News

November 2022 – April 2023

Applicant Review

• (Complete) Add styled email template to emails sent from the system.
• (Complete) Show missing reviewer authorizations. When a reviewer is added to an application or to a committee and they don’t have access to the system a message is displayed next to their name. This message links to a help page that explains how to get authorized.
• (Complete) Search looks in legal name field as well as preferred name.
• (Complete) Update report filter for degrees to allow focus on any specific COE degree, e.g. EdS.

Budgets

• (In Progress) Import new UW Financial Transformation (Workday financial) fields into budgets database for planning and comparison. This is a step toward converting TREQ and NARF to Workday worktags.

Effort Tools

• (Complete) Rebuild the default view and data entry tools in our effort planning systems (CL-Effort, HC-Effort) so they are easier to read and simplify data entry. It now automatically breaks planning into periods whenever there are allocation changes.
• (Fixed) Adding date parameters to budget report was not working.

OnCourse

• (Complete) Make proposed Course Releases more visible. Course Releases that need dean approval(s) show up in area reports, but their SCH are not included in totals until they are approved.
• (Fixed) Summary fields like instructors and meetings were not always refreshed after a local section plan was updated from the UWTS version.

Student

• (Complete) Add Graduation Planning tools and reports.
• (Complete) Add breadcrumb trail navigation to most pages in Student.
• (Complete) Add new undergraduate Education Studies major (EDUC S) to scope and report filters.
• (Complete) Add option to see meeting times within Current Registration.
• (Complete) Show final doctoral committee members for completed students.
• (Complete) Update report filter for degrees to allow focus on any specific COE degree, e.g. EdS.
• (Complete) Fix issue where we would occasionally lose access to a student’s current enrollment and transcript. This was caused by change to their identifying RegID field.
• (Complete) Previously we had added current advisor to student lists which caused substantial slow downs in some reports and maintenance processes. This was refactored so we pull in the current advisor view only when it is needed.
• (Fixed) Page navigation on report views with > 500 records was not working correctly.

TREQ

• (Complete) Prompt for meal times in trip orders. This helps make sure the correct reimbursement rate is used.

Infrastructure

• (Complete) Fake data for testing and demonstration. We implemented a system that replaces live data with fictitious records in most of our college databases. This feature can be activated (on request) in our development or test environment.
• (Complete) Application menu (top left hamburger) in all college databases only loads when it is triggered by the user.
• (Complete) Administrative impersonate feature which is used for testing and support is now consistently implemented across all college databases.
• (In Progress 40%) Store user uploaded attachments in secure cloud storage instead of local file system. Started with OnCourse syllabi as proof of concept.
• (Complete) Upgrade to Laravel 10. Framework and library updates for all projects.
• (Complete) Implement log collection and navigation tool. Queryable view of college database user activity.
• (Complete) Implement central error reporting and tracking for all college databases.

August 15, 2022 – October 7, 2022

Applicant Review

• (Complete) Added application triage tools that will help Student Services and program administrators complete check-in of application material so reviewers get complete files.
• (Complete) Added help article for Apply Portal that documents system and real-world workflows.
• (Complete) Refine menu and report names for Undergraduate Applications Started and Graduate Applications Started. These reports are similar, but started applications are from different systems and have different properties and workflows.
• (Complete) Add new program names to report filters. “Teacher Education and Teacher Learning for Justice” (EDUC 19) and “Culturally Sustaining Education” (EDUC 26). Also added these in Student database.
• (Fixed) The new Unsubmitted Graduate Applications report was causing new application processing to be skipped. This resulted in missing review committees and initial certification. Fixed and missed applications have been reprocessed.

Faculty Mentoring

• Started a new system to help faculty track mentoring relationships. This system was demonstrated during faculty retreat and will go live soon.

