[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Problems with ASpace reports

[McElheny, Robin G.]

At Harvard, we are having major problems with the reporting functionality in the latest ArchivesSpace release. We have tested the reports in our own installation and in the ASpace sandbox with very little success. See below for more details.
We didn't see any issues in JIRA that reflects these problems. Has anyone else encountered them? If so, have you resolved them - and how?
Record selection issues:

  *   The Accessions Acquired and Accessions Production reports supposedly allow for specified time periods, but no date parameters show up in the report user interface.

[cid:image001.jpg at 01D0CF75.A0567BD0]



  *   In other cases it is unclear how/where to select records for the report (e.g. Digital Object Record). No selection parameters appear in the report interface. Are we supposed to browse records, then select them using the check boxes, then generate reports?

Report format issues:

  *   In cases where we were able to download CSV and Excel reports (Accessions Cataloged, Accessions Deaccessions List, Accessions Inventory), we were unable to sort these reports because the formatting appears to be frozen. The output of the report does not match the file type. It is like getting a static document layered on top of a spreadsheet, rather than an actual spreadsheet.



  *   Xlsx downloads don't export uniform cell sizes, so Excel sorting returns a warning saying "this operation requires the merged cells to be identically sized"



  *   In order for the Xlsx downloads to be useful, each field should be in a separate column to allow tallying and sorting, but the ASpace downloads don't do this. Some examples:


In the case of the Accession Deaccession List Report, opening the CSV download in Excel resulted in a very messy, single column spreadsheet that broke data about one deaccesion across multiple rows. (Example: row 48= "Additional records of the League of Women Voters (Cambridge, Mass.),,,,,,1376,,," and row 49 = ",Accession Date:,,05/01/1968,Extent:,1.00 Linear_feet,,,,:").

Here is a screen shot:
[cid:image002.jpg at 01D0CF75.A0567BD0]

  *   Here's another example:
[cid:image003.jpg at 01D0CF75.A0567BD0]

  *   In the case of an HTML report, it displays page footers - odd for online display.
[htmlreport]

Report failure/timeout:

  *   We encountered many failures.

Example:

When we attempted to download an XLSX AccessionsAcquired report in the ArchivesSpace sandbox, we got the following message:



Internal Server Error (500)

Request Method:            GET

Request URL:     http://localhost:8089/repositories/4/reports/accessionsacquiredreport?lock_version=&format=xlsx



(TypeError) can't convert nil into String



You're seeing this error because you use JRuby::Rack::ErrorApp::ShowStatus.



Another example:
[cid:image005.jpg at 01D0CF75.A0567BD0]

  *   We were unable to generate any successful Resource reports. All attempts to download reports in any format resulted in "Waiting for (server)" messages with no results.


Robin McElheny
Associate University Archivist for Collections and Public Services
Harvard University Archives
Pusey Library
Cambridge, MA 02138
Email: robin_mcelheny at harvard.edu
Phone: 617-495-2461
Fax: 617-495-8011

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/pipermail/archivesspace_users_group/attachments/20150805/44c01aff/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 16855 bytes
Desc: image001.jpg
URL: <http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/pipermail/archivesspace_users_group/attachments/20150805/44c01aff/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 59883 bytes
Desc: image002.jpg
URL: <http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/pipermail/archivesspace_users_group/attachments/20150805/44c01aff/attachment-0001.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 37229 bytes
Desc: image003.jpg
URL: <http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/pipermail/archivesspace_users_group/attachments/20150805/44c01aff/attachment-0002.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image004.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 21318 bytes
Desc: image004.jpg
URL: <http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/pipermail/archivesspace_users_group/attachments/20150805/44c01aff/attachment-0003.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image005.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 22259 bytes
Desc: image005.jpg
URL: <http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/pipermail/archivesspace_users_group/attachments/20150805/44c01aff/attachment-0004.jpg>