Gather information about your data source

If you need an introduction to or refresher on data sources, see the Basic Reporting Help.

Make sure the data your organization stores can support the information your users want to analyze in a reporting environment. Questions you should ask include:

• Does your organization gather the data that users want to see documents on?

• Is your data organized in such a way that it can be used? Is the data reliable, and is it clean? One way to check on the reliability of your data is to create some simple grid reports designed to validate whether your data reflects your understanding of reality.

  • For example, if you have a good sense of how many customers own two or three of your organization's products, create a report that shows basic data on the count of customers who purchased those specific products over the past few years. If the numbers you see in the report do not come close to what you expected to see, it is worthwhile to spend some time with your database administrator to address the reliability of the data stored in your data source.

Related Topics

• Gather information about your user audience

• Gather information about your MicroStrategy project

• Locate or create time-savers

• Design the document