Analytics Workaround: Organization Unit Name

Table of Contents

Scope of the Problem

The problem and workaround described below is only relevant if all of the following are true:

1. You are retrieving data from the Fulfillment OR Borrowing Requests OR Requests subjects in Alma Analytics.

2. Within the subjects above, you are using any of the following fields:

   1. Fulfillment: “Loan Details”.”Loans – Linked from Institution Name” OR “Loan Details”.”Loaned at Institution Name” OR "Borrower Details"."User - Linked From Institution Name"

   2. Borrowing Requests: “Requester”.”User – Linked from Institution Name”

   3. Requests: Requester”.”User – Linked from Institution Name”

3. You are retrieving data prior to March 12, 2024.

This problem does NOT impact the “Institution” folder in all the subject areas that the Network Zone uses to filter data for individual campuses.

Background

Back in December 2022, UC Santa Barbara noticed they were occasionally unable to create orders off Network Zone (NZ) electronic collections for recharge purposes. After much research, Ex Libris told us that the ordering problem was due to a comma in the Organization Unit Name in three campus institutional zones (IZ): UC Merced, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Santa Cruz. In addition, they need to update a backend NZ table to match the IZ names. During testing, we identified no problems with making these changes and it did fix the ordering problem.

However, upon asking the listserv, we learned that there are several fields in Analytics that will continue to retain the old names when older data is retrieved.

Analytics Details

Subject Areas

The following subject areas have potentially problematic fields: Fulfillment, Borrowing Requests, and Requests. If you do not need to use these subject areas, you do not need to worry about the change. In addition, if you are only retrieving fulfillment or request stats for your campus, you do not need to worry about the change. However, even if you are at a campus that did not have a comma in their name, your reports may be impacted when you retrieve loan or request information involving that campus.

Fulfillment

The following fulfillment fields will contain old organization unit names:

• “Loan Details”.”Loans – Linked from Institution Name”

• “Loan Details”.”Loaned at Institution Name”

• "Borrower Details"."User - Linked From Institution Name"

Borrowing Requests

The following Borrowing Requests fields will contain old organization unit names:

• “Requester”.”User – Linked from Institution Name”

Requests

The following Requests fields will contain old organization unit names:

• Requester”.”User – Linked from Institution Name”

Workaround

Filtering

If you are filtering using any of the five fields above, make sure to include both the campus name version that include the comma and the version without the comma.

UCM: When filtering for UC Merced, include the following values:

• UC Merced

• University of California, Merced

• University of California Merced

UCSB: When filtering for UC Santa Barbara, include the following values:

• University of California, Santa Barbara

• University of California Santa Barbara

UCSC: When filtering for UC Santa Cruz, include the following values:

• University of California, Santa Cruz

• University of California Santa Cruz

Modify the Display

In cases where the report results include both the old and new organization name, one campus may appear in multiple rows. In the example below, UC Santa Barbara is appearing twice:

In many cases, we can simplify the resulting output by using a formula in the impacted column.

Steps

1. Edit the Analytics report you wish to modify.

2. Click the gear symbol next to the field that contains both the old and new organization unit name. In the case above, it’s the Linked From Institution Name field.

3. Click on Edit formula.

4. Note what the full field’s name is. In this case, it’s "Requester"."Linked From Institution Name".

5. Paste the following formula:

   CASE WHEN "Requester"."Linked From Institution Name" = 'University of California, Santa Cruz' THEN 'University of California Santa Cruz' WHEN "Requester"."Linked From Institution Name" = 'University of California, Santa Barbara' THEN 'University of California Santa Barbara' WHEN "Requester"."Linked From Institution Name" = 'University of California, Merced' THEN 'University of California Merced' WHEN "Requester"."Linked From Institution Name" = 'UC Merced' THEN 'University of California Merced' ELSE "Requester"."Linked From Institution Name" END

6. If modifying a different column than "Requester"."Linked From Institution Name", substitute all references of "Requester"."Linked From Institution Name" with the appropriate field name. For example, if we were retrieving ”Loaned at Institution Name”, our code would look like this:

   CASE WHEN "Loan Details"."Loaned at Institution Name" = 'University of California, Santa Cruz' THEN 'University of California Santa Cruz' WHEN "Loan Details"."Loaned at Institution Name" = 'University of California, Santa Barbara' THEN 'University of California Santa Barbara' WHEN "Loan Details"."Loaned at Institution Name" = 'University of California, Merced' THEN 'University of California Merced' WHEN "Loan Details"."Loaned at Institution Name" = 'UC Merced' THEN 'University of California Merced' ELSE "Loan Details"."Loaned at Institution Name" END

7. If desired, click the checkbox for Custom Headings and next to Column Heading enter a useful label.

8. Click Ok and then run your report like normal. Note: if you get a “Formula syntax is invalid” error, double check you do not have any “smart quotes” in you SQL. They must be straight quotes.

After modification, our original results would look like this:

You can also see an example report that uses this method in Alma Analytics from browsing to /Shared Folders/University of California System 01UCS_NETWORK/Reports/CDL IC and running “Organization Unit Change Test – Requests – with formula change”

Related Documents

Decision Page: Organization Unit Name Change