More built in reports for Canvas Admin's

[kona]

I'd love to have more variety with the admin reports. Yes I know you can get pretty much everything through API calls, which we do a lot of, but for your average admin user (one one without a dedicated IT staff) it would be great to be able to define a few variables, click a button, and get the data! Poof. Magic. dream

The example included with this post is from Chris who shared that in his previous LMS he could create his own reports based on all kinds of different data.  He could pick and choose what data he wanted and create his own spreadsheets.

[Chris_Hofer]

Thanks for the mention,  @kona ​.  Yup...the screen shot above is from Pearson eCollege's Learning Studio: "Enterprise Reporting" tool.  Very powerful!

[biray]

Hi Kona,

Thanks for the idea. In order to move this forward, can you be a bit more specific as to the ways you see this working. For instance, are you asking there to be a greater list of reports available at the admin level... those that are popular, but not listed at this time?

You mention that there should be a few variables... can you suggest which variables these would be? For instance, you can generate a report by term. What other variables are you thinking?

While it would be absolutely great to have a more user-friendly interface for generating reporting without the use of API for admins without a dedicated IT staff, it would be helpful to know what the priorities would be for those folks.

Any further insights would be helpful.

[kona]

 @biray  For type of reports and variables, some that we run ourselves that would be useful include:

• Enrollment - by term and by type of course (ex: online vs. hybrid vs. traditional - we track this via our section naming scheme)
• Instructor count - how many instructors are using Canvas - by term and by type of course
• Retention - how many students start a course/how many finish - by term and by course

For me these are the most important reports because they generate information that we have to supply to our accrediting body and information that I need at least once if not a couple of times a semester.

[Chris_Hofer]

I will also add that in Pearson eCollege's "Enterprise Reporting" tool, we can also save any custom reports that we create...so that the next time we want to run a similar report, we don't have to re-create all the fields we want.  We just bring up the saved report and customize it for the new semester (or whatever data we are looking for).

[Chris_Munzo]

One of the challenges of building an internal report writer for a cloud-based solution is making the data available for query, yet not affecting performance / speed of the system overall.  If 500 different schools were all querying Canvas' database at the same time, would there be performance slowdowns?  I believe that eCollege is usually deployed in a self-hosted model, so one school's reporting activity wouldn't affect anyone else; it's all on the hardware of that school.  Some other large systems tackle this by identifying some desired number of data elements, exporting them to a non-production database and then letting customer's query against last night's data using a third-party tool like Crystal Reports.

The API is a do-it-yourself solution: "Here's a way to get the data...have at it!"  And it's fairly low-cost to Instructure.  I would think that building an internal report writer would involve pretty significant costs that Instructure would need to pass along.

[Chris_Hofer]

 @Chris_Munzo ​... Actually, we were not "self-hosted" at Moraine Park Technical College (where I work).  Pearson eCollege hosted all of our courses for us on their servers.  We also utilized their Help Desk which provided 24/7/365 support.

[kona]

 @Chris_Munzo ​, I agree that API is a low cost solution and it's also what we use to generate our reports (that and dropout detective​ ). The issue is that many admin's don't have someone at their beck-and-call to get the different reports they want or to run them when they are needed. Even being married to the guy who does our API stuff doesn't mean I can get him to run the reports when I need them - like a last minute meeting with a VP.

[Chris_Munzo]

Yup, totally get it.  My point was that there are probably a couple of ways to skin that cat....full-blown internal report writer, expanded set of canned reports, making data available to a third-party tool like Crystal Reports or Microsoft Reporting Services.

[biray]

Thanks for the clarification, Kona. I'll move the idea forward and we'll see how the community responds during the next voting phase.

[sriddle]

We've had calls from faculty asking for more information on student access.  It would be good if we had filters in access reports by course or even student.

[dwillmore]

I would actually like to have the ability to create reports through a selection of APIs and variables that remain for a select set of users or by role returning csv reports of the data.

[tdelillo]

I agree completely,  @kona  . We have one Canvas "API guy" for a 5-college district, and it's a low priority for him, so it's as-needed, and you'd better really need it. If I could do more querying through the UI, it would help a lot.

[tdelillo]

One of the things I'm asked fairly regularly is, can we tell how many courses are using a certain LTI. In many cases, that information can be pulled from the external vendor, but not always.

[mlattke]

I agree that this is needed, but I also wonder if the Hosted Data Service on the Studio page http://product.canvaslms.com/ is related to the ideas in this request at all??

[kona]

Good question and I'm not sure.  @scottdennis ​, do you know anything about this?

[scottdennis]

Sorry, @kona.  I really don't know.  I haven't seen a demo or more that what is publicly available.  Deactivated user​ might be able to comment more specifically.

[Allison_Ogrady]

It seems to me like the Hosted Data service is going to be a lot like Enterprise Reporting- I love this idea. We transitioned from Enterprise Reporting to Canvas and felt like we lost a lot of capabilities in data usage. We are using AspirEDU for good deal-time data but still want the ability to customize reports based on filters. Thanks!

[cms_hickss]

We get asked, from Deans and the like:

• How many instructors in English are using the Discussion Tool
• Give us a comparison of Tool Usage across the Colleges and their Departments (aka, Sub-Accounts)

And normally, there are very last minute requests so an option to see something like this in the Logging area (Admin Tools) or in the Statistics area would be great.

[lfeng]

Hi everyone - apologies for the delay - regarding Hosted Data, the idea is to provide schools with access to their data optimized for reporting and query purposes.  There will be several options available for working with your data, either a flat file download or hosted in an Amazon Redshift data warehouse.  The data will be an extracted and transformed version of your school's Canvas activity including usage (page views, etc).   You will be able to use any ODBC compliant Analytics tool to connect to the data warehouse (Tableau, Excel, R, etc.).   This will allow you to create any reports that you need based on the underlying data.  We are currently running a beta program with about 30 customers and announcing it next month at InstructureCon.  Full production is planned for later this year - please stay tuned!

[scottdennis]

Awesome!  Thank you, Deactivated user​