Customer Tips: Roundup Edition

Here are a few extra tips for a roundup edition of our Customer Tips series to get your new year off to a good start!

Sometimes it's helpful in an analysis to recode variables, like recoding a binary variable for retention to a binary variable for attrition. 

- Jean Constable, Director of Institutional Research at Texas Lutheran University

Problem: a new input file every two weeks needs to be processed by the same job time after time.

Solution: Use a generic file name for the file in the input node. Copy the weekly input file to the generic file name and run the job. This works as long as the input files have an identical format. 

- William Anderson, CIO at Saint Michael's College

If you throw a filter between your input and the merge even if not populated when you change the input file, you do not lose the merge connections or fields!
-Loralyn Taylor, Registrar Director of Institutional Research at Paul Smith's College

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... Brian Johnson (DonorBureau)

Today's installment in our customer tips series comes from Brian Johnson, the VP of Product and Operations at DonorBureau. Here are his tips: 

1. You can have multiple select statements in the Query node as only the last statement does not have a temp table statement. This has allowed me to automate any complicated SQL queries I have for reports to run every week. 

2. If you need to create a new version of a scheduled report, use the old version and it will inherit the schedule of the original report in terms of run times. 

3. You can save output to Dropbox or Google drive to distribute data to team members without having to fill up their inbox. 

Customer Tips From... Dr. Nelle Moffett (California State University - Channel Islands)

The next installment in our customer tips series comes from Dr. Nelle Moffett, Director of Institutional Research at Cal State - Channel Islands. Nelle is an avid Veera user and loves building analytic processes. Here are her tips:

• Use a Rename node before an output to select only the fields that you want and re-sort them in the desired sequence.
• Use the Cleanse node liberally before any Transform node to remove or replace missing data. This will eliminate unexpected results when the Transform node encounters missing data. 
• To create your own variable labels, create a look-up table in Excel with the original values and the new value labels. Then merge this file with the original file using the field labeled "original" and keep the new field with the desired value labels. 
• Example of value file:

• To calculate the percent of a certain characteristic in the dataset, first use a Transform node to set a flag for that characteristic where 1= has the characteristic and 0= does not have the characteristic. Then use an Aggregate node and select the mean for a flag.
   
• To update a job to the current form of a dataset, first make the connection to the updated dataset. Then double-click on the data node in the job. At the bottom of the window where it says "connection" click on the name of the data file and select the new version. make sure all of the data fields are checked (that should be) and save the changes. If you give the data node a generic (rather than dated) name, then it will still be appropriate as the data continues to be updated to the current date. 

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

Customer Tips From... Scott Alessandro (MIT - Sloan School of Management)

The third edition of our customer tips series is brought to you by Scott Alessandro, Associate Director of Sloan Educational Services at MIT's Sloan School of Management. Scott is a long-time and avid Veera user who has been very creative with his applications of the software. Here are his tips: 

1. You are able to remap your data files by clicking on the connection icon either under the connections menu or in the job on the actual file. When I first started using Veera, I was afraid to move files around as it would break connections. Now I know better.  

2. Use the Find DeDup or Remove Dup node when you are working with a data file for the first time. You will be surprised how often duplicate records exist in data files (well, really we should not be surprised, but sometimes are).

3. With the output node, you can check or uncheck the columns you want to include. This is especially useful when you are using transform or merge nodes. I like to keep all of the columns throughout my job and then only select out the relevant ones in the output node. Helps you to keep track of what you are doing within a job (especially also if you create a ‘test’ output you move around the job).

4. Use ‘Set Run Order’ when you have multiple outputs in a job or a job that relies on one output to run another output. Akin to that, in the Merge node, you can also change the order that files are merged together by right clicking on the file number. Since I like to merge a lot of different files together, it is useful to be able to change the merge order especially if you add files later. 

5. Right click on a job to make a copy and then paste it onto the workspace.

6. In Cleanse, can multi-select columns and run the same type of cleanse, rather than selecting each column individually. 

7. Use the Rename node to re-order columns.

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

Customer Tips From... Dan Wilson (Muskingum University)

Our next set of customer tips comes from Dan Wilson, Registrar at Muskingum University. Dan typically uses Veera for repetitive and/or complex reports, including multi-year enrollment history by date, historical majors and minors (by year and department), and IPEDS reporting. Here are his tips:

1. It is important to remember the merge characteristics (all from a, all from b, all from both, only matching, etc.) so the last thing I do in developing any report is to verify each of these. 

2. While Veera's CrossTab feature is quite useful, I find it easier and more familiar to output my results to a target excel file, and then have another excel spreadsheet with my pivot table that has all of the formatting and other features set up. That way I can update the data file without overwriting my formatted "results" file. The same can be done with separate sheets in a file, but some of my reporting files pull data from different queries and Veera reports. For those reports I can run data from several sources, then open up my main file and hit "refresh". 

3. For those instances when a transform looks like a computer program, I'll break it into smaller bits and spread it out over several nodes. This allows me to test smaller chunks of the function at a time and locate any errant code prior to needing valium. (Editor's note: using the de-bugger in the Transform node can also help to find errors quickly!)

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

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!