How To Avoid Calling The Hotline

Here are the required steps for some common CIRS ad hoc reporting processes. Just check off each step as it's completed to ensure things run smoothly and you might not need to call the Hotline. For complete instructions on the processes listed below refer to the CIRS User Manual.

Extract Jobs

Submit an Employment History (EH) or Payment History (PY) extract job and note the job number.
Confirm a successful completion of your extract job by pressing the F1 key from the main ad hoc reporting menu and/or noting the system notification message.
Create or locate a report request that uses the extract file you just created.
Execute the report request in the online or batch environment.

Tip: The status messages you receive using the F1 key provide information only on the progress of your job (waiting, running, completed). To get information about any errors the system encountered while building your EH or PY extract file, refer to the system notification message that automatically generates when a job ends. For example, a system notification message containing the text COMP CD=SB37 means your file ran out of space; a message containing the text MAXCC=0000 means no errors occurred.

Batch Execution

Create or locate a report request in your personal library or the common library.
Submit the report request using batch execution and note the job number.
Confirm a successful completion of your batch job by pressing the F1 key from the main ad hoc reporting menu and/or noting the system notification message.
Browse the contents of your batch report file before printing, editing or downloading.

Tip: If your report request uses an EH or PY extract file, be sure to confirm the extract job completed before submitting your batch job. Otherwise you will receive an error message. Likewise, do not try to access your batch report until the batch job has completed.

Creating Hold Files

Create or locate a report request that places data in a hold file (e.g, PERMLRG) for downloading purposes.
Submit the report request using batch execution.
Confirm a successful completion of your batch job by pressing the F1 key from the main ad hoc reporting menu and/or noting the system notification message.
Browse the contents of your batch report file to verify no syntax errors were encountered.
Browse the contents of your hold file before downloading.

Tip: Just because you confirmed a successful completion of your batch job, doesn't mean your hold file was created. Always check the contents of your batch report file to confirm it executed without syntax errors. As an extra precaution, you should also browse your hold file to confirm the data is as expected before downloading.

Related Topics: Checking Job Status and System Messages