You have been identified as accessing the GLDSS Query Tool (QT) at least once since July 2021, through Self Service > Business & Financial Systems > Electronic Financial Reports (EFR) Portal > GL Reports > GLDSS Query Tool - Transaction Detail Data. The QT was developed almost twenty years ago and has limitations that include:
- Programming code and platform used are archaic and resource-intensive to support
- Caused major system performance issues that has impacted production HR and financial applications in Self Service
- Not available during fiscal year-end
- Small online report and Excel download record limits due to not working well with large volume of data
- Maximum of fourteen accounting periods with a single query can be retrieved
The Transactions Query Report (TQR) was released to campus and was communicated on May 30th via this memo. It is available in Self Service > Business & Financial Systems > Electronic Financial Reports (EFR) Portal - Summary Reports - Expense Summary Reports section. The TQR is a flexible, easy-to-use reporting tool that includes the following benefits:
- Written in current language and uses platform consistent with other Summary Reports, leading to improvements in supportability for technical and functional data steward resources
- Availability year-round, including during fiscal year-end
- Ability to select single or multiple fiscal years and accounting periods
- Programming code and technical platform used are standardized and consistent with other general ledger Summary Reports
- Ability to select single or multiple values for Funds, Departments, Transaction Types and Institutional Accounts
- Ability to select wildcarding or specific values for Subdepartments, Grant/Programs, Organizational Accounts, Departmental Accounts, Functions, Cost Centers and Budget Reference Fields
- Ability to select multiple or all fields of Output Columns to view in the report
- Written in tabular format that allows report output to be viewed online or exported to various formats including Excel, PDF, CSV and others. Tabular format is more user-friendly when retrieving large volume of records and can be used to create Excel pivot tables.
As you learn to use the TQR and become familiar with how it works, please initially try using it by narrowing the parameters selected. With the flexibility of being able to pull multiple fiscal years, along with flexibility in selecting other parameters in a single report run, a large volume of data may be retrieved. This can then consume a lot of server space that may impact report retrieval response times.
With the benefits of the TQR, including its availability during fiscal year-end, the QT will be available through June 30, 2023 and then be retired on July 1. We encourage you to try to use the TQR this month or whenever you need GL transactional detail data for reporting. Additional details about usage of the TQR and EFR Summary Reports general information is available in the EFR Summary Reports User Manual.
Please send issues, questions and feedback with as much detail as possible to as-efr@uiowa.edu, with a subject line of “Query Tool”.