This was a Power Point created for presentation at UNC Cause 2013. It is about a in-house app created and implemented within Banner Self-Service for creating/updating course sections for future terms. The information is stored within Banner Tables.
2. Decisions, decisions...
Do we…
Manually enter from scratch
Create software to be installed each term
To Roll or not to roll, that is the question!
Grant INB access to departments for entry?
3. SO…what is the answer?
Wouldn’t it be nice if all data needed
to create the new course sections for
those future terms was on one user
friendly screen where designated
users could be limited to a window of
time and limited to just those
departments for which they were
responsible?
4. And wouldn’t it be nice if this user
friendly screen would insert/update
the Banner tables with this
information so manual entry/updating
by additional people could be
eliminated?
It needs to be a one stop shop!
5. Class Scheduler
Eliminates the manual entry by the
University Registrar’s Office.
Empowers the departments and gives
them the control.
Windows can be established.
Departmental schedulers established to
access only their departments courses.
Access through self-service that is very
user friendly and reduces data entry
errors.
6. What do we need?
New table – SZBTMES.
This allows the URO to maintain
the Standard Meeting Times for
standardization of the meet data
stored in the table SSRMEET.
25. The file Banner_SSB_Class_scheduler.zip
contains all the Objects and
documentation for Class
Scheduler. It is available on General
Administration’s FTP server:
sandbox.northcarolina.edu
Questions?
Editor's Notes
All institutions must plan their course schedules for the upcoming semesters. There are a couple of approaches to this and your institutions have probably tried all of these at one time or another and all of them have their drawbacks. These items give you an idea of where we’ve been.Manually enter from scratch – Several hardy individuals plus some backups would receive hard copies of whatever the academic departments preferred. These hard copies were never in the same format and they were never conducive to data entry. Most of the time these were developed on the computer of the administrative assistant from previous semesters and then some of the data was invalid. Those entering the information had been doing it long enough that they knew their stuff. They would begin by visually verifying the data and returning any hard copies to departments with questions. Once this was stage was complete then data entry would begin. After entering the new course sections, a report would be produced so the data entry could be verified. After verification (2-3 times), then hard copy reports were sent back to the departments for their verification and also so they could indicate any additions/deletions/updates. This went on for several months.Create software to be installed each term – At some point, in order to have uniformity, we developed a software in Fox Pro that allowed us to have some control over what was entered and the format of the output used for data entry. It was a simple data entry screen, with controls that guided the departments through the entry process. Once they were finished with their data entry they would print out a canned report that was returned to the Office of the University Registrar. This report was used by people to manually enter these course sections. This was a much cleaner process of receiving the raw data from the departments since it cut down on bad data and all of them were in the same format BUT it was still being entered manually which included the back and forth with the departments.To Roll or not to roll, that is the question! – With Banner, there is this wonderful process named SSRROLL (Term Roll). It enabled the URO to roll the course schedule information from fall to fall or spring to spring. It even has parameters, 42 of them, 38 of those parameters are pieces of data that you will need to decide if you want to roll that information or not; i.e. corequisites, degree attributes, restrictions, cross list data, components, rules, controls…..do you get the picture? It’s wonderful BUT it this also offers new challenges. The people in the departments will need to know what is now in the future term so they can determine what needs to be deleted/added/updated. When deciding whether or not to roll one must consider these things plus think about any changes that have occurred within the departments and will be effective in the future term. Things like departments who have merged or split causing changes in subject codes and course numbers. And what about organizational changes. You might have a department that was in the College of Arts and Sciences but is now in the Health and Human Performance.Grant INB access to departments for entry? One other thing we tried was granting access to individuals in the departments to SSASECT so they can do their own manual entry/changes for their course sections. This brought about other challenges. Granting them access that was JUST within a certain time frame was not possible in Banner Security so they either had access or they didn’t. The user also could not be limited to just their departments so this meant the departments were on the honor system. They were not allowed to change data (i.e. classroom space or section limits) for a course section outside of their departments AND they must limit their updates to the time frame allotted. Once that time was past they were to cease and desist. Guess how well that worked? Then there was that whole thing with the Banner INB forms…..required fields were on different forms and some of the values could be tricky so training had to be done for anyone doing this. The INB forms simply are not user friendly.
