Merge subjects (Cross-listed courses) in reports
Merged subjects is a feature in reports that provides a mechanism for multiple subjects to be merged together into a composite subject for the purpose of that report with no actual changes to the underlying data.
The business case
Institutions often assign multiple course IDs to the same course. For instance, a mathematics course might be identified as BUS345 in the School of Business and as ENG318 in the School of Engineering. Despite the different IDs, these represent identical courses attended by both business and engineering students. Depending on the reporting requirement, data may need to be reported separately for each course listing, or it may be aggregated for the course as a whole. Such courses are commonly referred to as cross-listed courses within institutions.
Prepare a datasource for merged subjects
To take advantage of the merged subjects feature, additional data must be added to the datasource. At the bare minimum, a field must be added that contains the merged subject ID. The merged subject ID is what Blue will use to decide which subjects should be combined together. A second field can be added that contains a display name for the merged subject, the display name will show up on reports and throughout the report builder. A final field that contains a simple yes or no can be used to indicate which subject contains the master copy of the demographic data that will be utilized in the merged subject.
- If the merged subject ID is blank, the subject won't be merged, it will be treated just like a normal subject.
- All subjects with the same merged subject ID will be combined into a composite subject, but only for the report.
- If the merged subject display name is left blank, the merged subject ID will be used instead.
- If more than one merged subject display name is provided for each merged subject ID, Blue will randomly decide to use one of them and ignore the rest.
- The merged subject display name is not multilingual. The display name will be the same regardless of the language of the report.
- The master copy field can recognize, true/false, t/f, yes/no, y/n 1/0 and is not case sensitive.
- If a merged subject does not contain a subject that is marked as the master record, then every subject is considered a master copy.
Using Merged Subjects in a Report
Setting up merged subjects is an easy process, but only if you have an understanding of the datasource being used.
- Primary subjects can be merged.
- Secondary Subjects cannot be merged.
- Can be used with any project type except survey projects.
- If question personalization questions contain merged subjects then they will not be displayed in the report.
- Only subjects from an object datasource can be merged.
- Merged subjects are only available in a report if the associated project has already been published.
- Minimum reporting thresholds are based on the merged subject values.
- Project Mapping is not available if Merge Subjects has been enabled.
InSet up and publish a project
InManage tasks and subjects
InCreate and distribute reports