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Arena: Reporting

Options―Which One to

Choose

Presented by:

Ben Lane

Senior Arena Training Lead

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Objective

Discover Arena Reporting by understanding the different ways that you can report on Arena

Data.

What You Will Learn in This Session

• When and How to use My Lists/Public Lists

• When to use Custom Reports (Reporting Services, Visual Studio)

• About other reporting options

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My Lists/Public Lists

• You can create lists by choosing desired criteria that will result in a list of names who

meet the selected criteria.

• Great for reporting on Person Attributes, basic information, group, and tag members

• Once the list displays, you can merge records with existing documents or reports, bulk

update selected records, send an email or SMS text message to selected records, create

labels, or export to Excel®.

• Lists always display as a columnar report.

• Public Lists and My Lists function the same except that lists on the Public Lists page will

be available to other Arena users who have access to this page, whereas lists created on

the My Lists page are available to the List creator only.

• Users can change Public Lists to My Lists and My Lists to Public Lists.

• Users can also copy either a Public or My List to make quick minor edits to one already

created.

• I always begin by creating a list in My Lists (by default, at the end of the wizard, it will be

in Public Lists unless you uncheck that box.)

• The category is important to use so that you can organize your Public Lists and filter the

list to those that a particular ministry needs.

o Customize your category List in Administration > Lookups > List Category

• Currently, the Category does not hold an Advanced List.

• Advanced Lists offer And/OR Logic for criteria

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Steps to Create a New List: 1) Click Membership � Public Lists or My Lists.

2) Click the Add New List icon to create a new one.

3) Enter a Report Name.

4) Select a Report Type. Options are Computer Systems, Contribution, Group Report, and

Parent Report. Criteria differs by Report Type.

5) Select a Category, if available.

6) Enter a Description that adequately describes this Report.

7) Click Next.

8) Click a Criteria Group to expand the section and select your criteria. Ask yourself, “Who do I want on

this list?” The answer to this question will help you select the criteria. Available sections and criteria

may vary for your organization.

• Because of the “And” logic in basic lists, the more criteria you select, the narrower your results

will be.

• You can customize available criteria through List Configuration covered in another session.

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• You can use the % and _ wildcards in some fields.

• Understand how to use the options on dates and other criteria.

• Include Null: includes those who do not meet the selected criteria or where the field is

blank.

• The Arena User manual gives more information on the different criteria in Extended and

Advanced.

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• Small groups and Tag Criteria

o Click the + sign to expand and continue selecting or deselecting each group level.

o Click once to add a green check mark in a checkbox to search for people who are

in that small group and check all levels under that group.

o Click twice to change the green check mark to a red X to search for people who

are not in the selected small group or to exclude people who are members of the

group or tag.

o A blank box indicates you are not using the group as criteria.

• Using the Red X in a tag or Group allows you to search for people who are not members

of that group or tag OR you can exclude the members from a list of other people.

• Custom Person Attributes will be available as List Criteria if your organization has

created them.

9. After you have selected all of your criteria, click the NEXT Button

Note: Advanced Lists allow for And/OR Logic and will be covered in other sessions

• The criteria selection screen is different in Advanced Lists. After that, the wizard is the

same as Basic Lists.

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Field Selection

• Once you have selected the criteria for whom you want to have on your list, you will

next select which fields to display.

• Ask yourself: “What do I want to know about these people?”

• Full name, address, and email are the fields selected by default (listed in alphabetical

order).

• The single right-arrow allows you to move Available Fields to Selected Fields or vice

versa. Use the Ctrl key to select multiple individual fields throughout the list or the shift

key to select several contiguous selections.

• The double right-arrows allow you move all Available Fields to Selected Fields (which

you would never do).

• The double left-arrows allow you to move all Selected Fields to Available Fields (so that

you can start from scratch).

• You can order the selected fields by moving them up or down one at a time.

10. Select the fields you would like to display on the final report and click Next.

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Field Details

• The field detail page lists the fields that will display on your report. For each field,

change the heading name and alignment, as desired. ( OR just click Next.)

Sorting

• Arena allows you to sort by any of the Selected Fields.

o Default sort options are First Name and Last Name.

o Click the Red X to remove a sort field,

o Choose from the Selected Fields in the Drop Down.

o Then choose Ascending or Descending order.

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Summary

• From this page, you can run the report now.

• View the SQL Query (Great for using to start a Custom report).

• Change the report to/from a Public or My List report.

o If you select “Report is available to everyone”, it will be available on the Public

Lists page.

o If it is not selected it will be available on the My Lists page where only you can

view the list.

Click Finished!

• Once you have created a list, you can edit that list to make minor changes to it and then

click SAVE without having to go back through the entire wizard (except on Advanced

Lists).

• You can also copy an existing list, rename it, make edits to it, and save without having to

create an entirely new list and going through the complete wizard. (But you cannot

change it to an advanced list from a basic list.)

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Custom Reports

• A great way to get started on Custom Reports is to use the query that was created in a

List, paste that into Visual Studio, and then edit the report.

• You can also download reports from the Community and use as they are or edit them.

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• An advantage of reports is the use of Parameters or filters to use the same report for

many ministries, groups, tags, etc.

• One disadvantage of custom reports is that the information is no longer available for use

within Arena to email or bulk update.

• You need to use custom reports for information that is not available in Lists, like

attendance information.

Report Server

• Custom reports are stored in the report server (http://servername/reports).

• Your ReportServer has some folders created that correlate with report destinations in

Arena.

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• You can access an existing Report and edit that report using Report Builder right from

the report server OR you can open the report in Visual Studio (Business Intelligent

Projects/ Report Server Project) which comes with your SQL install.

• You can also create subscriptions for the reports that are run and emailed to particular

people on a schedule.

• Take the Report Writing Class that Arena offers!

Other Reporting Options

Arena has other more advanced tools for reporting: Report Grid from Query, Metrics, and Chart

from Query

Report Grid from Query

• This is a module that runs from a query or stored procedure within Arena.

• You can create a page and add the module and set security on the page and individual

modules (reports).

• Also the information is usable within Arena like a list.

Ben Lane

Senior Arena Training Lead Ben.lane@shelbyinc.com

Before joining Shelby Systems as a certified staff trainer, Ben Lane served as a youth minister

and a minister of education at various churches. His desire is to help churches maximize their

ministry through effective use of Shelby software. Currently he is Senior Arena Training Lead

and oversees training on the exciting web-based Arena software.