That is exactly what we did with creating and implementing the Class Scheduler. We removed the middle-man, the University Registrar’s Office. We have empowered the departments and given them control over entering, updating, and deleting their course sections for the future terms and, as they make these changes, this information is maintained in the Banner tables.A window of time can be established for the departments so they can do what they need to do within that window and then the URO can stop the flow of updates in order to solidify (Yea right!) the course sections for the new term and publish them for registration.The role of “scheduler” can be assigned to the department representatives. This role will allow them to have access to the Class Scheduler and to enter, update, and delete those course sections for the departments for which they have responsibility.The Class Scheduler is accessed through Banner Self-Service. It uses the Banner tables, including the validation tables, and is very user friendly. It incorporates the data needed to establish and update the course sections in this one place.Also, some rules have been place to reduce data entry errors, as in missing data that is needed.
To begin, we determined there were several things that we must set up before new course sections can be entered. We determined that two new tables were needed that would provide standardization within the course sections and they would also assist with ease of entry….i.e. less keystrokes.The first was the development of a new table so the URO could maintain Standard Meeting Times. i.e. – MWF from 8 am to 9 am. For the ease of scheduling classroom space, the departments are required to adhere to Standard Meeting Times as much as possible and this new table would provide a way for the schedulers to pick from the Standard Meeting Times.
A new INB form was created so the Standardized Meeting Times could be maintained.
It was determined that another new table was needed, SZBFTNT. Footnotes for course sections are stored in STVATTR (validation table).
The current table only allows for a description of 30 characters causing the use of a lot of abbreviations and cryptic explanations of footnotes. It houses all the footnotes, as well as, other codes used for course attributes. There is no way to associate effective term codes with a footnote, make it active or inactive, and once it is created it cannot be deleted. With all of this in mind, a new table was created, SZBFTNT, and a new INB form (SZAFTNT) was created so the information in this table could be maintained.
The new table (SZBFTNT) allowed for descriptions of the footnotes to be up to 450 characters in length, if that was something that was needed. It has a status code so it can be marked active or inactive and the footnote can be tied to the special approval codes (ssbsect_sapr_code). Upon entry of either the special approval code or the other, the other item will be entered.**Important Reminder** Any new footnotes created in this form MUST be entered in STVATTR since the Banner INB form SSADETL (Degree Program Attributes), which stores the footnotes at the section level uses this validation table to validate the data stored in the table SSRATTR.The data in both of these new tables, SZBTMES and SZBFTNT, is crucial to the operation and standardization of data in the Course Scheduler. Neither of these tables is term driven and they are used ONLY for the Scheduler.
Beginning and start dates were needed and these dates allowing data entry had to be termed based. So these term controls are set up by inserting entries in GTVSDAX. These entries place the control of the date ranges in control of the URO. Each term needs two entries: the start date and the end date. Without these term entries, the schedulers will not have access to enter/update/delete any course sections for that term code.
A way had to be established for the Departmental Schedulers to be given access to this self-service form. An entry of SCHD must be entered into the validation table STVFSTP. Then a record must be created in SIAINST – Faculty/Advisor Information, if it doesn’t already exist. In the Staff Type column the value SCHD is entered by the URO.
In addition to the staff type of SCHD the Departmental Schedulers must be identified in the Faculty College and Department block of SIAINST with the departments for which they have maintenance capabilities. Without the entries in this block of SIAINST the Departmental Scheduler will not be given a choice of departmental courses to select upon initial entry to the Course Scheduler.
How to use the Course Scheduler. We call our self-service Portal UNCGenie. You log into the Homepage as you would normally to do anything else.
On the main menu of the self-service, we added a new menu item using WebTailor called Academic Department Services.
Class Scheduling is where we are headed from here. So we click to enter.
At this point, you select a term to process and then select what department you want to process. The pull-down menu is based on the entries in the Faculty College and Department block of SIAINST.
A list of course sections for the term specified and the department selected will appear. From this point, the scheduler can click on a CRN to process or click on the “Add New Course Section” to add a new section for the term/department.
Once in the existing course section, the scheduler could return to the Summary List or…..
Or he/she could choose to modify or delete the course section. These buttons are at the bottom of the page.
When adding a new course section you be presented with the selection of the subject. In our ART department we have several subject codes to choose from. Simply make the selection and click “Add New Course Section”.
Warnings are built into the package so that data needed to create the new course section are entered.
This is the input screen…..upper section…..
…..the lower section…… Instead of showing this package to you this way I’d like to demonstrate it.
Those with access to this server can use an FTP Tool (i.e. WinSCP) to download the .zip file.
