Entrinsik Informer Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 10 out of 10

Score

10 out of 10

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Entrinsik Informer are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

Entrinsik Informer is a versatile reporting tool that has transformed the way data is accessed and analyzed on campus. Users find Informer easy to grasp and use, making training a breeze. With its seamless integration with multiple systems, Informer allows users to create and manipulate data as needed, eliminating the need for manual gathering of report data and saving hours of time. The software empowers end users to govern their own data and find the information they need with minimal support. IT departments have control over access, limiting what each user sees based on their access level. Additionally, the scheduling feature in Informer has been a game changer for users by allowing reports to run automatically and be delivered via email, streamlining workflows and processes. Informer's ability to provide accurate and timely reports from multiple databases has increased usage campus-wide, with different groups of users running created reports. It serves as a single point for querying multiple systems and databases, allowing users to create their own reports and reducing the burden on IT programmers. Overall, Informer has solved a multitude of problems for colleges and universities by addressing quick and complex reporting needs across various departments and empowering users to make informed decisions based on up-to-date information.

Reviews

77 Reviews

TOTAL GAME CHANGER!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 5, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am in the title industry where we have countless reports needed. Before implementing Entrinsik Informer, we were having to manually gather report data and spent hours of time trying to determine whether the data was inclusive of everything needed. Informer was a game changer! By pulling data directly out of our software, we knew we were seeing everything and no longer had to use numerous spreadsheets and manual calculations for our reports. Better yet, being able to schedule reports to run automatically and deliver them to us by email was almost too good to be true. We use Informer every single day and I can't imagine running my company without the use of Informer!

Pros

Gathers live data
Automatic scheduled reports
Delivery of scheduled reports via email
Allows customization of reports and data

Cons

Making it easier to find the needed information within the mapped dataset (currently can be like a needle in a haystack)
Increase the number of individual reports that can be scheduled at the same time
A way to create reports with calculations that do not require the user to enter code

Likelihood to Recommend

Informer is very well suited for retrieving any sort of data. We use it each day to pull reports on our income, transactions (opened to date, closed to date), the source of our business, the volume of business from individual clients, commission report calculations...the list is endless. If there is a field in our software where data is entered, we can create a report to retrieve it. The possibilities are endless!

Camille White

in Corporate at N Title, Inc. (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Informer, people are using and loving it without realizing they are using it.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

August 31, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Entrinsik Informer is available for use by the entire organization while only a few power users from the main departments actually create their own queries. The product allows a single point for querying multiple systems and databases. The UI allows users not familiar with SQL query commands to easily create complex queries and compile results from multiple files to one output.

Pros

Allows the creation of custom fields using JavaScript to provide end users with data directly without the need to do post calculations or cleanup. Many times the results required need a calculation based on the data or a field that is not available for query so being able to code the data into the results helps end users run their reports on their schedule without having to work with a technician.
The scheduling functionality allows different departments and users to plan ahead for their needs and either export or email the results. Scheduled reports comes in very handy when you need to export the data to third party companies or to a network location for batch processing. This allows us to provide current data with much more frequency.
LiveExcel functionality gives you the ability to connect your query to Microsoft Excel so users do not need to log into the product to run the results. This also allows the creation of VBA Macros to process the data and provide users with the final product on demand.

Cons

The product has had its growing pains as newer versions have come out. The transfer of old queries to the newer systems has caused some duplication of mapped files or fields and they have not come up with a tool yet to help merge these duplication.
Wish they had better internal reporting so I could easily find the different reports that are using links and the fields they are linking with.
I have noticed, being an admin, that the more connections and reports that are available the slower the system becomes when opening it. It would be nice to have nothing come up first and then show more once I drill into the area I want.

Likelihood to Recommend

It makes creating queries very easy for end users so not only research or technicians can do it. The availability for creating Live reports that are accessible via Excel on the network has given many of our users the ability to get the information they need in a format they can use without needing someone to translate the raw data.

