News - Technology Center

Work Complete

Applicant Review

This cycle was focused on building out our Application Data Warehouse data set in preparation for Deleting Application Data.

(Complete) Red Flag, both short tag and note, are included in CSV spreadsheet downloads.
(Fixed) Reviewer recommendation now correctly saves and refreshes the current view. When a review entered their admit recommendation the input was saved, but the old recommendation still showed on the current page.
(Complete) Add database schema foreign key rules at the database level. Previously record relationships were managed exclusively at the application level. Having additional checks enforced by the database gives us extra security when we implement Application Delete.
(Complete) Update fields in Applicant Review to handle graduated and undergraduate applications more consistently. Remove dead fields with missing or bad data.
(Complete) Import additional demographic data from Grad School and UW SDB. Our Application Data Warehouse is populated from Applicant Review operational records. In order to populate the warehouse with demographic fields for historical reporting, those fields have to be part of the operation record.
(Complete) Add scheduled jobs that load demographic data and populate the Application Data Warehouse data set.

Courses

(Complete) Change default SCH value for new course release records from 85 to 100.

Deleting Application Data

We are implementing a purge process that will delete old application data from the Applicant Review database. This follows the UW Record Retention policy.

Application records will be deleted the quarter after an applicant applied to start a College of Education program. For example if an applicant applied for our Teacher Ed program starting 2020 Summer, their application information will be deleted at the start of 2020 Autumn.

This delete timing lets us use the full application record to support recruitment, admissions, and advising.

Enrolled Students

If an applicant is admitted and matriculates they will have a Student record that persists through a separate retention policy. Specifically identified application material will become part of that Student Record (examples: Certification records, CV, or Statement of Purpose, Application rubric scores).

Application Data Warehouse

We have built an Application Data Warehouse data set that includes high-level de-indentified information about historical applications. We will be able to use this data set to provide aggregate reporting about application history (example: in 2015 we had X doctoral applicants, Y were admitted, and Z enrolled). But this data set will not include specific applicant identities or any of the administrative details of applicant processing.

Test Scores

We receive test scores from testing agencies that is displayed within applications. However this is a distinct record with its own retention policy. When we delete an Application the test score data provided by the testing agency is left intact. It may not be visible in the system because there is no application. However if a person applied to the college again at a later time the agency test data could once again be matched to the new Application and Person and be displayed in the system.

Cycle 98

2/29/2019 — 3/1/2019

Work Complete

Appreview

(90%, awaiting owner approval) Add Decline Note to Applicant Review detail page. This is a paragraph text field where COE faculty and staff can record information about why an applicant declined our admission offer. This field is meant to supplement the Grad Schools structured survey with unstructured feedback gathered in conversations with the applicants.
(Complete) Add GPA Exception request to undergraduate applications in the Apply Portal. Provide undergrads applying to ECFS and ECO an opportunity to address GPA below the program’s minimum requirement.

Courses

(Complete) Add Wildcard management tool. This tool allows curriculum coordinator to review the wildcard titles for a specific curriculum abbreviation and course number and make adjustments including add wildcard, delete wildcard, merge wildcards, rename wildcard, change tags, and bulk assign wildcard title to course offerings.
(Complete) Rework Course Tag tool. The new Course Tag page makes it clearer that tags are applied to the recurring curriculum (Course record) and not to a specific offering. The tool provides simpler add and remove function with a brief local log of changes that can be used to undo changes.
(Complete) Clean up Courses layout and styling. Courses database was built with a very small font-size that is not ideal for today’s common client devices. Increased overall base font-size. Set font stack to use client’s default font (e.g. on a Mac you get the MacOS default font: San Francisco, on Windows you get Segoe UI, etc).
(Complete) [Infrastructure] Final purge of Prototype.js library. This was an abandoned JavaScript library that older features were based on. Removal required rebuild of the report filters widget, enrollment detail tooltips, and modal dialogs.
(Complete) [Infrastructure] Add VueJS to project. This is a modern JavaScript library that allows for more sophisticated user interfaces.
(Complete) [Infrastructure] Add Bootstrap 4.3 style sheet to project allowing courses to use this on an opt-in basis. Primary initial uses are utility classes and flexbox layouts.

Cycle 97

2/4/2019 – 2/15/2019

Work Complete

Courses

Changed the definition of “Evening Class” to courses that start at 4:30 PM or later for the meeting view report. The hover title on that report shows actual meeting times.

