Elements at Virginia Tech: Run Reports
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Run Reports
Depending on your permissions, you may be able to run reports and export data from both Elements and the University Data Commons, both of which use Elements data. Most of the time, individual faculty members do not need to run reports in Elements, and the permissions to do so are usually provided to administrators (department chairs, deans, and similar). Elements is often used (and confused) with other systems or processes such as the UDC and FAR processes. eFARs stands for Electronic Faculty Activity Reporting. Your eFAR is what is completed and submitted each year for faculty evaluations. In most cases the eFAR is generated through the UDC. The UDC uses templates, often designed and customized by each college, to extract data from Elements and other sources to create your annual eFAR.
Reports in University Data Commons (UDC)
To run reports from the University Data Commons, go to the UDC Faculty Activity Data Portal (FADP); Select the Faculty Activity Reports in the menu and select either Individual or Group. You will need to select Individual for exporting your FAR or other individual reports, such as customized college CVs.
You can also select the Insights tab to view faculty activity in Elements and to download data files.
Please visit the College Guides and Templates page to download college-specific guides for running reports, downloading templates, and exporting FARs.
Run Reports in Elements
Reports in Elements can be useful for collecting information about an individual or a group about their activities (as a .csv file). Administrators may have the most interest in running these types of reports, such as collecting data on the number of scholarly works produced by faculty during a specific date range. Reports for individuals are not as common, and the UDC is the best place for exporting reports for individuals, such as FARs and customized college CVs. If you have permissions to run reports in Elements (usually provided to administrators at department chair or above, or those supporting administrative processes), see details below for how to get started.
From the Home page, click the Menu tab, then under the Reporting tab, select Basic Reports . Search for a name or several names (if running a report for an individual or a group of individuals). Or, you can select an individual unit, such as a college or department. Select a date range, the object category (e.g., Scholarly & Creative Works). Select Get data export. There are other customized options and filters, but most of the time, you will not need to select these. However, you may need them in certain circumstances, such as the option to "Include non-users" (users who are no longer at Virginia Tech) or to include "Non-academic users," such as special circumstances in which staff members may be included in Elements but still completing academic activities.
You can also export data from individual modules (e.g., scholarly & creative works, grants, etc.) for yourself in various formats. For example, you may want to export an RIS or BibTeX file for importing into a reference manager or to another profile, such as ORCID, of all your scholarly works. You could also export a Word or PDF document of these specific activities. Simply go to the module for which you want to export its activities, select the records you want to export (be sure to go to all pages and 'Select all' to ensure you select all, if that is your objective); select Export and select the desired file format.