Yesterday I received a call from one of EBSCO’s Technical Managers who informed me that Yes, this is a problem and No, there is no place on EBSCO Admin site to change the date.  The reports cannot be run until the 3^rd of the month, which is when the statistics are stable.  This is actually an old problem that they thought had been resolved, but apparently somewhere in the database there is still a flag indicating to run this particular report on the 1^st instead of the 3^rd.

First they have to find out where this flag is still set incorrectly, but they are definitely the ones that have to change the run date to be the 3^rd instead of the 1^st.

Thanks!

I hope someone can help me fix this, because I am getting nowhere with EBSCO.  This pertains to the COUNTER DB1 report “Total Searches and Sessions by Month and Database”, which I have set up in EBSCO admin to automatically run.

Last year – March 2012 – I noticed that the number of searches and sessions report for January 2012 were HIGHER in the report produced March 1, 2012 (which was reporting February statistics) than the report produced February 1, 2012 (reporting January usage).  I opened a call with EBSCO, who seemed to sit on it forever before closing it in December 2012 stating that the problem was fixed.

March 2013 I do the same comparison of January statistics between report produced February 1st (for January statistics) and March 1^st (for February statistics) and find the exact same problem.  Statistics are changing from one month to another before they then stabilize – only to have the next calendar month experience the same problem.

I opened yet another call with EBSCO, and other than me sending them sample spreadsheets every month to PROVE that this is a problem, I am getting no response other than the initial “we have forwarded to the appropriate department”.

I think the problem is simply that the report is being produced on the first day of the month and therefore whatever batch program that runs to accumulate the last days’ numbers is not complete.  (The detailed JR1 reports I scheduled to run on the 3^rd of the month are just fine.)  But I can’t find anywhere on EBSCO Admin that allows me to indicate which date to schedule this report.  I simply do not have the time to manually go in and run this report every month – that is why they allow you to schedule it!

Have other people noticed this problem?  Am I the only one?  Does anyone know how to specify which day of month to schedule a report to run on the EBSCO Admin site?  Our statistics are always 2 months behind because of this, and that causes a real problem during renewal  and budget planning seasons.

Thanks for any help or insight anyone might have,

Nancy

Nancy A. Bennett

Electronic Resources & Systems Librarian

Carroll University Todd Wehr Memorial Library

100 N. East Ave.

Waukesha, WI  53186

(262)650-4886

nbennett@carrollu.edu

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