NARF

• (Complete) Automatically search for matching student records on student appointment requests. Highlight students found in self-sustaining programs who may need special handling.
• (Complete) Added a Department field (Miller, Cultivate, Haring, CEL) to appointment requests. This field will be completed by HR/P team during HR Review step and will be forward to Onboarding request in Technology ticket system.
• (Complete) Change note times to absolute (10/10/22 10:19 AM) instead of relative (2 hours ago).
• (Complete) Add download link to the authorized user list.

OnCourse

• (Complete) Only Curriculum Manage can accept changes from the UWTS data to the local plan. Planners can still edit the plan using existing edit tools to make it correct.
• (Complete) Added Course Variant Title and Summer Term fields to UWTS Entry screen.
• (Complete) Sections that are added to faculty course releases can be marked as canceled. If sections are offered Area Chair may add appointment type of expected replacement.
• (Complete) Course Release report now has tabs that show releases waiting for specific Dean approval.
• (Complete) Person merge tool can be used to search for similar names using wildcards, no longer limited to records with exactly the same name.
• (Fixed) Empty search request returns nothing instead of everything. What did the Zen Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor? Make me one with everything.

Rooms

• (Complete) Rework the MRBS user management tool to support bulk editing. Show whether user has current COE appointment.

Student

• (Complete) Add tool to support maintenance of ELS Minor group in UW Time Schedule. This allows registration to specific courses without add codes for students in the ELS Minor.
• (Fixed) Cleared up several issues with the Mentor Payment report and moved it to the Placements menu.
• (Fixed) Resolved a bug where specific reports could appear un-styled if you used the browser back button to return to them.

TREQ

• (Complete) When an order gets an automatic Department Approval, because there was a Pre-Authorization order, make sure the automatic approval is created and labeled correctly.
• (90 %) Add food form and food policy statement so requesters no longer have to complete paper food forms along with orders.
• (Complete) Added report and alert of people who need access. These are people who are assigned tasks, but could not be automatically authorized.
• (Fixed) Faculty with end date still appearing in My Faculty.

Infrastructure

• (Complete) The new hire Data Agreement has been updated. Our agreement is simplified and focused. We also send new employees to the UW Data Agreement operated by the CISO.
• (Complete) Copy to clipboard moved to modern, more secure, browser API.

July 1, 2022 – August 12, 2022

Applicant Review

• (Complete) Better large upload warning and errors. Uploading attachments to Applicant Review or Student that were larger than the system’s 5MB limit used to trigger generic 500 errors. We have added validation that warns the user immediately when a large file is selected and provide a specific error message if the large file is uploaded anyway.
• (Complete) New report showing graduate applications started. Like other reports this can be filtered by specific programs. This is based on new web service provided by the Graduate School.
• (Complete) New implementation of decision entry. This new version makes decision status plainly visible to reviewers and administrators. Additionally, it opens new workflows for decision entry and prepares data for use in Slate to support recruiting efforts.
• (Complete) Added a separate add-on permission for entering provisional decisions.
• (Complete) Converted EDUC project (includes Applicant Review and Student) to system font stack. This font strategy attempts to prioritize the user’s OS font (Windows font or MacOS font) which provides a more modern and scalable application feel.
• (Complete) User main role is now radio buttons enforcing a single role selection per user. Add-on roles are still checkboxes where multiple can be selected.
• (Complete) Remove explanation text field from Apply Portal prerequisite step.
• (Fixed) The bookmark component is fixed so the dialog box text is aligned left.

Budgets

• (Complete) Add tooling to track budget reconciliation work.

CL Effort Tool

• (Complete) Added report filter checkbox which allows user to see ended allocations.
• (Complete) Remove project leads from change approval workflow.

NARF

• (Fixed) Onboarding request form formats empty values correctly for FreshService API.

