1. TalisAspire Management Reporting
Sheffield Hallam University's experience

2. TalisAspire Management Reporting
Sheffield Hallam University's experience
Caroline Thorpe
c.m.thorpe@shu.ac.uk

3. Background
• large post 1992 university
• Talis Aspire since 2012 - we call it Resource Lists
online (RLO)
• went fully live January 2013
• Migrated 1500 lists from TalisLists in Autumn 2012
the context at Sheffield Hallam University

4. • our VLE is Blackboard (Bb)
• a simple Bb Building Block had been developed for TL
this was adapted to automatically link to RLO
• new simple Bb for TalisAspire in place since October 2013
needs to be added manually
• more complex Bb Building blocks are planned

5. • our hierarchy is extracted from our Student
management system (Systems InTuition)
• Faculty - eg DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIETY
• Subject Group eg SG-77002
• Module eg ADVANCED DIGITAL MEDIA
• Course data is not available

6. We use time periods and
Rollover Lists every May

7. TalisAspire Standard Reports
• need View Reports permission
(Admin or Acquisitions for us)
• Lots of help at:
http://support.talisaspire.com/entries/25585992-Introduction-to-Reports
• Ask support they are very
helpful

8. Starting to use reports
This is a useful report for us that shows which modules have
lists
• We could do a total number of lists by Subject group and
Faculty with the Number of lists linked to them
• .... and then we did a rollover and had twice as many lists!
• needed to add a bit of Excel code to limit the number
• would be nice if there was an Node Has List Y/N column!
1. Hierarchy Snapshot

9. Starting to use reports
Useful features
• Last updated - could identify lists that had not been updated
since importing from TalisList
• List owner - an indication of engagement?
• Linked to node
• Item count
2. All Lists

10. Starting to use reports
All list items
All journal articles
• Useful for identifying and updating records imported from TL
eg webpage links that were actually books in catalogue or
articles
• Also to do other quality checks
• Would like a Online link field in the Journal articles report
3. Item reports

11. Other sources of information
• Google Analytics reports on usage
Blackboard reports on module sites with
• TL building block
• external links to TL
• RLO building block
• external links to RLO
GoogleAnalytics and
Blackboard

12. What were the needs?
• Pretty charts
• Percentage of Modules with lists
• Number of lists by Faculty
• Evidence that the project is on track
1. Information for managers and the project
steering group

13. What were the needs?
• which lists have not been picked up by Academics?
• which lists are used?
• which lists were linked in Blackboard and how?
– Old Talislist building block
– New RLO building block
• which Lists brought from TL had not been updated since
last rollover?
2. Information for managing the project and
the data

14. Reports Wish List ...
• Google Analytics Usage data
– at Hierarchy level
– and item level
– not just on the dashboard
• Hierarchy Upload
– Node Has List Y/N column
• All Lists
– List by Node report
• All Items
– Types of items on lists broken down by Hierarchy
– Would like a Online link field in the Journal articles report
– And ...

15. What reports would you like?

16. Getting creative
• All these reports very nice but did anyone actually use them?
• Subject librarians overwhelmed with information
• How could we tell if our academics were engaging?
• Could we make the information easier to handle for staff?
what else could we do

17. Mega conglomerate report
- or how I created a monster!

18. What was involved - 1
1. Run a Hierarchy Snapshot
– Sort it by code
2. Run an all list report for the current academic year
– sort by LinkedtoNode
– duplicate lines when lists linked to more than one node (a
lists by Node report would be nice)
– create column for has an owner (=IF(ISTEXT(D3),"1","0")
3. Ask for Blackboard reports
– use Text to Columns to convert Bb Site codes
12-6851-00L-A-20134 to Module numbers 12-6851-00L
in brief...

19. What was involved - 2
Create a spreadsheet with
– Hierarchy Snapshot in first worksheet
– Blackboard reports in another
– All lists owners in another etc
On the first spread sheet
Create columns by using VLOOKUP to locate the node code
look it up on another report and bring back data from
another column in that sheet. eg
=VLOOKUP(J2,'RLO BB'!C:C,1,FALSE)
Use Subtotal to create the summary data
VLOOKUP, Subtotals and other Excel delights

20. Summary data

21. What was involved - 3
• Also run some reports on Google analytics and mapped those
to All Lists reports
• similar process
• really useful data
• lots of editing data eg to make Google Analytics data match
the urls in All Lists reports
What about GoogleAnalytics?

22. Top lists report - note the list names,
owners and Subject Groups

23. Data by Subject Group

24. But ... its already
available in the
Dashboard

25. Caroline Thorpe
Senior Information Adviser Systems Team
Sheffield Hallam University
c.m.thorpe@shu.ac.uk
0114 225 4478

26. Wish list
Over to you!