Frequently Asked Questions

Your Decision Center installation resides on a hosted server at Innovative. Its tools and reports do not read data directly from your Sierra or Millennium database. The application reads a copy of your data from a database specially-designed to facilitate analytic processes.

Every twenty four hours, usually around midnight at your library's location, Decision Center loads data from your Sierra or Millennium dataservice and circulation transaction (circtrans) file into its optimized database schema on the hosted server. This is called the "nightly conversation" between your library services platform server and Decision Center. Consequently, changes in your data usually take a day to appear in Decision Center tools and reports.

There might be some instances in which data posted after midnight, but before the nightly conversation finishes, enters the system. However, Decision Center has complete statistics only through "yesterday".

Once every twenty four hours, Decision Center harvests circulation transactions directly from your system's circtrans file. In some cases, Innovative harvests circtrans data for prospective clients, so your results might include data generated before you acquired Decision Center.

Acquisitions data reflects only expenditures, and only those made via invoicing. At installation, Decision Center derives historical data from invoice records and ongoing data from posting.

Encore transaction data comes from Encore's activity logs.

The Locations page of this WebHelp provides all the details on how Decision Center handles location data.

Decision Center excludes items with status m,$,n, z, o, and l from calculations that should include only items that are available for circulation. See Fixed-length Fields in Item Records in the Sierra WebHelp for more information about these item statuses.

The following information applies to the Supply and Demand Buying tool:

Monthly Supply

Average monthly supply for the title.

Supply is the potential number of copies that can be checked out per month. Decision Center assesses the library's historical circulation turnaround time for each I TYPE and location pair to establish a "read modifier" (per-copy monthly availability) value. For example, a title with an average circulation period of 20 days would have a read modifier value of 1.5. The system multiplies this value by the number of available items to establish the monthly supply.

Decision Center calculates turnaround time on a per-title basis when sufficient data exists for the title. The number of available items includes items on order, but does not include items unavailable for circulation, such as "lost" copies or copies withheld from circulation.

Monthly Demand

Demand for the title over the last 30 days.

Demand is the number of holds and checkouts (minus holds filled, and not including renewals) over the specified time period. Demand is calculated title by title, not by item.

Decision Center is not limited to statistical reports. It includes tools that provide valuable action recommendations, such as:

• where to weed or expand collections to drive higher circulation and turnover.
• guidance for effective spending and staffing.
• how to optimize collections to reflect community demand and usage.
• how to streamline item availability for faster service.

Additionally, Decision Center tools incorporate:

• library-selected thresholds and strategic targets.
• arbitrary date ranges.
• potentially more than 10,000 acquisitions transactions.

The Web Management Reports provide snapshots of your data. Decision Center includes interactive, problem-solving tools.

Decision Center and Web Management Reports use different metrics for evaluating some data. Some of the differences include:

Web Management Reports transaction counts by codes are static counts that reflect the codes in place at the time of the transaction. For circulation reporting in Decision Center, item code data also reflects the values stored at the time of the transaction. In many other reports, Decision Center displays the codes currently present in patron and item records. For this reason, past transaction activity for records could show a different count for a given code when viewing the same report in Web Management Reports versus Decision Center.

If your library plans to make code updates and you would like to retain a report of past transaction activity displaying the code values as they exist presently, generate and save any desired Decision Center reports before making code changes.

Decision Center assigns backdated check-ins to the backdate date. The Web Management Reports assign backdated check-ins to the date of the transaction. Because Decision Center increments the check-in counts for the dates to which transactions were backdated, check-ins could grow for a given date, such as when staff are backdating check-ins for a snow day or backdating check-ins to the last open day before a holiday. Web Management Reports check-in counts are static, since any backdated check-in is counted on the date the check-in occurs.

Decision Center's tools and reports do not include the current day's data. (See Why doesn't my newest data appear in Decision Center?)

Many fields in Decision Center show only the most recent information for that field. For instance, Decision Center reports always shows a patron's current postal code, which might be different from the postal code where the patron lived at the time of the transaction.

As an example, if a patron checked out two items in January while residing in postal code 1234, and subsequently in May moved to postal code 6789, a report run in May counts those two transactions from January as transactions that occurred in the patron's current postal code 6789.

By design, some values in records are kept up-to-date and some are not. In making these design decisions, Innovative considered the size of the data storage, the impact on performance, and the statistical significance of gradual changes in the database over time.

The following is a table of data fields that are always up-to-date and data fields that remain constant:

Decision Center does not delete codes from its database because it must keep track of historical records from times when those codes were in use. For all codes except location codes, your deleted codes continue to appear in the reports and filters to which they apply. Deleted location codes continue to appear in reports, but do not appear in the report filters.

Note that deleted codes are retained, but the corresponding descriptions are not. Reports that include deleted codes display the code and not the code description.

The Code Categories page of this WebHelp provides step-by-step instructions for creating collection and physical format roll-up categories.

The Collection page provides information to consider before setting up collection categories.

The Physical Format page provides information to consider before setting up physical format categories.

Decision Center does not directly integrate the scoping found in your Sierra or Millennium system. However, it does roll-up item-level locations into higher-level locations (Locations Served maps shelves into branches). In many cases, this reflects a library's application of scoping.

You also can create collection roll-up categories that reflect your scoping configuration.

When you make changes to the statistical category (SCAT) tables on your Sierra or Millennium system, Decision Center must realign its database to match those changes. Choose Admin Tools | Other Configuration | Realign SCATs to schedule this update. The update begins as part of Decision Center's nightly data conversation with Sierra or Millennium and, depending on the size of your system, can take several hours to a few days to complete.

For more information, see Realign SCATs.

Your browser's language setting determines the date, number, and currency format you see in Decision Center. Innovative does not control your browser's setting. To find the language setting in your browser, try the following menu paths:

Select a language and the appropriate country.

Most browsers are frequently updated, so these menu paths might change. If necessary, please refer to your browser's Help system for instructions on modifying this setting.

Yes, Decision Center uses a secure HTTPS connection to increase security and provide compatibility with browsers that use HTTPS connections by default.

In Circulation reports that provide Holds Placed data for parameters such as Owning Location, Item Type, and ICODE#, you might notice that the data for these parameters is predominantly reported in rows and columns labeled Unknown. For example, when you run the Owning Location by Item Type report and limit the transaction type to Holds Placed, you might see a high percentage of transactions with Unknown owning locations and item types. This behavior occurs because most holds are placed at the bibliographic level, and Decision Center cannot display details about the item (if any) that ultimately fills the hold. Decision Center does provide such item-level details when you change the transaction type to Holds Filled.