books that need ordering, or examples of when an individual item is present in lists, or all the lists in a particular school, or any number of other scenarios. Further information about the various individual reports is available in this support article - Reports Overview.
However, we know from user interactions that a common theme around reports is enquiries around how they can be used to identify data that needs adding, updating or removing. Many of the other reports you run in Talis Aspire rely on accurate data in other parts of the system, so ensuring that everything is as tidy as possible will be beneficial to you. This article includes a number of 'recipes' which you can build on to design your own queries which will help you find items, lists, hierarchy nodes or users that need some action.
Once the reports have been run, they can be exported to CSV for further analysis. Exported reports typically contain direct links to the items of interest that you may need to edit. All reports contain live data, so can be run again as your work progresses so you can see the impact of your changes. You may also choose to save the URL generated by any filters you set as this can be used to quickly run the report again in future.
Note that this is far from a comprehensive list of what reports can do for you, and you may need to adjust some of the recipes here to suit your own institution's data, but hopefully you will find something in here of use. The reports outlined here were also explored in more depth in the following webinar: Good Housekeeping.
Recipes
| OUTCOME | REPORT | FILTERS REQUIRED | NOTES |
| Identify Books not held By Library for Purchase | All List Items |
Resource Type (Book) In Library Catalogue (No) Time Period (Current) |
Depending on your acquisitions policy, you may also want to add an Importance filter. Or you could use the From Date Added filter if you plan to run this regularly - eg 'Show me things added in the last month'. |
| Identify links that need fixing | All List Items |
URL Prefix List Status (Published) Time Period (Current) |
If you no longer subscribe to a particular collection, enter the domain in the URL prefix filter to find all affected items. |
| Identify unavailable digitisations | All List Items |
Has Digitisation (Is Not Empty) Digitisation Status (Referred / Rejected / Withdrawn / Expired) Time Period (Current) |
This will help you identify items on current lists where a digitisation request has been made but there is currently no live scan. |
| Identify Lists with no owners | All Lists |
List Owner (Is Empty) Time Period (Current) |
Lists with owners are searchable by the owner's name, so it's beneficial to identify these lists and add owners where necessary. |
| Identify Lists where the owner has left | All Lists |
List Owner (Name) Time Period (Current) |
If you know a staff member has left, simply search for their name in the List Owner filter to see which lists will need reassigning. |
| Identify Lists not attached to hierarchy | All Lists |
Hierarchy Code (Is Empty) |
Lists which aren't attached to the hierarchy impact on the accuracy of your wider reporting, and are invisible to the LTI integration from your VLE. |
| Identify Lists that may need reviewing | All Lists |
Review Status (Not Reviewed) Time Period (Current) |
If you allow your lecturers the choice of publishing or reviewing, you can use this to identify lists that may need attention. |
| Identify Public / Private Lists | All Lists | Is Private (Private / Public) | Your tenancy will have a default privacy setting, but individual lists can be altered. This will help you identify all affected lists. |
| Identify Empty Lists | All Lists | Include Empty Lists (Empty Lists Only) | Empty lists are not a good look! Identify them, and archive them or encourage their owner to populate them. |
| Identify Problem Lists | All Lists |
Rollover Copy (Is Empty) Time Period (Previous) |
After your rollover, you may have draft lists from the previous period that have since been published, or someone may have created a new list in the old time period. This report will help you identify them so you can roll them over or manually update their time period. |
| Identify Users who need roles revoked | All User Profiles | Aspire Role | Choose a role from the filter to see all users who hold that role. You can then click on their name to their profile page and revoke it from there. |
| Identify Users who need anonymising | All User Profiles | To Last Login Date | The criteria you use is up to you, but choosing a cutoff date with the Last Login Date filter is a good starting point. If you export the results, we can use the data in the spreadsheet to anonymise the users for you. |
| Identify Nodes with no Parent Code | Hierarchy Snapshot |
Parent Code (Is Empty) |
Some nodes in your hierarchy may have been created incorrectly, leading to issues with your reporting. This will enable you to identify them and plug them into the correct spot. |
| Identify Modules with no attached list | Hierarchy Snaphot |
Type (Module) Linked Lists (No) |
This will help you identify courses where currently no list is available. You can then speak to the relevant lecturer, or delete the module if it's no longer required. Some institutions may use 'Unit' instead of 'Module'. |
| Identify Duplicate Lists | List Copy Actions |
Include Rollover Copies (No) Original Time Period (Previous) Copy Time Period (Current) |
Teaching staff may sometimes manually copy a list into your new time period before rollover, leaving you with duplicate lists once the rollover is complete. This also impacts on availability of digitisations on affected lists. This report will help you identify where this has occurred and clarify which list version should be taken forward. |
More complex reports can also be built by exporting spreadsheets from more than one report and using VLOOKUPs or similar formulae in Excel or other tools to offer new insights into your tenancy.
Further suggestions of maintenance tasks you might want to consider are available in this article: Maintaining your Talis Aspire Reading Lists.