State Agencies Bulletin No. 441

Subject
Modifying and Saving Public Queries as well as other Query Maintenance Issues
Date Issued
November 13, 2003

Purpose

To ensure effective functioning of Public queries, particularly to prevent corruption or mistakenly saving as Private queries.

Effective Date

Immediately

Background

A Public query is one that can be run, modified and/or deleted by anyone who has access to the records in the query. The current Query version requires that a modified query has to be saved before being run.

Because of this new feature, some Public queries have been inadvertently saved as Private and therefore cannot be accessed by other users. In addition, other Public queries have been modified and no longer return the originally intended results.

Another result of this feature is more queries are being created than are actually used. In order to ensure that only effective functioning queries exist, users should delete unused or unproductive queries.

Guidelines for Saving Queries as a Public or Private Query

A Private query is a query only the creator can see and run. A Public query is a query that anyone who has access to the records in the query can run, modify and/or delete.

Guidelines for Modifying and Saving Public Queries. If you are modifying a Public query that you did not personally create, the query should be saved with a new name. (Saving a modified query with the same name will overwrite the original version and it will not return the expected results when run by the original creator.)

In addition, you must determine if the modified query should be saved as a Public or Private version.

If the modified query is for your personal use, save it as a Private version with a new name. If other users need access to the modified query, save it as a Public version with a new name. Refer to the next section of this Bulletin for Instructions on saving queries.

Agency Actions: Instructions on How to "Save As"

Select Home > PeopleTools > Query Manage > Use > Query Manager. Search for the desired query. In the Search Results section, click the query name that is to be modified or saved as a Private version. This will open the query to the Fields page.

At the bottom of the page, click the Save As hyperlink.

  1. Type a new name for the query following the specific PeopleSoft naming convention (All upper case alphanumeric characters, no spaces, no special characters (e.g. @, #, $, %, &, -, . ) except for the underscore character _, with a limit of 30 characters). Public and Private versions of the same query must be saved with different names.
  2. Click the down arrow in the Owner section and Select: Private - for your own version.
    Or
    Public - if more than one user is to utilize the query.
  3. Click the OK button.

Agency Actions: How to Delete a Query

NOTE: You must first verify if the query is a Private or Public version before deleting the query. Users should not delete Public queries that they did not personally create.

Other users will lose access to the query once it is deleted.

If it is a Private Query and you wish to delete:Select Home > PeopleTools > Query Manager > Use > Query Manager. Search for desired query to be deleted. When the Search Results displays the query to be deleted, click the Delete hyperlink that is on the same row. The confirmation message will be displayed "OK to delete query QUERY_NAME (query description)? (139,4)." Click Yes to confirm deletion of the query.

Questions

Questions regarding this bulletin may be directed to the Query Help mailbox.