Oct 3 – Oct 14, 2016
This cycle was mostly focused on Student 2 work. We also have work in progress for new RSVP functionality that will run in the Recruitment database. This will allow people to sign up for events directly in our CRM system and save us the effort of importing data from spreadsheets.
One of our big goals with Student 2 is to have fewer features hard coded in the application and more configurable through the web GUI. Credit counts and Milestones are the major initial features to be implemented this way. This is a challenging approach. The rules system is complex, it requires a user interface that is powerful and still understandable. Here are a few approaches I am using to help this work.
- Good use of help information embedded in forms.
- Display configuration formatted similarly to ultimate output. Credits configuration looks like credits bucket on the student page.
- Reuse behavior so once a user understands how Set rules work, they will be able to apply that to Credits rules and Milestone rules.
- Provide result views so users can debug their configuration. For Sets show the effective programs included. For credits we have a view of the transcript with applicable courses highlighted.
Work Complete
EDUC Project
- The boundless W logo in the upper left corner links back to the home page for each application context. If your in Budgets the W goes to Budgets > Home, in Appreview it goes to Appreview > Home, etc.
Student 2
- Student Sets including flexible rules system, an efficient data structure, GUI configuration tools, and preview mechanisms. Allow configured selection of students by Major, Pathway, and Degree.
- Credits system allows configured rules to be applied to data from UW Student Web Service enrollment resource and credits in specific categories to be counted up.
- View of student "transcript" (SWS enrollment) that highlights courses counted by a specific credits bucket.
- Transcript fresh date so that web service is only loaded occasionally or whenever configuration changes.
- Student header (husky card photo and H1 student name) link back to this student's detail page.