Michael Harlow

Systems Specialist in Information Technology at College of the Desert (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

View profile

Entrinsik Informer: Higher Ed Institution

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

October 11, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Entrinsik Informer can be utilized by anyone with granted access at our institution. Access is granted when a specific need is expressed. At our institution, Enrinsik Informer serves to provide quick, detailed reports as it relates to our customer, or student, base. Additionally, users can create individual reports should our employer not already have one created to fit their specific need. I have yet to generate a report from scratch just yet, but with assistance from our IT department, who oversees the software, I have heard that it is pretty simple to do and allows users to get very specific with their queries.

Pros

Informer provides detailed, in-depth reports.
Reports can be exported and manipulated for individual use through Excel.
Allows organization/institution to work together and in a streamlined method. No need to continuously create the same report for different divisions.

Cons

Personally, I need continued practice with Informer to feel 100% confident when using it.
Reports can take several steps to complete, can be a little complicated should you use it infrequently.

Likelihood to Recommend

Entrinsik Informer is very well-suited for generating specific data. Reports can be created on just about any query. The software has been very helpful at my institution, where different reports can either be created for one specific purpose, or shared with other users and departments, depending on the need.Although I have sporadic usage of Informer, I have yet to encounter a scenario when using it is less appropriate than other options.

Verified User

Administrator (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Informer Entrinsik from a front-end user's perspective

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 10, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As an independent consultant, I use Entrinsik Informer (EI) at any client site that has it implemented. At this point, I've used it only with clients who were still on Unidata; I have no experience with those operating through SQL. I'm a huge fan for a number of reasons. Navigationally, it's intuitive for any user. It's flexible for in terms of file linkages and in terms of dictionary names (in plain English) for less-experienced users. It enables more experienced users to build complex reports quickly and produce them in multiple display formats. The copy feature is very helpful in enabling the construction of a new report without having to start at step one. Overall, it's simply an excellent product. For me, the only impediment is that I've never had any training in its use, so I'm confident that there are functionalities that I'm not leveraging. Finally, EI has a very attractive price point making it feasible for even the smallest institution.

Pros

Possible display of dictionary elements in 'plain' English
Multiple display formats for results
Intuitive navigation

Cons

Online availability of training

Likelihood to Recommend

I see no scenarios where Entrinsik Informer (EI) is not an appropriate tool for those using Unidata; I have no experience with EI in SQL.

Anita Farris

Contract Consultant for Advancement/Advancement Software at Ferrilli Information Group (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

Put information into the right hands with Informer

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 9, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Informer across campus. It changed the way we access information. In the past, power users ran reports for the rest of campus. Now, the entire campus has access to the information they need when they want it. Our IT department writes most of the reports and controls access. For example, all budget managers have access to real-time information. What the budget manager sees is limited to the general ledger numbers they manage. One department can't see another department's numbers. We also have access to course information, demographics, etc. All the information seen depends on your access level. End users love it since all they have to do is fill in a few blanks!

Pros

Put information into the hands of those that need it for quick & easy access.
Allows security controls so the right people see the right information.

Cons

I wish it was easier to write reports on the fly.
I would love if I could save the report modifications I make for me to see each time (if I drag column somewhere, it does not stay that way when I open it again).

Likelihood to Recommend

I think Informer is great when a lot of people need similar information from your CRM. Reports can be written where the end user fills in their specific request. It is as easy as fill in the blank!

Karen Brenneman

Director of Technical Information Resources in Information Technology at Meredith College (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

Powerfull cheap till with minor drowbacks

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

May 9, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Entrinsik informer tool is used for delivering daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly and yearly reports. In addition to this it is used to export data in csv format and deliver it to other systems to be used. It is used by administrative offices for daily work. It helps users with no technical skills or knowledge to create reports on their own without necessarily knowing database relationships or how to write a query.

Pros

Easy to use - no technical skills required to understand how to get a report with basic data that user needs. It is simple drag and drop which is very useful for many users.
Easy to maintain - for IT administrators updating the system is super easy. Once it is set up very little to no maintenance is required.
Easy to set up - When connecting to databases it is easy define the connection and the username and password. It is a bit tricky with unidata databases as you have to set up one "additional" subroutine to be initialized once the informer connects.
Super cheap - compared to other reporting tools this is like fraction of that cost with the same functionality.

