Integrating Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) with Koha for Generating Printable Workflow and Audit Reports

摘要

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to explain the need and process of integrating a popular open source reporting tool with Koha ILS. Such integration is needed to fill-up an obvious gap in the Koha ILS to allow preparation of customizable printable report for audit compliance purposes. Methodology: The approach uses the Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) project, an open source software, and integrates it with the MySQL database of Koha. The customized reports are run against the Koha database and the output is generated from a web browser. Since Koha is also web-based, this integration becomes a seamless between the two systems. Findings: There are too many manual steps required to prepare printable reports for audit and procurement compliance. The method discussed in this papers makes it a matter of few clicks within the Koha interface to download those audit reports in ready to print format. This method can also be used for replacing existing method of printing purchase orders from Koha with better results since Koha allows very little customization of printable orders. Originality/Value: The approach discussed in this paper significantly enhances the capabilities of the Koha ILS in meeting compliance needs without changing any code-level customization. Since both the tools used are web-based the user does need to switch to another tool to get the required reports for printing.