Hiring

(Complete) Once a request gets Department Approval changes must be submitted through HR contact. This will ensure that changes are properly communicated and any re-approvals requested.
(Complete) “Ask for Change” button supports this new workflow. Ask for Change is just a customized Approval Request that gets routed to the correct HR reviewer.
(Complete) Sent-Back feature has been simplified. A Sent-Back request goes back to the Requesting Phase where the original requester can edit the form. Once the request has been updated they will submit it back for Department Approval.

Student

(Complete) Fixed issue causing extra generated placements. Student database generates placements implied by student’s enrollment in specific courses. When the placement was an Academic Year placement and the student enrolled in triggering courses in multiple quarters duplicate placements were created.

Cycle 96

1/22/2019 – 2/1/2019

Work Complete

Hiring

(Complete) New header and menu. Move menu button to far left and W logo to far right. This new layout works more intuitively and improves accessibility.
(Complete) Allow four decimal places in budget split field. This is the same precision allowed in UW Workday.
(Complete) Open approvals can be deleted. If a user requests an approval and then decides that approval request was a mistake, they can “Cancel” the approval request. Approvals can be canceled by the user who requested it or by a user with admin role. Approvals that have been responded to cannot be canceled. Approvals that are automatically generated by the system (HR and Budget approvals) cannot be canceled. Canceling a Department approval un-submits the request.
(Complete) Added Bookmarks to NARF. Users can bookmark appointment requests they are interested in tracking, there is a bookmark widget at the top of the appointment detail page. Click start to bookmark, click text to add a note. Bookmark page shows a user’s personal bookmarks. System automatically adds bookmarks for a user when they submit an appointment request or provide Department approval.
(Fixed) Workday and Letter dates would always save as today’s date. This is fixed, when user enters a different date it is saved and displayed as the date appointment was entered in Workday.
(Complete) The home page has a table-of-content shortcut bar when the home page includes three or more workflow based sections. For example the TOC links would let the user quickly scroll to the Workday section. These TOC links are generally displayed for back-office user roles who have many workflow sections on their home page.
(Complete) The home page sections based on steps in workflow can be collapsed to hide various tables.

Person

(Complete) Data source name weights respected for Legal Name field. Our college databases update from many sources which sometimes provide conflicting name information. We handle this by giving data sources name weights and only change a local person name from sources with greater weight. We are now receiving both preferred names and legal names from multiple sources so this existing name weight logic had to apply to the Legal Name field.

Cycle 95

12/27/2018 – 1/18/2019

Work Complete

Applicant Review

(Complete) Displays applicant preferred name entered in MyGrad application. (If there is conflicting data from UW Student preferred name and MyGrad Applicant preferred name, student preferred name is displayed.)
(Complete) Capture additional fields from MyGrad application into local database. Theses are largely demographic fields to support IR reporting.
(Complete) Added Transcript Review report. This is a workflow report for student services. It lists applications that have one or more transcripts where the OSS evaluation of degree and GPA have not yet been entered.

Courses

(Complete) Refine download for faculty activity report. Be more explicit about projected and actual enrollment numbers and SCH allocation.

Hiring

(Fixed) It was possible to submit Department Approval form after request had been canceled.
(Complete) Revised HR Review screen to add view of fields that need to be referenced during that process.
(Fixed) UW Student numbers can now be searched from the worker form using leading zero padding.
(Fixed) Now able to set a preferred contact email for a worker record. System was keeping email from shared person data over user input.
(Fixed) Same course release records were being displayed for current academic year and next academic year.
(Fixed) Added JavaScript polyfills to keep application compatible with IE11.

Test Scores

(Fixed) NES test scores displayed in Applicant Review did not include “NES” in their description.

Infrastructure

(Complete) Set up work queues for “educ” project. This is a system for handling long-running or brittle tasks asynchronously from web requests. Improves user experience and stability of system. Setup includes management software on server to keep alive worker processes.
(Complete) Set up system to work with external error reporting API.
(Complete) Removed project requirements for Excel sheet reader. This is no longer used after recent test score import revision.

