How to Launch and Sort the Student Planned Courses Informer Report

Complete an ITicket to obtain access to Entrinsik Informer Reporting Tool if you are not already an Informer user.

Informer is used at Valpo to retrieve and explore data from Colleague. These instructions walk users through running the "DEGREE_PLAN_TERMS Future Term Courses Planned by Students in Self Service - DEPT" report. This report lists the classes students have planned to take. It is very useful to Department Chairs as they make decisions about which classes to schedule each semester.

Step-by-step Guide

1 Run the Informer Report
2 Export Results to Excel
3 Protect Student Data
4 Evaluate the Data with a Pivot Table
5 Want to know more about Pivot Tables? Try this LinkedIn Learn course

Run the Informer Report

1. Navigate to the Informer Login Page

2. Enter Valpo Username and Password

3. Reports Listing page appears. A list of the reports the user has been granted access to will appear.

4. This report may be quickly found by typing 'planned' in the Reports Listing field.

5. Click on the yellow star to save the report as a favorite (Report will now appear in "My Favorites" filter).

6. To launch the report, click on the Launch icon next the report.

7. Enter the first letter or first few letters of the department for which you want to run the report (e.g., cba for College of Business, M for Math dept., ENGL for English dept.).

8. Enter the Start Date for the term you want to review (e.g., 8/1/24).

9. Click Launch Report

Export Results to Excel

10. To export results to excel, click on Export Results

Protect Student Data

Please remember student data should be used for University purposes only. It is not to be shared or stored outside the University.

11. A menu of options will appear. The most commonly used option is Excel Comma-Separated Values (.csv)

12. Select Excel Comma-Separated Values (.csv). Output options appear. Make sure the following selections are made:

13. Click on Export

14. The report will download automatically. Double click to open.

15. Highlight the entire Excel Spreadsheet by clicking in left corner next to the A.

16. Next, from the Home tab on the Excel menu bar, click on the drop down menu on Format and select AutoFit Column Width. This will ensure every column of data easily appears.

17. Data is now available in Excel and may be sorted and used for decision making, etc.

Inserting a Pivot Table is a quick way to see how many students plan to take each course. Continue on to insert a Pivot Table in the Excel spreadsheet.

Evaluate the Data with a Pivot Table

1. To insert a Pivot Table. Place your cursor anywhere on the spreadsheet that is populated with data.

2. Next, from the Insert tab on the Excel menu bar, click on Pivot Table

3. The Create Pivot Table box will appear in a new tab. The following selections will appear:

4. Click OK

5. You may now select PivotTable Fields to sort the data. This is done by dragging the data fields to the appropriate areas.

For this report, we recommend the following selections (Course Name, Planned Term, Student ID) in the areas pictured below:

You may include Last Name, but might not get a complete count if you have any students with the same last name

6. The Pivot Table (Sheet 1) will now list the courses, the planned semesters, and how many students plan to take the courses in each semester.