Building Your List


So you have begun to explore the insights and build a dashboard that is the start of your destiny to conquer the financial aid office - but now those insights have ignited the burning passion of knowledge you wish to pursue. What do you do? Fulfill your destiny. The quick query tool allows you to build your own custom reports based on all of the data in the system. In the navigation menu, you’ll see multiple options to create new or run existing queries under the Quick Query tab. Clicking New Query will take you to the query builder.


The Quick Query builder contains two main pieces - the left side manages the ISIR fields you wish to appear on the report, while the right side manages the filters you place on your selected fields.




Management of fields starts by selecting which section of the ISIR you would like to browse and pull fields into your query. If you’re familiar with the full file review functionality in StudentForms, you’ll see the similarity in function. The ISIR Sections drop down will allow you to narrow down all ISIR fields into more consumable amounts, similar to the way it’s broken down when viewing an actual ISIR (Student Information, Student Tax Information, Dependency Status, Parent Information, etc).


Selecting an ISIR Section will greatly narrow down the fields you will find in the Fields drop down. For example, if you select “Student Information” as the ISIR Section, Fields would contain the first section of the ISIR fields, including Student’s First Name, Student’s Last Name, etc. Clicking on any ISIR field will add it to your Selected Fields list below that will be used as part of your query.


If you can’t seem to remember which section an ISIR field belongs in, or even the full name of the field, you can use the search option located next to the Fields drop down. This will open a modal that will allow you to type in a piece of an ISIR field title to locate it. This function will search all ISIR sections, regardless if you currently have one selected. If your search does not produce any results, the message “No fields returned” will appear. Otherwise, any fields contains the search word will appear. Clicking on a result field will highlight it in blue, indicating that it is ready to be added to your list. You can select multiple fields at once if needed. Clicking “Add Fields” will close the modal and add your selected fields to the list.


 

By default, a new query will always list the fields Year Indicator (Award Year), Transaction Number, Student’s First Name, and Student’s Last Name as part of the query. As you add more fields to the list, they will appear on the bottom of the list. At any time you can drag and drop the order of the fields on your desktop or touch device. The order the fields appear is the order of columns they appear from left to right in the final report. If you wish to remove any field from your list of fields, you can simply click on the “x” icon to remove from the list.



Filter Management


The Filter management allows you to narrow down the values of the ISIR fields you selected to query against. In order to run quick query, you are required to have at least one filter running; otherwise you would be trying to pull a report of every single ISIR your school has uploaded into the application. By default the Year Indicator appears as the first filter. Clicking “+ Add a Filter” will add a new filter rule to your list.


For each filter rule added, you will need to select the list operator, the ISIR field, the field operator, and the ISIR value. Let’s break this down for more information:


  • List operator groups the ISIR fields to narrow down results

    • AND groups together the filters

    • OR separates the filters

      • For example, if I have the following fields:

        • Student’s Last Name = smith

        • AND Student’s Citizenship = U.S. Citizen

        • AND Are You Male or Female = Female

          • Your results are looking for all female U.S. citizens with the last name Smith

        • Student’s Last Name = smith

        • OR Student’s Citizenship = U.S. Citizen

        • AND Are You Male or Female = Female

          • Your results will look for any person with the last name Smith, as well as all female U.S. citizens

        • Student’s Last Name = smith

        • AND Student’s Citizenship = U.S. Citizen

        • OR Are You Male or Female = Female

          • Your results will look for any U.S. Citizen with the last name Smith, as well as all females

        • Student’s Last Name = smith

        • OR Student’s Citizenship = U.S. Citizen

        • OR Are You Male or Female = Female

          • Your results will look for any person with the last name Smith, any person who is a U.S. citizen, and any person who is female

  • ISIR field is a drop down of all ISIR fields you’ve selected to run a report against

  • Field operator relates defines what the query is looking for when reviewing the ISIR value. Let’s look at some of the options:

    • EQUALS - the query will only look for values that match the ISIR value

    • NOT EQUAL - the query will look for any other value than the ISIR value

    • IN - works like Equals, but you can put multiple values in

      • For example, if I want to look for ISIRs where the citizenship status is only “U.S. Citizen” and “Eligible Noncitizen”, and want to exclude any ISIR that has either “Neither” or  left the ISIR blank, I can select the operator IN and select only the values I want to pull

    • GREATER THAN & LESS THAN - basic math, either you want the value to be greater than or less than the value you input

  • ISIR value will appear as a text field or drop down, depending on the ISIR field. For example, Student’s First Name is a text field because that is entered manually by the student, whereas Student’s Citizenship Status has predefined selections, so the the drop down will display all possible answers. For any field with predefined selections, the option <Empty> will look for value that have been left blank.



Reports


Once you have selected all of your fields and placed any filters you wish to use on your query, you will need to click the “Run Query” button to start the process. Please note that if the query has more than 5,000 results, you will need to add additional filters to lower the amount of your results.


Your results will appear in a grid, with the list of select ISIR fields used as columns to separate the information. Clicking on a column will run a sort for that column (alphabetically/reverse alpha, lowest/highest, etc).  The bottom of the bar contains the pagination to view more results, extend the amount of results shown on the page, and the total amount of results.



Below the results grid, you have multiple options:


  • Export - exports your results into an excel format file

  • Save - Saves your query. This will prompt you to give your query a name and select whether your query is private (My Queries) or make it publically available to other users at your school (Shared Queries). Adding a description is optional and you can automatically favorite this query by clicking on the star icon next to the title.

  • Save As - Saves a new copy of the current query.

  • Return to Query - navigates back to the query builder to modify your current query



Saved Queries


When you save a query, you can locate it in the Query List. In the Navigation Menu, under the Quick Query tab you can navigate to the filters of the Query List - My Queries (any private queries you have built), Shared Queries (school shared queries), and Favorite Queries (favorites between private and shared). The Query List contains the name, the viewability (private or shared), who created it and when, last person to update it and when, the ability to favorite (or unfavorite) queries, and the ability to delete queries. Deleting a shared query will remove it for all users.