A226-1 – Implementation Guide

Background

The PiL curriculum course A226-1 ACL Fundamentals contains a self-study guide directing
participants to complete certain sections of the ACL online training program. Unfortunately, owing to
licensing issues this training is no longer available to practitioners and will not become so again for
the foreseeable future. This paper has therefore been put together to suggest an alternative to the
ACL online training so that participants can get a grounding in ACL sufficient to prepare them for the
facilitator-led learning unit A226-2. Facilitators of A226-2 should be aware that participants may not
be familiar with all the terms used in that unit for this reason, and provide extra support as needed.

This document gives an outline of the content that is covered in the ACL tutor (a free online resource
which participants may still access) and how this may be supplemented by the other resources
available in A226-1.

The paper is split into two parts:

i.) Skills which participants can obtain from using the ACL Tutor alone
ii.) Subjects covered in the A226 course which are not covered in the ACL Tutor

Summary of findings:

The ACL Tutor is a useful resource which allows participants to cover the basic functions and
commands of the ACL software. Although certain functions that were referred to in A226-1 are not
included within the Tutor, it does allow participants to work through examples of tools and
applications within the software to become familiar with its key abilities. When used with
supplemental A226-1 handouts, participants will gain a good understanding of the functionality and
practical uses of ACL and will be prepared adequately for participation in A226-2.

Recommended actions:

Provide participants with the contents of A226-1 zip file, which consists of:

 A226-1 ACL V10 Fundamentals Participant Guide

 ACL Tutor.pdf

 Guide to importing data into ACL.pdf

 The Excel to ACL Cleanup guide.pdf

 Commonly used ACL commands.doc

 ACL COMMANDS USER GUIDE.pdf

Refer facilitators of the facilitator-led learning unit A226-2 to this document and the zip file so they
understand participants’ knowledge level.
UNDERSTANDING OF ACL TUTOR AND A226 COURSE

i.) Skills which participants can obtain from using the ACL Tutor alone

Background to ACL Tutor – ACL Tutor uses the example of ‘Metaphor Corporations’ to work through
examples covered in the Tutorial. The data provided in the Tutorial is designed to be similar to that
of a real life client, with various searches, filters etc used to work through examples and practical
application of the software.

Topics covered

Chapter Page Number Topic covered Useful resources from

Number A226-1

1 6-8 Planning your analysis of data:

 How to plan your preliminary
investigation
 General tips to consider when  Participant Resource
organising a new ACL project
e.g. Eliminating errors from data
etc.

2 10-16 Preliminary examination of data

 Count Records function
 Participant Resource
 Statistics and profile commands
 Look for duplicate records
 ACL Commands user
 Analyse Total fields function
Guide
 Quicksort function
 Applying the filter

3 22 - 26 Creating a project in ACL project: Guide to importing

 Importing data files into ACL as data in ACL
tables Excel to ACL cleanup
guide

4 27 - 31 Check and verify the data type:

 Correct type and format
 View and edit definitions in a
 Participant Resource
table
 Verify Commands
 Add and edit project notes

4 33 - 39 Analysing data:
 Filter command
 Participant Resource
 Edit/Table layout function to
locate records
 ACL Commands User
 Filter by size of transaction
Guide
 Export numbers to a text file
(Data Export function)
 Chapter Page Number Topic covered Useful resources from
Number A226-1
5 42 - 48 Continuation of data analysis:
 Summarise totals for each sub
category of data  ACL Commands user
 Isolate transactions by guide
category (BETWEEN and
ALLTRIM functions)  Commonly used
 Isolate particular data types ACL commands
(MATCH function)
 Classify command

6 50 - 56 Further data analysis:  ACL Commands user

 Join and relation commands to guide
allow us to compare and
combine tables  Commonly used
ACL commands
6 57 - 62 Further data analysis:  ACL Commands user
 Extract function guide
 Creating a standard ACL report
 Commonly used
ACL commands

7 63 - 75 Continuation of data analysis: Most of these

 Organising your ACL project functions (but not all)
 Combine and Verify functions are covered in:
 Join function
 Relation function  ACL Commands user
 Extract and append function guide
 Export function
 Merge function  Commonly used
 Check for Duplicates function ACL commands

ii.) Subjects covered in the A226 course which are not covered in the ACL Tutor

The following course content made up the objectives of the A226 training module. A discussion of
content within ACL Tutor is given below:

 Define the terms that are associated with ACL – Many of the topics and terms covered in
A226-1 are included within the ACL Tutor e.g. Duplicates, Classify, Verify, Count etc. As we no
longer have access to the content that was covered in the online program, a full listing of the
topics that are NOT covered in the ACL tutor is not available. However, using the ACL tutor in
combination with the Participant Resource, the ‘ACL Commands User Guide’ and the
‘Commonly Used ACL Commands’ Guide will give a good level of coverage and explanation.
Those discussed in section i.) above are covered explicitly in the ACL Tutor.

 Use the Analyse and Data ACL commands – See above. While not all commands and
functions are covered by the ACL tutor alone, using it in combination with the Participant
Resource, the ‘ACL Commands User’ guide and the ‘Commonly Used ACL Commands’ guide
should give a reasonable level of coverage. See analysis above in i.) to determine those
functions covered explicitly within the ACL Tutor.