Exercise 4: Export a report
In this exercise, you will:
- Run a report from the Undergraduate Applicants dashboard
- Export the report data to a .CSV file that you can open in Excel
- Use Excel functionality to do further analysis and create a chart to tell the story
Exercise
1. Once you are logged in to Cal Answers, there are a few different ways to open another dashboard. Select the Home hyperlink from the menu at the top right corner of the Cal Answers application window to the Cal Answers home page with the list of subject areas.
2. Expand the Financial Dashboards section, select the General Ledger Reporting dashboard, and open the General Ledger Detail report tab.
3. The Dashboards menu in the upper right corner of the Cal Answers window is another way to navigate to a dashboard. Select the Dashboards hyperlink and select Financial Management Reporting from the Finance subject area.
4. Select the SRECNA report tab.
5. Notice that there is no selection in Org Level3. The prompts you choose for one dashboard do not carry over to other dashboards. Select your Org Level3 and select Apply.
6. Note that the prompt Accounting Period as of is a cumulative amount. As this is a summary report, it includes all of the periods up to an including the period (month) selected. If you want to look at data for one month at a time, use the detailed reports in this dashboard: By Month, Revenue & Transfers, Compensation Expenses, Non-Compensation Expenses, and Transactions. Select the period for the last closed month in the Accounting Period as of filter.
7. This report has 3 different views. Between the report title and the report data, the Select View drop-down list allows you to select a view. Take a look at the columns in the Default view and then select Summarized. Notice the difference. Now select Expanded and notice the columns presented.
8. You are curious about the amount you see in the results. Select the hyperlink for that value.
9. You’re finished looking at the details and would like to return to the SRECNA report. In the bottom left corner, there are breadcrumbs showing the path to this page with hyperlinks for each step along the way. Select the SRECNA link.
10. You’d like to do some further analysis in Excel using the data in this report. Scroll to the bottom of the report and select the Export hyperlink.
11. Select Data and then select CSV format.
12. Select OK to acknowledge that the export process is complete.
13. Open the file by double-clicking the SRECNA.csv icon in the upper right corner of the screen. If you don't see it there, go to the Downloads folder in Windows Explorer.
14. Notice that the file includes more columns of data than were presented in the report. The export data as CSV file functionality always exports all columns available in the data set, even if they aren’t displayed in the report. You can work with this data in Excel and save the file in Excel format using the File/Save As command.