12 Tips for Managing Report Names in SumTotal Advanced Reporting

About 10 years ago, I started a position as a report writer and analyst for a large HR department. In my first conversation with the senior HR analyst, I told her the first thing I wanted to do was to conduct an inventory of what reports were already available. She wished me luck in finding anything useful. 

Her response puzzled me, but I soon learned what she meant. I found almost 400 reports. Few of them had names or descriptions that helped me understand what was in them. It took months to clean up the mess. 

Report names matter, and without a published and enforced set of rules, you will, in time, have chaos. The effort required to resolve the problems may make you want to junk it all and start over. 

There is an easier way. Report naming conventions should be a part of your organization’s data governance policy. Your data steward should review every report name and description for compliance. 

If your organization doesn’t have a data governance team or function, we recommend you get started on it right away. Your organization may have good governance in place by another name. Start a conversation with your CIO to learn how it works in your business. 

Data Governance 

According to the Data Governance Institute, data governance is the exercise of decision-making and authority for data-related matters. It defines who has authority to do what with data in the organization.  It governs how you carry out the decisions your management team makes about your company’s information. 

What data governance means to your organization depends on the nature of your business. Although the framework for an organization may be the same as for another business or industry, the focus could be different. 

To get started, we recommend that you connect with the Data Governance Institute and download the DGI Data Governance Framework, or contact us to talk about your needs. 

 Report Naming Conventions 

If your organization does not have report name conventions, we have a few tips to get you started. The standards here are based on our experience. This is our second update since we first published them in June 2016.  

Note: This guide assumes you have completed Advanced Reporting Author Training and have read and kept a copy of the SumTotal Advanced Reporting Best Practices Guide. 

• Create a naming taxonomy. You could use an organization taxonomy, an information type taxonomy, or both. You may choose a hybrid of, for example, organizations and functions. What matters is that you have a structure that works for you and that your users to run their own reports will understand. 
• If you need to include department or location in a report name, you may want to use them at the beginning of the name so reports will be grouped together. 
• Use plain language that a new employee will understand. Use abbreviations only if they are common acronyms that everyone understands. 
• We recommend using spaces or underscore (_) between words. Camel case works fine, but it's hard to read (ThisIsCamelCase).

• Use specific report names that give a clear idea of what is in the report. “Completion Report” is not useful. “Safety Training Completion Report” is better. 
• Do not use ampersands (&). Spell out “and.” Ampersands can create problems in HTML. 
• Use hyphens only if a user would type them in a search. Searching “year end” will not return a name that contains “year-end.” Instead of using hyphens for separators try colons. 
• For country and region codes, use ISO 3166 standards. The International Organization for Standards maintains both 2-letter and 3-letter codes. 
• Identify temporary reports with a suffix and purge them when you have finished using them. 

• Provide complete descriptions for every report. Don’t assume people will know what is in them. 
• Decide how you will implement the guidelines. Train everyone who creates reports on the standards and give them reference guides. 
• Follow up frequently at scheduled intervals. It might be a good idea to have your IT group or implementation partner help you design an audit report. 

Following your guidelines will help people find the information they need. It will speed up report development because report writers can use what they already have as a starting point. And when it comes time to clean up the report lists, it will be much easier than having to open each report to see what is in it. 

Pixentia is a full-service technology company dedicated to helping clients solve business problems, improve the capability of their people, and achieve better results. 

3 Ways AI Will Improve Your Recruiting and Hiring

3 Ways AI Will Improve Your Recruiting and Hiring

Your recruiters do more than talk with potential employees. They source and screen profiles, schedule and conduct interviews, work with hiring managers, respond to calls and emails, on-board and much more.  

In this administrative rush, your recruiters often forget to maintain timely contact  with prospective candidates. Candidates see lack of communication as a sign that you are ignoring them.  

This can damage the trust they are beginning to build and impact your candidate experience and employer brand. 

Automate Your Administrative Tasks and Sustain Timely Communication With AI 

Effective recruiters are those who maintain timely communication and relationships with their candidates. One of the ways you can help your recruiters is by implementing AI in recruiting. 

AI can automate time-consuming, repetitive tasks such as screening resumes or scheduling interviews with candidates. AI driven recruitment can free up time to focus on tasks that need human intervention. 

Save Time in Hiring by Automating Resume Screening

Recruiters should be recruiting. AI should be shuffling resumes. 

Screening applicants manually takes a lot of time. By the time you find the right candidate, the ideal candidate may be snatched away by your competitor.  

Automation can screen your prospective hires based on your requirements many times faster and with more accuracy than humans.  It can weed out 80% or more of unqualified resumes and identify the best skill matches in your candidate pool. This keeps your focus on productive tasks like building relationships with your prospective hires. 

                                    

Transform HR Process delivery with Chasma Lexy

Gain Accuracy in Your Selection Process and Improve Quality of Hire

Machine learning can analyze video interviews to evaluate facial expressions, vocabulary, tone of voice and many other indicators that are often missed. It allows you to create a quantifiable picture of each candidate. As the amount of data grows, the predictions will become more accurate, eliminating the unconscious bias in the selection process. This will help your recruiters assess the candidates better and help you make the right hire. 

Maximize candidate engagement by reaching them 24/7

AI recruiting assistant can act as a medium of communication and engagement. It can instantly handle many of your recruiters’ routine communications like acknowledging applications and reaching out to candidates when they need to know about their interview schedules, progress or feedback. 

The big bonus is it can help your recruiters to overcome the lapses in communications that make applicants vulnerable to being recruited away by your competitors. 

Incorporating intelligent automation into your recruiting can speed up your hiring, improve quality of hire, and save you time and money. The functionality can be embedded directly into your recruiting processes. 

Let your recruiters recruit. Let your machines handle the drudgery.

Chasma Place, is an independent source for solutions that will help you keep pace with changes in the way your people work without ripping and replacing your existing systems.