Cycle 94

12/10/2018 – 12/21/2018

Work Complete

Appreview

(Complete) Bookmark note length is extended to 100 characters. When user enters more than 100 characters an error message is displayed warning that their input will be truncated.
(Complete) Remove Scholarship review inputs from reviewer recommendation form. Scholarship review is now handled in a separate process and we want reviewer interface simplified to necessary fields.
(Complete) Always use application email when communicating with applicant. 99% of the time this is what happened, but in the rare case where a person was a COE Student before they were a COE Applicant and they stopped using their UW email address, email could go to the wrong address.

Courses

(Complete) Remove outdated options from room needs inputs. These options have less meaning than they once did and may have slowed room assignment when sent to Registrar.

Hiring

(Fixed) Notes were not showing in the Hours & Pay section of the appointment detail page.
(Fixed) Add Note button was available for new Course records, but not while editing existing courses.
(Complete) Refactored Courses tool to use same structure and shared components from Hours & Pay tool and Budgets tool. When request has 0 courses, course add form is activated automatically.
(Fixed) Adding an ad-hoc request for “Fiscal” approval moves the entire appointment request back to the “Fiscal” stage.
(Complete) Added search links by worker and course to the college’s Student and Courses databases.
(Complete) HR Review form has “Approve” as default choice in Approval input. User needs to change option to Send-Back or defer response.
(Complete) Letter stage is used or not based on Position type configuration. New “Position Types” configuration is available to users with admin role. Users can set Letter to Yes/No to use or skip the Send Letter stage. All Position types with “fixed-fee” pay have been set to Letter = No.
(Fixed) Person merge strategy was too cautious when records had match in one ID field, but another ID field was blank. Now system will merge { uwnetid: xyz, studentno: 12345 } with { uwnetid: xyz, studentno: null }.
(Complete) Added a fluent test rigging system for request staging. This new interface allows unit test setup to be concise and descriptive.
(Fixed) Editing help message for positions was clearing their boolean settings. This bug is fixed and configuration is corrected in all environments.

Student

(Complete) Extend year options for report filters. This range was determined automatically, but toward the end of a calendar year the upcoming year is of interest. Starting September 1, the system makes sure that the upcoming year is an option in the filter list.

Test Scores

(Complete) Implement native file import for Pearson test scores (edTPA, NES, WEST-B, WEST-E). This tool allows for upload and preview through the web interfaces and substantially reduces test score load times.
(Complete) Test scores are matched to college database persons (students or applicants) when the test score is loaded instead of during a separate process. Separate match routine had the benefit of rechecking scores for new matches, but takes substantial amount of time to run.
(Complete) Verify that all Pearson test scores properly capture Pass/Fail evaluation with specific scores.

Infrastructure

(Published 1.0) Added a shared utility library “ImportKit”. This library provides tooling for stream reading, record extraction, and value parsing strategies.

March 2019

COE Drupal editors’ interface was updated with a new, cleaner theme. Fields with a purely administrative function have been hidden from editors to decrease clutter and increase usability.

The updated COE Technology center site has been launched.

COE Drupal site simplification:

Consolidated redundant content types: CME, L4L, EPSC, Smart all now Basic Page content type
Disabled unused modules
Eliminated majority of roles, converted all roles to MyCOE, which can edit all content but not publish

Redesigned COE Core Faculty Directory

February 2019

COE Drupal

Added Program Finder to Leadership landing page to COE site

Add Faculty Spotlights section to COE site

Cycle 93

11/27/2018 – 12/7/2018

Work Complete

Hiring

(Complete) Add a Workday Revisit Date. HR has the option to add a Revisit date when recording that an appointment request was entered in Workday. When the Revisit date occurs the request returns to the Workday stage in they system and a new notification email is sent.
(Complete) System displays configured help text on Compensation Details field for each Position type. The help text is editable by HR team through web UI settings.
(Complete) System will request at least one fiscal approval, even if no budgets are added by original requester. The default budget approver is configured in settings.
(Complete) Budget and Hours & Pay period edit tools are updated to prevent “Continuing” when an edit was in process. Previously it was possible to start adding or editing a budget, period, or note and click the “Continue” button to move to the next step, which would lose any unsaved changes.
(Complete) Appointment request tables on home page are sortable by clicking column headings.

Person

(Complete) Added links to the request authorization form.
(Fixed) Previous positions imported nightly from EDW were generating duplicate records with each update. Resolved matching bug and cleaned out bad records.

Student

(Fixed) Check for missing “issued_year” field in certification data. This field is automatically calculated based on certificate issued date. Verifying that previous fix was successful.