Our new analytics engine will turbo-charge your data analysis, making it possible to analyze exponentially larger datasets in LibAnalytics. What does that mean exactly? With the previous engine, sites with especially large numbers of individual records in a single dataset (in the neighborhood of 50,000 records) could experience lags and timeouts while generating reports. Fixing this issue required a major under the hood rewrite of how we store and return data. We’re happy to report that the new engine is ready for prime-time – we’ve tested it with the largest datasets we could find (more than 700,000 records!) and it performs admirably, without lags or dreaded timeouts.
Thanks to our rewritten analytics engine, we’ve also added a couple of frequently-requested reporting features:
- Expanded Field Analysis – Run Analysis on Numeric and Text fields! To see this in action, head to a dataset and click View/Analyze Data > Field Analysis > Analyze All (Numeric or Text) Fields.
- Frequency Analysis – The new Field Analysis options include Frequency Analysis – quickly view how frequently each numeric and text entry occurred. Just select Analyze All -> Numeric / Text fields.
- Expanded Cross-tab Reports – We’ve added Numeric and Text fields to cross-tab analysis! Head to a dataset that contains free text and/or numeric fields and click View/analyze Data > Cross Tab Analysis.
- “Inactive” Account Level – When a user leaves your institution, instead of reassigning all their data entries to someone else, just change their account status to Inactive. This will disable their account from logging in and recording new entries, while preserving the records they’ve created.
As always, a huge shout-out goes out to everyone who shared suggestions and feature requests – we love hearing from you!
I would like to try out the Expanded Field Analysis, but when I click on “View/Analyze Data”, I don’t see an option for “Field Analysis” let alone “Analyze All (Numeric or Text) Fields. Do we need an update?
Thanks,
Rebecca
Hi Rebecca –
After you click on “View/Analyze Data”, you’ll want to click on “Generate Reports” (the blue button) to reveal the various reports. Once you do that, “Field Analysis” should be the second tab. Once you’re there, click on the text that reads “Analyze Fields by Group”, and you should see “Analyze All (Numeric or Text) Fields” inside that dropdown list.
Thanks, hope this helps!
-Sarah
One feature that I love in a competing product is the ability to have a small grid of predefined tags. They appear on the form, and they can be applied to a record by clicking on the desired tag(s). We liked this feature because it allows us to use a controlled vocabulary. It solved the problem, for example, of measuring how many printer issues we were addressing if our staff has been typing them in as “printer,” “printing,” “paper jam,” “toner,” etc. Is that something that might be considered for LibAnalytics?
Hi Ken – there are two existing features in LibAnalytics which you might find useful. Predefined Entries are one option – they’re a great way to standardize text entered in the question field, and they can speed data entry by pre-selecting relevant fields in the form. For more info check out http://help.springshare.com/datasets/predefinedentries.
If you’d rather add tags as a separate data point in each transaction, another option is to add another multi-select field to your dataset for “tags”, and adding values for all of your common issues. That would be a way to establish a controlled vocabulary, and you’ll be able to filter all of your LibAnalytics reports based on that vocabulary.
Thanks – hope this helps!