The Lab's IRIS Data Warehouse is a powerful application for tracking budgets, costs, compiling reports from various databases and checking records. Last year, version 2 of IRIS was released. IRIS version 2 is a new web site for accessing institutional administrative data and reports, designed to replace the original IRIS and the IRIS Web Subscription Reports system. IRIS v2 is a functional superset of these previous systems, and has many new features to make reporting easier. The new version also allows access by employee user name LDAP password (the same ones used for Netscape email).

Also available in IRIS is a cost browser - a helpful tool for doing quick lookups and drilldowns on projects and resource categories for the latest actual cost data. Most reports are available in PDF, rich text and html formats and can be downloaded in Microsoft Office applications.

Among the data available by name, project number, division and other criteria are travel reports, property records, space charges purchase records, labor charges, telephone expenses, budgets and more. IRIS also allows PIs to review the status of their project costs and to see all charges made against a project number. In all, some 75 different reports can be generated from the IRIS database. You can also use IRIS to search and order items from stores and the Boise catalog.

"It's a really great way to keep track of expenses," said Ali Belkacem, chair of the Computing and Communications Services Advisory Committee. "IRIS is a powerful tool for accessing a wide range of information, some of which would be very time-consuming to track down otherwise."