OnCourse

• (Complete) Room needs missing can be downloaded as CSV spreadsheet. This report provides a list of instructors on sections where no room needs have been provided.
• (Complete) When adding joint sections in the Plan a Quarter tool both the added section and its sibling section will be updated to display as joint sections.
• (Fixed) The “Not Online” report filter now correctly includes all sections with that status. Sections with non-standard coding were hidden when that report filter was active.
• (Fixed) Person records created from Student Web Service has first and last name assigned correctly.
• (Complete) It is now possible to search for two letter person names. Previously two letter search terms were only compared to section letters.
• (Fixed) Selecting two tags in report filters no longer causes sections to be listed twice.
• (Fixed) Accepting open credits (1-25) from UWTS data to local plan was broken.

Student

• (Complete) Registration search on student detail page now searches two quarters: the current in-progress quarter and the next upcoming quarter.
• (Complete) Refactored student completes to simplify record and eliminate conflicting values. Features added over time (program complete with no degree, expected completes) had introduced duplicate status properties that caused incorrect behaviors in reporting.
• (Complete) The completed student report now excludes non-COE majors. Student’s non-COE majors are visible when you view the student detail page, but the report list page only includes rows for COE major.

TREQ

• (Complete) Refine food policy tool: improve description and instructions, display warning on non-food budget numbers in red.
• (Fixed) Clicking “User” label in user edit form now check the matching radio checkbox.

Infrastructure

• (Complete) Upgraded all projects to Laravel 9.

We’ve changed this blog post title to be clearer: “College Database Updates”. This post is a catch up, focusing on significant user facing changes over several months.

Applicant Review

• Added Apply Portal question for current or transfering UW student.
• Applicant can delete a school / institution when creating their Apply Portal application.
• Applicant Intent (whether an admitted applicant intends to enroll) is available as a report filter.
• Refine report filter for decisions, add “Final Decision Entered”.
• Add report dashboards with funnel counts (applications > decisions > admits > enrolls) to home page and report pages. These dashboard can optionally display year-to-year comparisons.

CL OFEE (Effort)

• New system launched that helps Cultivate Learning plan, review, and approve staff payroll allocations across various grant budgets. The tool is based on the college’s Faculty Effort tool, but has a different change and approval workflow.
• Added support for cross unit (non-COE) budgets.

Budgets

• Change user authorizations so faculty always have access to review their effort reports.
• Add Approval All shortcut to effort reports for cases where small changes are made to a report and fiscal manager does not want to re-collect approvals.

NARF

• Send email notifications when an appointment request is canceled.
• Send email to HR/P administrator when a person is added as an Approver, but the system cannot automatically authorize them.
• Add “Advanced Search” system to NARF which allows for multiple custom reporting workflows.
• Add CSV download link to reports in NARF.
• Approve on Behalf is disabled for HR Approvals. Only user with HR role can provide this approval.
• Adding a Budget Number to a request causes the “Approver for No Budgets” to be removed.

OnCourse

• Fix authorization checks for editing sections. Authorization checks were applied when deciding whether to show a user links and form, but also needed to be applied consistently to post update requests.

Students

• People set as an advisor in Applicant Review will automatically be added as potential advisors in the Student Database.
• Update all reports so that a count of records is included at the top of the data table.

TREQ

• Added a link from My Orders labeled “Show More” that provides 2 years of the current user’s order history. My Orders on home page includes 90 days.
• Added Project Owner as a search field in the Advanced Search tool.
• Reference Numbers (e.g. Ariba reference) can be deleted.
• Added validation of numeric values only to the Quantity field in Items form.
• Current biennium is a setting managed by system administrator, affects budget suggestions.
• Added CSV download to Pending Tasks report.

Infrastructure

• All systems updated to use common error reporting system. This provides development team faster, proactive information about errors experienced by users.
• Add input length validation to many fields across all systems. Older versions of our underlying databases would silently truncate input that was too long, our current database version now treats this as an error which is a safer response. We have gradually been moving this validation and error messages to our many existing forms.
• Implement a logging system that automatically detects server environment and web request vs scheduled jobs and adjust logging strategies.