Introduction to Analytics and Terminology
Ex Libris Analytics enables you to run reports on library activities. You can use out-of-the-box reports that are provided by Ex Libris or you can create your own reports. Groups of reports can be displayed in dashboards that you customize. You can share reports and dashboards that you create with other users in your institution or in other institutions. These reports help you understand the activities that your library performs, which enables you to make informed decisions on how to run the library.
Analytics is built on Oracle Analytics Server (OAS). Every day, a full database refresh (also known as an ETL) takes place in Alma Analytics. This process may take several hours to complete. The time it takes to complete it depends on numerous factors, such as the changes made to the data.
While for the majority of subject areas the ETL is daily, for the following subject areas it is less than daily:
- The Analytics Usage Tracking subject area data is updated in Analytic once a week.
- The Benchmark subject area is updated in Analytics once a month.
- The Cost Usage section of the E-Inventory subject area is updated in Analytics once a month.
- The Titles subject area is updated monthly except for the fields in the Bibliographic Details dimension. The fields in this dimension are updated daily, except for the following fields, which are updated monthly:
- Author
- ISBN
- ISSN (Normalized)
- ISSN
- MMS ID
- Title (Normalized)
- Title Author Combined and Normalized
- Title
Subject areas that are updated monthly do not run on a specific date of the month. Every day a few institutions are updated, with the requirement that no institution goes for more than 30 days without an update, although it may be less (for example, 27 or 28 days).
Typically, the ETL starts in the evening and the data is available by the beginning of the following workday. This is the case for all data except for a few subject areas such as Titles and Benchmark. The staff user can see when the data was extracted from Alma and when it was loaded to Analytics from the Analytics menu in Alma. For example:
- Data available as of is the time that the load of the data to Alma Analytics was completed.
- Data updated as of is the time the data was extracted from Alma.
In the example above, the data was extracted on Dec. 21, 2019, at 10:00 PM and the load of this data to Analytics was completed on Dec. 22, 2019, at 06:28 AM.
- The format of the time here (and in other places in Alma) is configured by the system_time_format parameter at Configuration Menu > General > General Configuration > Other Settings. For more information, see Configuring Other Settings.
- You can create analytics reports with the Data available as of and Data updated as of fields, which are located under the Institution folder of the various subject areas.
The following table displays the start times of the ETL and the time at which a message will be posted on the Status Page. If the process is not completed by a certain time, a message is posted on the Status Page. To view the Data Refresh Delay Reports page, click here.
| Instance | Start Time | Status Page Message if the Process Has Not Been Completed |
|---|---|---|
| APXX | 12:00 UTC | 21:00 UTC |
| CNXX | 12:00 UTC | 21:00 UTC |
| EUXX | 20:00 UTC | 07:00 UTC |
| NAXX | 00:00 UTC | 13:00 UTC |
| CAXX | 00:00 UTC | 13:00 UTC |
After a monthly release or a service pack update, an additional ETL might be run.
This help describes unique aspects of this tool for Ex Libris customers and basic analytics activities. For a thorough description of all the activities available in Analytics, select Help to view the online help and Oracle documentation or refer to the Oracle® Fusion Middleware documentation for the Oracle Analytics Server.
This guide describes how to perform basic activities such as building, formatting, and customizing reports and how to provide reports to others, both internally and externally, by creating and updating dashboards.