ACL Bootcamp Exercise 2: High Impact Analysis

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EXERCISE 2:

High Impact Analysis


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YOUR COACH

Shane Grimm, ACDA: 20 years of experience with ACL

Certified ACL Trainer

Experienced coach of 1000’s of ACL users@shanegrimm


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Getting Back in Shape

ACL Bootcamp: New monthly webinar series designed to help ACL users of all levels learn new skills

– Basic drills and also focusing on “problem areas”


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ACL Bootcamp is Interactive

Suggestions for future topics?

Ask questions as we go along

Join the conversation at acl.com/social

Let’s get started with Exercise 2: High Impact Analysis…

#aclbootcamp


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Today’s session

High Impact Analysis

Learn the proper techniques for adding weight to the data you are analyzing. Visually build connections between different tables of data and combine a series of related files into one for maximum impact.


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Reasons for building connections

Combine monthly tables together into one master table for the year

Gather additional information from a separate table to add more meaning to the current table

Look at two tables and find what records don’t exist in both

Look at two tables and filter the records that do exist in both

Look at two tables and compare to find the differences?

Any other examples?


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Combining tables in ACL: available tools

Join tables

Relate tables

Extract Append

Merge


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Relate tables

Join tables

Join tables

Join tables

Extract Appendor Merge

What tool to use to combine tables

Combine monthly tables together into one master table for the year

Gather additional information from a separate table to add more meaning to the current table

Look at two tables and find what records don’t exist in both

Look at two tables and filter the records that do exist in both

Look at two tables and compare to find the differences?


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What is needed to join or relate two tables?

Both tables defined in the same ACL Project

A common piece of information in both tables that you can use to combine (a key field)

Note: ACL Desktop 9.2 removes the requirement for key fields to have the same width or data type


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The Scenario: Reviewing Payroll and HR Data

Three tables:– Payroll– Work Depts– Employee Master

Let’s take a quick look at these tables

Note: These files are available within “Sample Project.ACL”. This project is automatically added when you install ACL Desktop. Default location is C:\ACL Data\Sample Data Files.


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Workout #1

Check payroll coding by comparing payroll to work departments– Ensure only valid work departments are being used


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The Planning

Compare Payroll to Work Departments


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The Planning

Key field is work department code (for example “AOO”, “B01”)

Looking for differences, use UNMATCHED


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Let’s see a Demo


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Summary

Planning – sketch out steps beforehand

Used Join to find differences between two files (Payroll and Work Departments)

Used Join’s Unmatched option

ACL’s Join command can combine files in a number of different ways.

Used Relate to bring in useful information to complement my data (Employee name)


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Workout #2

Find Ghost Employees

Employees in Payroll table that do not exist in the Empmast table


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The Planning

Compare Payroll to Employee Master


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The Planning

Key field is employee number (for example “00010”, “00020”)

Looking for differences, use UNMATCHED


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Let’s see a Demo


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Things to watch out for

Watch out for cases where there are multiple records with the same key field value

Watch out for blanks

Watch out for inconsistencies in your key field– Extra symbols, “(604) 555-1234” will not match “604 555-1234”– Case sensitive, “A003” will not match “a003”


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Summary

Planning

Used Join tables (unmatched) for Payroll and EmpMast

Used Relate tables for work department name

Review your results and look for blanks


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Do more

You can do more advanced testing, including: – Relate up to 18 tables at the same time– Join on multiple key fields– Use different join methods, including many-to-many– Use Join as a filter, e.g. find all transactions for only the vendors that exist in a

separate table– Combine files from different systems with key fields that are dissimilar

Start simple

Expand your knowledge each time you use ACL– Perform a test with Join and then try performing the same test with Relations

Have fun and be creative!


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Q & A


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– Talk to your ACL Account Manager for more details

More Information

Next Exercise Thursday, December 1:

Data Access Drills

Education

ACL Bootcamp Exercise 2: High Impact Analysis