Cons

It can [eat] your resources - if your query is big or got into some endless loop which is possible) it will use all RAM you dedicated it to a jetty server and it will make your CPU go to 100% which is bad if you are running other applications as it would have serious impact.
It is bundled with Jetty server - and Jetty server is not a very nice web server to work with and can be complicated. I really don't understand if they have a Java application why .war file wouldn't run on Tomcat that we already have in use so it requires additional software.
If number of reports is big it becomes very slow when loading main page and reports.
It does not have a limit on number of columns which is bad for everyday user in two ways: They think they can put 30+ columns and use it as report - who is going to read 30+ column report? Having 30+ columns will slow down the application for all users and eat all of your server resources.
It will potentially have a performance impact on unidata database when executing a large report. Number of fields should be limited.

Likelihood to Recommend

It can work well in small and large organizations but it has to grow a lot when it comes to dashboards and presentable reports. Yes you may use templates for PDF but you cannot really visualize data. So for "higher ups" visualizing data is what you want to present not plain text. For everyday work and for some IT data transfer between systems (CSV) it is really nice. I've heard the new version coming in Q3 2016 should fix some of those problems.

Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Entrinsik's Informer - a valuable reporting tool

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

May 9, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Entrinsik's Informer for the majority of our reporting from the Student Information System. Informer is used by virtually every department on campus for ad-hoc reporting and for scheduled reports. The types of reports include nightly audit reports, extracts that are then used to feed other systems, and traditional reports designed to track progress for the different business needs of the various offices across campus.

Pros

Simple user-interface: Informer is relatively easy to learn and end users can begin running reports and creating new reports quickly.
Email "burst" functionality: This feature allows emails to be sent out based on data in the report. So for example, a report could be scheduled that would email all student employment managers listing out the specific employees that report to them that haven't submitted their time sheets. Each manager would only see the rows that correspond to their email address.
Analytics and grouping: Users can quickly drag columns to group and sub-total, and can use the analytics tab to get deeper insights into the data.

Cons

Performance is sometimes an issue. This can usually be overcome by re-designing the report - using fewer fields, using indexed fields etc.
The java script calculated fields are overall a good feature, but they can be difficult to work with as some true javascript syntax is not supported due to the architecture used.

Likelihood to Recommend

Most schools that use Colleague (the Student Information System) have either UniData or SQL Server as the back-end database. If a school is currently a UniData school but has plans to move to SQL Server in the relatively near future then I'd advise against moving forward with Informer until after the conversion to SQL Server. There is a tool that will convert some reports, but there are many instances where the tool won't successfully convert the report and it will need to be re-written.

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

Drowning in Ad-Hoc Reports? Get Entrinsik Informer!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

May 6, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Entrinsik Informer as our reporting tool for our student information system. Any employee may request to be a user for Informer, but we really only have a select group of employees that use it regularly (including myself). We migrated to Informer due to Datatel (now Ellucian) eliminating Query Builder for reporting. Now that we have Informer, it is easier for end-users to create their own reports, which reduces the need to involve IT and thus the end-users get the data they need in a more timely manner.

Pros

Informer is pretty user-friendly. When teaching other employees how to use Informer, I typically don't have to repeat any steps or further explain how to do certain tasks because of how user-friendly it is.
Reports in Informer are kept in a list that can be filtered by user, specific tags, or even by how recent the report was made or run. This makes it very quick and easy to find and run a specific report.
Informer has many options for downloading the report output, including text (txt), comma separated values (csv), and even PDF.

Cons

There are a lot of reports that we have in Informer that say they have never been run, even though I know they have been run. So that makes it really difficult to determine which reports can be deleted to keep a tidy report list.
The only other complaint I have about Informer is that there doesn't seem to be a properly detailed error code/message when the student information system can't be accessed. For example, I am currently trying to move Informer to its own standalone server and I get an error message saying that our license isn't valid. Informer Support sent a new license, which prompted the same message, and the only explanation they have given me is that Informer can't reach the student information system. I would think that if that were the case, the error message would say that instead of an invalid license.

Likelihood to Recommend

Entrinsik Informer is well suited for businesses that need the capability for end-users to create their own reports. It is easy to learn, and users have multiple output formats they could use, so IT would not need to be as involved. Setting up users is quick and simple, so end-users can be up and going in no time.

