Session Notes: ShelbyQUERY, the Basics
One of the most frustrating parts of working with Shelby for me is the lack of options in Selections and Listings. There are so many times that I need information in a report that comes from a different module than the one I am in, and S&L just doesn’t give me the option to include that information. Or, it does have the ability but it’ll just take you 20-minutes to figure out how to get it.
So, in comes ShelbyQUERY. With this, I can run SQL statements on my database, using this helpful tool. It is over the heads of most of our people, and there is a definite learning curve. I have a slight advantage because I’ve done so much web programming using MySQL.
I thought it was so funny that the presenter of this session talked about how the user interface is so much more intuitive in this module than in the rest of Shelby. He’s right - the UI is easier to use and more intuitive here. The real funny part to me was in finding out that Shelby didn’t actually program this module - they license it from another company.
Here are a few helpful pieces of information when using ShelbyQUERY. When filtering data through the module, the wildcard is not an asterisk (*) like in the rest of the software. You can’t filter the Smith’s by using Sm*, instead the wildcard in QUERY is the percent sign (%). So, to filter the Smith’s, use Sm%.
Also when filtering, the question mark (?) is no good, instead it must be substituted with an underscore (_).
Finally, here’s some helpful information in understanding Shelby’s tables. For instance, GlobaFile information is not found in the “GF” table, it’s found in the “NA” table. Here’s the list:
| AM | Expense Amortization | MB | Membership | |
| AP | Accounts Payable | MG | Matching Gifts | |
| AR | Accounts Receivable | MI | Profiles used in Advanced Search | |
| BR | Bank Reconciliation | NA | GlobaFile (Names) | |
| CA | Cabinet Appointments | NU | Check-in | |
| CK | Check Express | PO | Purchase Order | |
| CM | Commemoratives | PR | Payroll | |
| CN | Contributions | RC | Resource Calendar | |
| DH | Deposits on Hand | RE | Receipting | |
| FA | Fixed Assets | RG | Registrations | |
| GH | Donors and Gifts | RM | Remittance | |
| GL | General Ledger | SE | Servant | |
| IN | Inventory | SG | Organizations/Groups | |
| IR | Insurance and Retirement | SS | System Tables | |
| LN | Loan Processing | ST | Statistics |
Happy query’ing to you all!

June 17th, 2007 at 11:19 am
For ever 1 Selections & Listings reports we now have 2 SQL reports deployed to dashboards. That is in addition to the Intranet reports (Sharepoint). Selectiongs & Listings is used only in three major situations:
Group Emails
Bulk Mail & Labels
Selecting records to update
I can honestly say that in 7 years of using Shelby no single innovation was better for us than the Dashboard. It literally gave me another 2 years before I have to spend energy or money going to a new system.