The Book Bag : Query

Your October Forums Roundup

Katie Infinger — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:53:00 GMT

Here's your forum post roundup for October:

Your voice counts! Don't forget to vote on our FAWeb Support Roundtable Topic Poll!

Tips from a Troubleshooter: Favorite Tools

Sean Long — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:11:00 GMT

Three parts of the software are invaluable to me: Query, Export, and Reports.

Query - I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you master queries, you will master the system. There's a great Query Guide you can use to help learn about queries, but here's the short version: A query is used to group records, such as people, charges, credits, courses, classes, applicants, rooms, advance deposits, payments, deposits, or a combination! You can group records by any field you can find on a record (and some fields you won't find easily, like Record Added On date). You can use saved queries in reports, global changes, report cards/transcripts, and in your default searches.
Export - Many of you know how to use export, I'm sure. But do you know that you can perform mail merges directly from Education Edge? And did you know you can export any field, and control for duplication with far more accuracy by using a query to filter records in export? Do you need a list of every student with a second cousin who has missed more than 3 days, their name, shoe size, and nationality? Create a query to find those students, and use it in export to pull that information (you'd have to track Shoe Size as an attribute, though).
Reports - There are over 50 reports in Registrar's Office and 35 in Student Billing. Each report fulfills a specific need. Do you need a list of all the immunizations your 5^th graders have received? Run the Medical Report. Do you need a tally of how many D's and F's Mr. Triangle (the math teacher) gave compared to Mr. Square, who teaches the same course? Run the Grade Analysis Report. What about when you need a list of the Products and Billing Items you're using this year, because you can't remember what 0010 means? Print out a Product and Billing Item List. If you see a report that you aren't familiar with, open it and press F1 to pull up the help file that describes the report!

That was a really high-level review of my three favorite and useful parts of The Education Edge. Have any questions about these? Check out Knowledgebase, the user guides, or post a comment below!

New in 7.78: Opening Records from a Person Query

Katie Infinger — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:39:00 GMT

Hey ladies and gentlemen, I've got another new 7.78 feature to share! You can open records in a Person query by double-clicking on a row in the results. Now Person queries function the same as other query types. Brilliant!

All the new features are listed in The Education Edge 7.78 Update Guide.

Ask Me About Using the Ask Operator

Katie Infinger — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:19:00 GMT

There's been quite a buzz about the Wild, Wild, Cards post that our friend Doug wrote in The User's Edge Blog. I encourage you to read it and try wild cards in your queries, especially when grouping students by last names.

Another time-saver is the ask operator. Ask isn't just a song from The Smiths or a village in Norway, it's also a great way to clean up your queries. If you're a long-time reader of The Book Bag, you know I like to keep queries clean.

When you use the Ask operator, you can eliminate numerous queries with the same filters but different values. The ask operator allows you to postpone the selection of specific values for your query filters until the time you actually run the query or use it in another area of the program.

For example, you need to hand out the Annual Mother-Daughter Luncheon letter during English, which meets during every period of the day. You can use the ask operator in one query to easily run the letters without creating a separate query for each English class. Here's how:

Create a new student query (BB135272).
On the Criteria tab, select:
Schedule, Academic Year equals 2006-2007
AND Schedule, Courses, Course Name equals English 101
AND Schedule, Meetings, Period ‹ask›.
Save and close the query.

Include this query on the Filters tab in your luncheon letter export. After creating the letter through the Mail Merge Wizard (BB199112), click Merge Now to generate the letters. In the Runtime Wizard enter the following:

Select the query operator and period. For example, select the operator Equals and P1 to run the mailing for students with English in first period.

Click Next to review the query criteria.
Click Run Query to continue processing the letters.
Run the letters again, selecting a different period in the runtime prompts.

You can also use this query in Mail, Export, and Reports.

To find this information in Knowledgebase, enter How to use the ask operator in query, select Registrar's Office 7 as the product, and click Search. It's BB344216. Any questions? Just ask by leaving a comment!