Tips and Tricks!

Admire Academy (this database) features great search bars and an absolute treasure trove of documentation. Documents are continuously added and edited, so check this site frequently, even if you don’t have a specific question!

Our Community Forum is where users and Admire staff ask questions, join stimulating discussions, and collaborate. Remember: the more clear you are when composing your question, and the more screenshots you add… the more likely it will be that someone will manage to point you in the right direction.

Here’s a super quick video demonstration (47 seconds, no audio) of the basic search options on the Community forum. You will NOT regret watching it.

Every organization has particular ways it uses the various components of Admire: Perhaps you enter new students in a certain manner, perhaps you have a protocol for exactly how to name new associations, etc. Documenting your specific processes significantly reduces the time it takes you to train in new employees and provides our support team with an invaluable aid they can use to familiarize themselves with the ins and outs of your processes. Remember, if we advise you on best practice in Admire without understanding a specific way you happen to have been structuring your personal Admire filters for the past decade... Well, that's gonna present a problem.

Short video (41 seconds, no audio):

When you find a report/update/export that you don’t want to forget about — even without a particular filter, or when you come up with a valuable report/filter combo, simply save the FAVORITE by clicking on the star circled below and filling out the relevant info.

For neat organization, you can record a group name; you can also type in the notes box. Group/Notes are free-type fields. Groups already in use become available in the dropdown for future selection.

You can save reports alone or with a filter, and you can also save several favorites of the same report with varying filters.

Notice the ability to share the favorite with others in your organization.

To see a list of all your favorite reports and report/filter combos, click the star circled below.

To limit the list to show only the favorited report/filter combos (or reports without filters) of A SPECIFIC REPORT, use the “Favorite Filters For” bubble and dropdown. You can also limit the list to only show your own favorites, without shared favorites from other users.

Important: Don’t worry about deleting a favorite if you need to! Clicking DELETE on the screenshot above will delete the FAVORITE; it will NOT delete the actual report or filter. Actual deletion of FILTERS themselves is done from the filter builder using the DELETE button there.

Use the star with the black filter/funnel to limit the Report list in the Report dropdown (as well as the Report smart search magnifying glass list) to only include favorited reports.

Once you type a Report name, the gray star will turn gold if the report has been favorited. You can click on the star to see all favorited filters for the report. (Technically, the star simply opens the same list as the magnifying glass star on the top of the page. When you open the list from the plain star, it has the “Favorite Filters For” bubble filled in, along with the correct report name chosen in the dropdown. You can use either star, however.)

Filters themselves can be organized in groups so that you can then browse for them efficiently. These groups are UNRELATED to favoriting or even to favoriting groups, are meant for ALL filters (if you wish to avail yourself of the option), and concern only the filters themselves (not reports/exports/updates).

On the filter builder itself, fill in the group on the top (free-type).

On the Report Wizard, you can click BROWSE to scroll through a list of the filters organized by group. You will also see each filter’s respective group listed when using the filter magnifying glass smart search or the filter dropdown.

You can find the BROWSE option in the little mini-dropdown next to the filter bar on other screens, above Edit, New, and Copy. You can also find it by clicking the three dots next to that little mini-dropdown.

You can connect the regular email you use on your computer/phone to Adrenaline, and send regular emails to specific accounts right from Adrenaline. You can even set up custom email templates for this purpose. Understand, however, that this refers to emails containing simple texts and/or a few selected calculated fields if you use the templates. THIS DOES NOT refer to emailing actual Admire reports!

In fact, Adrenaline does not have the capacity to simply generate or email any actual report you choose. What Adrenaline can do is email FAVORITED report/filter combos (see above) to the email you set on your account for this purpose.

• Adrenaline can only email FAVORITED reports.

• On the simplest level, it can only email YOUR favorited reports, even if other reports have been shared with you. To enable favorited reports to be available on Adrenaline for users besides their actual creator, you would use Tools → Administration → Assign Report Favorites. Reach out on the Community for assistance with that if needed.

• Adrenaline cannot split the report to multiple account emails, as when actually using the Advisor Automated Report Service screens and emailing, say, receipts to each respective account.

We said above that Adrenaline only emails to the email set on your login. Here’s the lowdown about that:

There are technically two places where an email is associated with an Adrenaline login. They are the Manage Logins option on Adrenaline admin itself, and the User Accounts screen back in ADMIRE (Tools → Administration → User Accounts).

When an Adrenaline login is first created, the email used is the email listed in User Accounts in Admire. Once the user is actually created, however, the emails are no longer officially synced, and you’ll be able to change one without the other.

The email visible under Manage Logins in Adrenaline admin is the email that receives security codes and password reset emails, whereas the email listed in User Accounts in Admire itself is the one that receives the emailed reports sent from report favorites on Adrenaline.

Valuable note for troubleshooting: Emailing reports via Adrenaline in this manner (not via using your standard email on your computer/phone)… uses Advisor. So if something isn’t working, it may be helpful to check the Advisor queue.

The Cover Sheet lists the SQL code used by the filter, as well as some other pertinent info… and can be very helpful for troubleshooting.

• Watch this short video (57 seconds, WITH audio).

• Note especially the options for SORTING spreadsheets, screens, and dropdowns to your preference.

• The option to expand hidden columns is showcased very briefly. The next entry (and accompanying short video) on this document, “Find recently created entities by expanding their ID column and sorting by it,” delves into the topic at much greater length.

• Every entity in Admire is given its own ID.

• You can use these IDs to filter for specific records.

• The IDs are given programmatically and are uneditable (although some user databases may have in the past contained customizations for specific IDs).

• The IDs are always given in ascending order, i.e., they start from 1 and go up (by one) with each record. For example, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., …, …., …, 20435, 20436, 20437, etc., etc. You will notice some IDs missing; those are generally due to entities that have been deleted.

• Regardless of whether any entities have been deleted… since new IDs ALWAYS ascend by one, the NEWEST of any entity will ALWAYS have the HIGHEST ID of all of those entities. THEREFORE, a very easy way to find the latest record one created is to find the ID column of the entity and then sort it from highest to lowest; the newest record will ALWAYS be right there on the top of the list.

  • This is very helpful across the program, but one extremely common usage is for filters. It is easy to forget the name of a filter you just created, but if you sort for the newest (i.e., the highest) FILTER ID, you’ll be able to find the filter easily.

• The FILTER ID column is not visible immediately upon loading the filter dropdown; it must be expanded manually.

• MANY other invisible columns can also be expanded manually throughout the program… throughout many different dropdowns and spreadsheets

• Most of the commonly used expandable columns are entity ID columns (e.g., the FILTER ID column), but there are also many non-ID columns.

• Expanded columns do not remain expanded the next time their respective page is loaded.

• Here’s how to expand columns:

  • Hover your cursor directly, precisely, confidently, smoothly… on the first letter of the heading.

  • When you hover properly, the cursor will change into a strange little half line/half sideways arrow symbol. Once you have gotten that symbol, drag rightwards! If any expandable columns are hidden there, they will expand.

Below, in the sub-dropdown titled “Click here to expand for a treatise on exact column expansion rules, regulations, idiosyncrasies, and assorted drama,” you’ll find… a treatise on exact column expansion rules, regulations, idiosyncrasies, and assorted drama. But first, here’s a brief video demonstrating various column expansion examples (two-and-a-half minutes, no audio):