Data Mining Quick Guide

For further information please see the Data Mining Tutorial or go back to Data Mining.

What is data mining?

Data mining is an enquiry tool that allows searches on the IRIS database. By selecting the forms and fields the search can be refined and one or more query can be applied to find the clients required.

For further information on the Forms available click here.

For further information on the Fields available click here.

With the clients found the options are:

• Save the search criteria.

• Export the list of clients into a CSV file, this will have the fields selected.

• Directly open Excel with the information selected displayed within Excel.

• Highlight clients, right-click, and select Generate Letters which opens AutoMail (requires licence).

• Print what is displayed on the screen.

• If there is not a PM licence present on the system the Data Mining options will be limited if accessed through AutoMail. For further information please see the Generate Letters help screen.

Data mining replaced the Find Clients from the PM menu as of release 7.9.0 October 2002.

How to access data mining

To select data mining right-click on the PM icon and select Data mining. The Data Mining screen is also accessed from AutoMail when selecting Multiple Clients.

• The top section of the screen, Criteria List, shows the search criteria already entered.

• The lower section shows the columns selected and the list of clients found.

• And the options along the bottom of the screen show how the information can be output.

Save and open previous searches

Having set up a particular query it may be useful to save this for the future. To do this select File | Save Search

This will list any previous queries saved. Take care if long file names cannot be used on your network environment.

Give the file a name and click Save.

To open a search previously saved select File | Open search. This displays a similar screen to the one above except Save is replaced with Open.

Highlight the search required and click Open. The data mining is displayed with the fields filled in as requested by the search.

How to set up a query

Each query uses Forms and/or Fields and these are very similar in content but the Fields allow greater access of the IRIS database. This includes information based on client's Accounts or Tax Returns.

For further information on Forms click here.

For a glossary of the Fields available click here.

Having selected a field, the next option is to enter what condition the field is to be tested on, this is known as the operator. The drop-down arrow shows the possibilities.

In the above example the field is sales which is numeric, therefore the options would be:

• Is more than

• Is less than

• Is at most

• Is at least

• Equals

• Not equal to

• Is between

• Exists

• Does not exist

• Depending on the field type will determine what the list of operators is.

How to set up the columns

When Data Mining is first accessed the screen shows the Client and Client name columns by default.

To select a column manually, click Columns to display the list of columns available. Select each appropriate column. This allows the column to display on the search output but have no conditions on the output.

Searching for clients

After all the search criteria have been applied click on Find Clients to bring up the selection of clients that match the criteria.

This output of the data can be:

1. Select a section of the data to print by using Left click and Shift to highlight the required fields. Any output selected after this will only produce the clients selected.

2. Access Client maintenance by right-clicking and selecting Client maintenance. This can be extremely useful to check the client’s details.

3. Click Print to output the fields as they are displayed on the screen.

4. Click Export. This allows a save the selection in a CSV format. Therefore any software that can Import a CSV file can use this file.

5. Click Export and select Open exported .CSV file. This will open Excel there and then and enter the fields display on the screen into Excel. From this point Excel can be used to manipulate the data as required.

6. With an AutoMail licence right-click on the selected clients and choose Generate Letters. This will open the Generate Letters screen within AutoMail.

Default Criteria

When data mining is first opened, and before any criteria are added, there are three defaults that apply which may result in clients not showing.

These are:

1. Client with a D.o.D. (Date of Death). As Data Mining is heavily used within AutoMail client with a date of death are automatically excluded. This is to stop mailing lists going out by mistake. To include these clients add the criteria by clicking on:

Field - Individual - Date of Death, set criteria to Anytime and then Add to List

2. Non-Clients. Data Mining is geared to look at the client's information and such non-clients, those not registered with any product, will not be included. To include these clients add the criteria by clicking on:

Form - Client Type, and Tick non-clients and then Add to List.

3. Confidential Clients. If a client is marked as confidential then no information relating to the client will appear. There is not a form/field that can be applied as this would make the confidentiality redundant.