Alma Analytics Overview

Introduction to Alma Analytics

What is Alma Analytics?

Alma Analytics is a tool within Alma that extends the basic searching & reporting functions in Alma. It's not actually a part of Alma, but an external module, built on Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Editions (OBIEE) and uses Structured Query Language (SQL) to extract data and compile reports and analyses.  It uses searching methods & terminologies associated with database queries.

How do you open Alma Analytics?

Within Alma, select "Analytics" on the left menu (the lowest option on the menu), & then click on "Design Analytics" on the pop-up menu:

Analytics will now open in a new tab in your browser. At the top of the tab you will see a header for your dashboard:

From this page, you can click on "Catalog" to see what Tables, Folders & existing Analyses are available to you.  To get familiar with the folder structure, in the Folder path menu on the left, click on the "PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 01PRI_INST" folder.

This will open up the folders within the Princeton University shared space.  In The "Reports" folder, you will see folders for the various Departments, e.g., Cataloging.  If you click on one of these folders, you see the Analyses that others have created in the right window.  For organizational purposes, be sure to only Create new Analyses in your Department's folder.

You can Create new Analysis by clicking "Create" on the menu at the upper right:

You can Create a new Analysis, Dashboard, Filter, Dashboard Prompt, or Condition.  

Let's start with Creating an Analysis, which is like creating a query in a database, using fields from tables.

Select "Analysis" on the drop-down menu.  Then select the "Subject Area" you are interested in running a query on.  In this example, we are selecting "E-Inventory".

You will then see this:

On the left menu are the tables, displayed as folders, with fields in them.  To view the fields within the tables, click on the folder name.

To start your query, select the fields from the tables.  For example, if we wanted to see the Level URLs within the portfolios for electronic resources, we would select that field & place it in the "Selected Columns" window, either by double-clicking the field on the left, or by dragging it into the "Selected Columns" window.  This field is found in the "Electronic Collection URL Information" folder:

We now want to add more fields to our query, since a list of Level URLs isn't enough information for our report.  We would at least want to know what the Portfolio IDs are of the URLs we are looking at.  So we add that field as well:

The difficult part is knowing where to find the fields you are interested in displaying in the Report.  In this case, the Portfolio ID is in a different folder than the Level URL field.  It is in the "Portfolio" folder:

This is a very simple query.  We have two fields.  If we want to view the results of our query, we click on the "Results" link above the "Subject Areas" menu on the left:

When you click" Results", the query will run.  Depending on the number of rows your query is going to display, the query may take a long time to complete & display the Results.  

Note that Analytics only displays 1000 rows at a time.  You can see this by scrolling to the bottom of the Results:

To Save an analysis, when you are looking at the Results of your query, click on the floppy disk icon on the top right of the screen: 

A window will pop up.  A the top of the window is the Directory that the Report will be saved.  Be sure you are saving your Report in the correct Departmental Folder.

Be sure to double-click on the folder you want to save your Analysis into.  Name your Analysis & Save.  You will be able to find your Analysis in two ways: 

Click "Home" on the top right of the screen.  This will display your most recent Analyses.  

Click "Catalog" on the top right of the screen.  This will display the Folders Menu on the left, and you can navigate to the folder you saved the Analysis in.  

This example is a very simple one, in which we are not adding any criteria to our query.  We can Sort our criteria, add more fields, as well as place filters on the criteria we are searching for.  This query complexity will be covered in the next step.

Many "reports" are available as the results of basic or advanced searches in Alma itself, but Analytics provides searching and analysis at a deeper or more complex level.

Presentation by Don Thornbury, as part of CaMS Transitioning to the Next Generation of Metadata e-Series, Unseen Labor, Part 2 (August 24, 2022)