Introduction
Bud’s Custom Data Exports feature puts your data directly at your fingertips. With a simple, intuitive portal, you can easily template and export Data Warehouse fields right within the Bud platform, no third-party tools or specialist BI knowledge required.
This guide walks you through what’s included in the new feature and how to make the most of it, empowering your organisation to make smarter, data-driven decisions with ease.
A webinar introduction of this feature can be found here
User Role
- All users with Custom Data Exports - Administrator turned on. More details on enabling the Feature and Assigning Permissions can be found here.
What is Custom Data Exports?
Custom Data Exports lets you easily select fields and apply basic filters from the Data Warehouse within the Bud platform, allowing quick CSV exports. It complements our other reporting tools, offering three options to meet your data needs.
With the Custom Data Exports feature you are able to:
- Select exactly what fields you want to export from our default templates
- Apply common filters to fine-tune your data
- Export your data to csv
- Save and reuse custom report templates to access common queries efficiently
- Share templates with colleagues and control access to your data
How to use Custom Data Exports
Default Templates vs My Templates
When you first land on the Custom Data Exports Portal, Administrators will be able to see two sections. "My Templates" and "Default Templates". People with the user role (when implemented) will only see the "My Templates" option.
Default Templates
This is your starting point within Custom Data Exports. Our predefined default templates list all fields available in a simple to use, pre-mapped state. This format ensures that data exports are easily run and complicated areas such as data relationship modelling is done for you! A full breakdown of fields available can be found here however a summary of the templates currently available are;
Learning plan overview
This template provides a summary of key learner and programme details at a learning plan level. It includes core learner data, employer information, programme milestones, and aggregated progress metrics.
Summary of fields available
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Activity Submissions
This template provides a detailed view of individual learner activity submissions at the submission level, including submission details, status, feedback, and third-party content where applicable. Running this report without filters may return a significantly large volume of records and take longer to load.
Summary of fields available
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Applications
This template captures detailed information about learner applications, including basic personal details, qualifications, employment status, and application progress. It also tracks document sign-offs, compliance checks, and key enrolment information. This template is at an application level.
Summary of fields available
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Learner Details
This template provides detailed learner-level information for reporting and learner management. It includes core personal details along with demographic, qualification, and background data not available in other reports.
Summary of fields available
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Activities
This template provides a detailed view of individual learner activities at the activity level, including learner, employer, programme and activity specific details for monitoring and tracking. Running this report without filters may return a large volume of records and take longer to load.
Summary of fields available
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Reviews
This template provides a record of learner reviews at the review level, including scheduling, completion status, participant details and signatures. Running this report without filters may return a large volume of records and take longer to load.
Summary of fields available
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Simply select the template that best suits you needs and click "Customise" to start Selecting Fields and filters
My templates
This section shows all templates created within your organisation that you can access. Templates appear here once saved on the preview page. Use the search and filter options to find templates easily.
You can export any template by clicking customise, which opens the fields and filters page. Changes made here will show in your export but aren’t saved unless you update the template via the preview page’s save option. See the Selecting Fields and filters and Preview your data and Saving templates sections for more details.
As a Reporting administrator, you can delete, edit, and manage template privacy. Learn more about Template management here.
Selecting Fields and Filters
When clicking customise on a report, you will be taken to the fields and filters page. This will allow you to apply any filters to your dataset and select from the available list of fields to export.
Applying filters
We offer various filters to help refine your query and simplify template setup. We strongly recommend using filters to speed up your dataset processing. Since this feature connects to the Data Warehouse, not applying filters returns all rows in your organisation's dataset. This can be very large, especially for activities, reviews, and submissions, causing long export times or exceeding row limits in tools like Excel.
Date filters
The first filter options are date filters, which vary depending on the template used. For example, these are the dates available in a Learning Plan template.
We offer three types of date filter intervals:
Between – Select a fixed from and to date. Saved templates will always use this exact range.
In the next / In the last – Define a period by entering a number and choosing a time unit from:
- Days
- Calendar Months
- Calendar Years (1 Jan - 31 Dec)
- Academic Years (1 Aug - 31 Jul)
For example the entry in the below image will return all learners with a planned end of practical period in the last 3 academic years (2023/2024, 2024/2025 & 2025/2026)
The header will always display the date range you have selected to help identify the range input.
Templates saved with "in the last" and "in the next" intervals will always run a relative query and as such will always be based on "today". For example, if I have saved a template with the above filter, running it the following year will pull 2024/2025, 2025/2026 & 2026/27. Date intervals are always inclusive of "Today" so will always use the current day, month or year as the first entry.
For a quick way of clearing these filters, there is a button to allow you to clear any filters applied.
Other filters
The second filters section displays other filters that might be useful in relation to the data you're pulling. For example, the below image shows for Activities.
The first option, available in all reports, lets you export data for either "My learners" or "All learners".
My learners filters the data to show only learners where the user running the export is the primary trainer.
All learners shows all learners in the Data Warehouse, regardless of the user exporting.
There are also Boolean filters to quickly include or exclude items like exempted activities or deleted submissions, with choices: "Yes", "No", and "Show All".
For example, "Is Exempt" - selecting Yes shows only exempted activities, No shows only non-exempt, and Show All includes both.
Dropdown filters (such as learning plan status and programme type) will allow you to select from the available options to filter the dataset.
This image shows selections on "In Progress, Withdrawal Requested and Break Requested" within the learning plan status filter. This will output data filtered to only those three learning plan statuses.
An absence of any selections in these dropdowns will not apply any filter and as such will return all rows. If you are ever unsure about having these selected, we have added a button to allow you to clear all filters currently added.
Selecting Fields
Each default template provides data related to its area. Fields are grouped into sections for easy navigation. To include a field in the export, just check its box; uncheck to remove it. Use the toggle at the top of each section to select or deselect all fields in that group.
At least one field needs to be selected to progress to the next page.
Please note: navigating back to the previous page will clear any changes you have made.
Preview your data and Saving templates
Once satisfied with your selections, go to the preview page at the bottom of the screen. Here, you can save a new template, overwrite an existing one, check the query, and export data.
The preview shows your applied filters and fields for a final review before saving or exporting. To make changes, click the "Back" button to return to the selections page; your previous choices will be retained for easy editing.
If you're satisfied with the preview, click export to run the query. This will generate a CSV file and download to your local machine. Export time depends on data size; large queries may take longer. Do not refresh or leave the page during export, or it will stop.
You can also save templates on this page.
"Save as new template" lets you name your template and set visibility as Private or Shared.
Private – visible only to Custom Data Export Administrators.
Shared – visible to both Custom Data Export Administrators and Users (when implemented).
Click Save As to save your template, which will appear in "My Templates".
"Update current template" appears when customising an existing template. You cannot change the template name but can adjust visibility and save other changes. Click Save when satisfied with your template..
Saving and exporting are independent actions and can be done in any order.
Template Management
Here are some common housekeeping tasks you might want to do:
Deleting a template
Click Delete on the template in the My Templates section. A confirmation pop-up will appear. Once confirmed, the template will be permanently deleted. Please note, deleted templates cannot be restored.
Updating fields or filters in a template
To update a template, click Customise in My Templates, make your changes, then save them using the "Update current template" option on the preview page.
Changing template visibility
To change a template's visibility, click Customise, go to the preview page, adjust the visibility dropdown under "Update current template," then save your changes.