Koha Question of the Week: Do I Need to Know SQL to Create Reports in Koha?

by Kelly McElligott on Oct 14, 2022

Each Friday, we will bring you a new Koha Question of the Week. We will select real questions that we receive and share the answers with you!

Question: Do I Need to Know SQL to Create Reports in Koha?

Answer: No!

There are so many other ways to create reports in Koha without having SQL knowledge. The other great thing is, the more you create reports, the more you can learn SQL just from using it!

Koha has a few valuable resources that would help a library create reports.

The first resource is the Guided Report Wizard, which will walk staff through creating a report with simple questions. After these questions are answered, Koha will provide the SQL language, and all the staff member needs is to run it.

Koha Manual: Guided Report Wizard

The second resource within the Reporting Module is the Koha Community Wiki Report Library which allows libraries to use curated reports by other librarians around the world. A simple copy and paste will grab that report and add it to the library’s own report collection.

Creating a Report for your Library using the Koha Report Wiki

Their third resource is the Koha Mana Knowledge base which also will allow libraries to browse existing reports and easily import them straight into their Koha system.

How to use the Koha Mana Knowledge Base:

Using Mana to Import Reports into Koha

The fourth and most convenient resource is that any report that is needed can be custom written and designed by ByWater Solutions staff. If you are a partner of ByWater Solutions, any report can be curated for your library at no cost and no limit to the number of reports you request!

Additional Resources

More helpful resources about Koha Reports:

Self-Paced Learning in Koha: Reports

Koha Question of the Week: How can a library create more Report Groups?

Monday Minutes: Adding a Dropdown Option in Reports

Koha 21.11: New Options for Runtime Parameters