Reporter Introduction

The Reporter is your tool for creating, naming, saving, sharing and re-using cross queries of the contact records in your database. The results of your queries can be used to send a blast email, export data, print mailing labels, produce counts and lists and store custom reports.

This section of the knowledge base provides a general overview as well as a refresher and reference guide for your association staff who have already been trained on the Reporter. Contact support to schedule Reporter training for new staff or to address issues specific to your association that are not covered in this chapter.

The AMS has more than 1,200 library reports and exports throughout the system, but these are standard reports that cannot be modified and pertain to a single module. For example, there is a standard library report for members that have joined during a date range, or that have renewed, or people that have registered for a meeting or event. The library reports should give you all of the information you need within their module specific view. The Reporter is not meant to be a substitute for these standard library reports.

Use the Reporter when you need to report or export based on data across more than one module, or when you wish to send a blast email to a group of contacts that meet specific criteria.

You can create as many criteria as you like in a single query, and can then join the criteria via AND, OR and NOT operators. All of the criteria screens use your field labels, and only the fields you have turned on show up in the criteria. You do not need to know how to build an SQL query, or how the database is defined. You simply fill out the parameters of your query in the same manner used for inputting the data or running a report and group the criteria as you wish.

Examples of simpler queries include:

• Everyone that is a current member of a committee or set of committees
• All current members who have not registered for a particular meeting or event
• Everyone that purchased a particular item from the online store
• Everyone that made a donation during a specific time frame and/or within a specific dollar amount range

Complex queries can use set logic. Examples include:

• All current members that registered for last year's annual meeting and have not yet registered for this year's meeting
• All exhibitors that have purchased a booth in any of the past 5 annual meetings that have not yet purchased a booth this year.
• Or this same query of exhibitors with additional criteria to find companies that have also advertised in or sponsored any of the prior 5 annual meetings

The Reporter allows you to save queries for future re-use. Each query is saved to a Library Card that contains the criteria for that query. Library Cards can be copied and edited when a new card is needed that is similar to or builds on an existing one.

The Reporter is a two-pass system, in that it performs two major functions in a sequence. The first function is the execution of your selection criteria to create your group. The second function is then to extract whatever data you wish to pull from the database for the group, or to send the group a blast email. It is important to know that the two processes are completely independent. For example, you may have created criteria to select all current members. When you execute your query, the resulting number of members is saved in your group, concluding the first of two steps. You then have the option to select different exports to retrieve different sets of data for the group. You may wish to extract all demographics and membership info, a list of all committees any members serve one, a list of donations they have made, and so on.

You may also wish to send the group a blast email that may have nothing to do with membership. The purpose of the email may be to solicit donations, to call them to action, to notify them of opportunities now available, and so on.

It is critical to your use of the Reporter to understand this aspect of its design. You first build your group with your criteria, then you work with the group in terms of what data you want back. That data is not limited to the criteria you used to select the group, thus you can retrieve any data you wish for a contact regardless of why they are in your group.

Summary of Steps for Creating and Using a Library Card

1. Create a Library Card
2. Add Criteria to the Library Card
3. Set the And/Or/Not operators for the Criteria
4. Run the Job to pull contact records.
5. Create or select an output product.
6. Test the output product when necessary.
7. Submit the output product for a Library Card to send a blast email or create any other output product.
8. Share the results as needed with staff, board or other groups.