Brian Pollitt

Programmer/Database Administrator in Information Technology at Danville Area Community College (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

View profile

A must-have for Ellucian Colleague users

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 4, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our Registrar, Human Resources, and IT departments heavily rely on Informer, but almost every department has at least one user. Ellucian Colleague is used for crucial services like housing transcripts and course records and assigning student and employee ID numbers. Colleague has no useful way to report on this data, so Informer fills that need.

Pros

Informer's Calculation columns are extremely useful, particularly "Script" columns. They allow users to write Javascript snippets that analyze other columns and display complex calculations, so long as you can write the Javascript to do so.
Informer's Scheduler is full-featured and vital to automating its use. Avid Informer users like to schedule reports to write data directly to servers of ours (accessible while on-campus or through VPN), and non-users like to schedule reports to be emailed to them. Both replace the need for staff to remember to periodically run reports.
At a basic level, Informer is vital for Ellucian Colleague users simply because it can easily query records and display them as a spreadsheet. It's supremely disappointing that Colleague users suffered so long without this feature.

Cons

Informer needs more predefined date formats in its Column Display Editor. The existing 5 do not meet everyone's needs.
It's a minor UI issue, but Informer's Edit Columns view stutters and displays empty space when scrolling left or right. It may be because I'm using Safari on Mac OS X, and Informer isn't designed for input devices that scroll with "momentum" (as Apple calls it).
The Reports Listing takes longer to load reports than I believe it should. At least a progress bar displays to tell you when it's complete.

Likelihood to Recommend

Entrinskik Informer is vital for Ellucian Colleague users. Entrinsik has clearly been filling the need left by Ellucian, in that their product cannot report on the data housed within it. The only reason not to use Informer is if your institution's database software already has capable reporting tools.

Verified User

Director in Information Technology (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

Entrinsik Informer usability review.

Rating: 8 out of 10

September 15, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Entrinsik Informer is our ERP reporting and data extraction tool used across two campuses. It allows users to get *their* data without relying on IT Services. There was a change made to the old method of retrieving data from our central ERP system so a replacement was sought out which turned out to be Entrinsik Informer. It's really good because you can export in a variety of formats. If there was one minor issue with it it would be the lack of an ability to format report output.

Pros

Setting up a report is quite easy for end users to manage
For the logging in process it interacts with our identity management system
It's very easy to download data into a PDF or spreadsheet/csv file.

Cons

Lack of customising a finished looking report
Doesn't work the same was as Crystal or Access reports ... the interface is different.
Customising a computed column is a little tricky.

Likelihood to Recommend

Entrinsik Informer works well as a data extraction tool and the end user doesn't need to know anything about writing queries. One question would be if a person is looking for a solution that they can give to higher management that is formatted and easily understood. This tool is lacking in that regard.

Verified User

Analyst in Finance and Accounting (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

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Powerfull cheap till with minor drowbacks

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

May 9, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Easy to use - no technical skills required to understand how to get a report with basic data that user needs. It is simple drag and drop which is very useful for many users.
Easy to maintain - for IT administrators updating the system is super easy. Once it is set up very little to no maintenance is required.
Easy to set up - When connecting to databases it is easy define the connection and the username and password. It is a bit tricky with unidata databases as you have to set up one "additional" subroutine to be initialized once the informer connects.
Super cheap - compared to other reporting tools this is like fraction of that cost with the same functionality.

Cons

It can [eat] your resources - if your query is big or got into some endless loop which is possible) it will use all RAM you dedicated it to a jetty server and it will make your CPU go to 100% which is bad if you are running other applications as it would have serious impact.
It is bundled with Jetty server - and Jetty server is not a very nice web server to work with and can be complicated. I really don't understand if they have a Java application why .war file wouldn't run on Tomcat that we already have in use so it requires additional software.
If number of reports is big it becomes very slow when loading main page and reports.
It does not have a limit on number of columns which is bad for everyday user in two ways: They think they can put 30+ columns and use it as report - who is going to read 30+ column report? Having 30+ columns will slow down the application for all users and eat all of your server resources.
It will potentially have a performance impact on unidata database when executing a large report. Number of fields should be limited.

Likelihood to Recommend

Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience