Armed with this guide, and a little patience, you will find report building to be easy, accurate and effective. Give yourself some time to “play” with it a bit so you’ll become familiar with how it works, and you’ll get the results you’re looking for. You now have the ability to view reports as HTML- PDF or download CSV files directly to Excel. Now more than ever, you have the power to get the numbers you need, in real-time. From simple to complex, the possibilities are endless.
By understanding the terminology, and learning about the functions and fields, you’ll be able to wrap your brain around what you need to know before you create your reports. Some reports, especially those which are more complex, are better to build in stages, then combine the data. Not only will it be faster and easier for you to build it this way, in many cases the data is exactly how you wanted it to be. Let’s begin with a few terms and phrases often used with reports.
Filters and Filtering Data
Filtering: data in a report means to set conditions so that only certain data is displayed. It is done to make it easier to focus on specific information. Filtering does not remove or modify data; it merely changes the way the information is presented.
Operators: are used to build a filter to manipulate individual data items and data sets. These data items are called operands. Operators are represented by special characters or by keywords.
Dataset: The datasets are basically sections from the system you are familiar with, and the fields within them. Choosing the fields within each dataset allows you to identify the information you seek, then though a series of filers, formulas and displays, get the exact number/information you need.
Filters: These are a part of every Rule you add.
Equal: Identifies a specific value. For example, a rule that looks at “First Name” set to [Equals] and uses the word “Sam”, would return results for clients whose First Name is “Sam”. Clients with names like Samantha would not be returned.
Not Equal: Identifies values that are other than the specific value indicated. For example, a rule that looks at “First Name” set to [Not Equals] with “Sam” as the argument, would return results for clients whose first name IS NOT “Sam”.
In: Used to compare multiple values in a list.
Not In: Returns values whose values are NOT IN the specified list.
Begins With: Perhaps the child’s name is “AMY” which can be spelled so many ways, so you can filter by “Am” for Amy, Ami, Amiee, etc.
Doesn’t begin with: Say you know the child’s name ends with “Lee” and you know it’s not Anna, so you could put doesn’t begin with “Anna”.
Contains: Specific words, numbers you are searching for.
Doesn’t contain: Specific words, numbers you don’t want to include.
Ends with: Let’s say the child’s name is Annabeth, you are not sure of the spelling, so you could put “Ends with Beth”
Doesn’t end with:
Is empty: Empty will return the value of Zero. Null returns no value at all. Think of it as a blank field.
Is not empty: This simply means the field has something in it.
Between: Used in a date range. Example Between “01/01/2017” and “01/31/2017” will return all values that are equal to the start date and equal to the end date.
Not Between: Just the opposite of Between.
Greater Than: For example if you want to capture 18 years old or older, you could put 18 as the value.
Less Than: Here you could say less than 18.
Is Null: Identifies values that are null. Null is special value used in database that is given to a field when no value is assigned.
Is not null: Identifies values that are not null. Null is special value used in database that is given to a field when no value is assigned. Often people equate this with “not empty”
A function allows you to drill down to what you actually want. For example, if you want a non-duplicated count, you would choose the ID, then add “distinct count” You can chose to get aggregated numbers or counts, totals, or raw data. The Functions give you that ability. Here are some of the Functions you will see in the CAC CareNet Report Builder.
Count: this will give you an exact count of each occurrence.
Distinct Count: when you use the ID from a Dataset, such as Client ID, and you choose Distinct Count, you will have unduplicated numbers of clients for your search. For example, if you wanted to know how many therapy sessions a client has had, (let’s say 10) then you would just want the count, however if you just want to know that they had therapy, then you would want the distinct count which would give you (1).
Sum: this will give you a total. Suppose you need the amount of time spent on your encounters. You could SUM the Encounter Duration to calculate this number.
Average: this will give you the average of elements in your list. Let’s say you wanted to know the Average time spent with clients during Therapy Sessions. You could retrieve this information by running the Average your Session Duration.
Minimum: this will give the lowest value in the list. If you have a list of dates, performing the MINIMUM function would return the lowest date in the results.
Maximum: this will give highest value in the list.
On Dataset fields which include a date, you can choose the Date Format for the results you seek. For example if you choose 08/01/2018 it will give you the dates in this format. However, if you choose Aug 2018 your results will be displayed by Month and Year.
The up/down arrows on the left side allow you to do a sort in Ascending or Descending order or no sort at all.