Customer Tips From... Jeff Fleischer (Rapid Insight Inc.)

Okay, okay... Those of you who have worked with Jeff know that he isn't really a customer. But, as the Director of Client Operations here at Rapid Insight and an analyst at heart, he is a wealth of information, so I've decided to share some of his tips. They are:

1. The Format Column node was retired a few releases back in favor of the Convert node. Using Convert, change the data type you wish to format to "text", then select the desired style from the node's Format column. PS: The Format Column node is still accessible - try going through the menu Node -> Add Report -> Format Data. 

2. Merge nodes will forget their setup if you disconnect them from their inputs. Placing a Cache node just before the Merge will keep it from forgetting its configuration if you need to relocate or copy it. 

3. Merge nodes also act as a rename. Just edit the text in the Output Column and use the black arrows on the menu bar to rearrange the column order. Bonus tip: select multiple columns before using the black arrows to re-position several at a time. 

4. Use the menu option Edit -> Convert All Columns to Text to do just that. 

5. Dropdown box controls often respond to single letter entries, avoiding actually having to pick from the dropdown list.

6. Select multiple fields using Ctrl-LMouse to Cleanse multiple fields by setting up a single rule/operation. Note that the fields all have to be of the same type (text, integer, date, etc.) for this to work. 

7. Use the new "File Created Column" option in a Combine Inputs node to identify (with a Filter or Dedup) the most recent records coming from a location. 

Customer Tips From... Dr. Loralyn Taylor (Paul Smith's College)

Our new customer tips series will feature tips from customers on using either of our software applications. Each entry will focus on one customer’s ideas to make your lives easier.

We’re kicking things off with Dr. Loralyn Taylor, from Paul Smith’s College. Dr. Taylor is a one-woman IR office and Registrar and is constantly looking for ways to save time when creating reports and executing jobs. Here are her five tips:

1.  Take the time to rename your nodes so that you can easily follow your line of thought as you move through the job.
2. Remember that there are multiple ways of doing things. The shortest is not always the best – to me it is often more important to be able to easily follow my thought on how I am working through the problem than to do it elegantly in the fewest number of nodes.
3. Common problems to check for: data format incompatibility (just use a convert node), and sometimes a null is not actually a null (just because something looks blank doesn’t mean that it is).
4. Remember that creating a job is like solving a puzzle; you have to think about it and play with it.
5. I often have to run jobs many times to get them right. Helpful tip: Set up a test data output that you can move around to different parts of the job to see how your data is coming through at different points when you are troubleshooting. 

...Have tips of your own? Email them to caitlin.garrett@rapidinsightinc.com!