Category: Work Plans

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.

2/8/2021 – 3/5/2021

Work Complete

Applicant Review

• (Complete) Build applicant list specifically for Undergraduate programs. There are different application / student properties that are operationally important for our Undergraduate programs, from Graduate programs. This report view automatically applies Undergrad as scope and includes meaningful fields in page view and spreadsheet download.
• (Complete) Delete option for locally uploaded attachments. Application attachments that were added locally by Student Services can be deleted by administrators. This already worked for attachments to “Materials”, now it works for Transcripts and Recommendation attachments.

Budgets

• (Complete) Budget search looks in the “Administrative PI / Director” field. This field is local college metadata entered by our fiscal team. Previously we only searched PI in the official UW data for Grant Principle Investigator.

NARF

• (Complete) Added maintenance that deletes Workers with no appointment requests. If a Worker record is more than 1 day old and has no Appointment Requests it gets deleted. These records generally show up when a user starts a request and changes their mind. This reduces HR/P teams work in cleaning up duplicate Worker records.

Recruitment

• (Complete) Update email editor tool. This project was using a 3rd party tool for WYSIWG email editing that was no longer supported and was displaying warning messages in the system. We’ve updated it to use the same version as Applicant Review.

TREQ

• (Complete) Clarify the interface for budget searches. To search TREQ orders by Budget Nbr you have to pick a budget from the budget suggestion tool. The search form now lets you know if no budget is selected.

Long Term Projects

Faculty Effort

(90% Complete) Faculty Effort is a new feature for the college Budgets Database that will facilitate planning faculty effort across budgets.

• Continue processing feedback from broader Fiscal Team testing. Largely updates to arrangement and labels.
• Add email notifications for report approvals.

Institutional Research Data Warehouse (IRDW)

(10% Complete) IRDW is a new resource in development for the college’s Office of Institutional Research to provide a reporting data set optimized to answer you questions. It will house a combination of UW official data, College Database records, and subject specific metadata.

• Design a record for Application data and do initial import.

On Course

(20% Complete) On Course is an in-development project to substantially upgrade our college’s Courses Database. On Course will provide a more modern interface, better optimized for the work you do, with an improved data model that will address many long-term limitations of Courses.

• Implement a Course Section detail page. This page has the same purpose as the “Offering Detail” page in Courses, it shows you all the known attributes of one specific section. The new version is arranged to emphasize important fields and help describe the structure of the system better. The old “Tabs” UI is replaced with collapsible sections, this means you can view multiple sub-sections at one time. The entire page has a responsive layout that lets it make good use of large desktop screens and rearranges nicely on small mobile screens.

1/25/2021 – 2/5/2021

Work Complete

Budgets

• (Complete) In new Faculty Effort feature, update language and help messages based on feedback from fiscal team. This feature is under review by the wider team in preparation for release.

OnCourse

(15% Complete) OnCourse is an in-development project to substantially upgrade our college’s Courses Database. OnCourse will provide a more modern interface, better optimized for the work you do, with an improved data model that will address many long-term limitations of Courses.

• Change Wildcard Titles to Course Variants. This provides largely the same function, but instead of replacing course titles with the Wildcard version, Variants will be presented as extra fields, e.g. subtitles.
• Added Joint section groups. This data model will allow us to display groups of joint sections as a single record and still let users to drill into a single specific section when they need to. This will support reviewing enrollment at the joint group level and adding enrollment threshold notifications to the group.
• “Instructors” instead of “Staff”. Courses uses a single record type to add both Instructor of record (goes into Time Schedule) and support staff (TA, Reader/Grader). This created complicated forms and awkwardly worded labels. In OnCourse Instructors are a set of records and Support Staff is a separate record type. Software labels match real world terminology and both record types lose irrelevant fields, simplifying the user interface.
• Update initial migration process for data model changes. When we launch OnCourse it will contain all of the plans and history available in the current Courses database. Every change we make to OnCourse model requires a migration strategy to get the existing Courses records in the new place in the new system.
• Load data in nightly batch process from UW Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) > SDB. This bulk strategy massively improves system update times. The bulk update that takes 5-20 minutes to run in Courses completes in under 30 seconds.
• Load data for a single record from the UW Student Web Service (SWS). This will allow a user in OnCourse who is comparing our plan to UW Time Schedule data to click a button and get fresh UWTS info immediately. Build a debug web view of the SWS course section record.
• Build mapping system that translates EDW course data and SWS course data to the same representation. SWS has translated many fields into pretty, readable values. But we require a single representation in OnCourse that can be updated from either UW source.

Infrastructure

Prototype an app using InertiaJS. Our college database are largely server-side rendered applications. These are quicker to develop and easier to support, but they can lack the speed and elegance of modern client-side rendered JavaScript applications. To date, we enhance our applications by adding JavaScript widgets to specific pages, while still operating  server-side oriented applications.

InertiaJS is a new library that serves as an adapter between a modern client-side application and a classic server-side application. This allows the server-side application to change very little and maintain control over complex issues like routing and authorization.

We have started a small prototype application to verify that this will work in the UW / COE technical environment, understand how development will change, and see what kind of user experience improvements we can achieve. If these results are promising, we will consider InertiaJS for future projects.

1/11/2021 – 1/22/2021

Work Complete

NARF

• (Complete) Add a Cancel link to each step in the request creation process. This allows a user to easily cancel their request at any point.
• (Complete) Add request count in badges on the home page jump navigation. The count shows the number of requests listed in the relevant section further down the page. The jump navigation shows when the current user has 3 or more sections visible on the home page.
• (Complete) Add prompt for Sexual Misconduct Declaration form. Requester is required to enter the date this form was sent when requesting New Employee or Rehire for Student employees.
• (Complete) Add report of Top Submitters. This report give HR/P team overview of activity in the system.

Person

• (Complete) Update central Person Authorization logging so that all college database report user authorization changes centrally. This central view supports administration of the >1,000 users in our college databases.

Student

• (Complete) Import Institution (schools) data from WA State OSPI.
• (Complete) Import WA Public Schools employee data from WA State OSPI. These records are imported as Career records when they match our students.

Infrastructure

• (Complete) Implement a Test Environment warning consistently across all college databases. These warnings appear when a user visits a college database application on our Development or Staging servers. Initial warning in pop-up modal. That modal can be dismissed for the user’s session. Even after the modal is dismissed a red Test Environment flag sticks at the top left of the window.

12/14/2020 – 1/8/2021

Work Complete

Applicant Review

• (Fixed) Basic Skills test scores were being displayed twice if an applicant had multiple applications with expected certifications.
• (Complete) Add Submitted date to the Application Incomplete report table view.
• (Complete) User may delete their own Rubric Score up to the point they mark it complete.
• (Complete) Revised the Rubric build tool so the edit field for evaluation ratings is a reasonable size for the content. Previously when you clicked to edit a rating a tiny text area field was provided.
• (Complete) Strip illegal operating system characters from attachment filenames. It was possible for applicants and recommenders to include characters in attachment filenames that could not be used when a review tried to download the file to their local Windows or Mac computer (e.g. /\:). If those characters appear, we replace them with an _ underscore before providing a download.
• (Complete) Activate IR Coding tool. This allows the Institutional Research office to add hand coded fields for application reporting. Made several improvements to streamline the hand-coding process.

Courses

• (Complete) Add Room Preference Status report. This shows all the offerings for a particular quarter where the instructor has not yet entered their Room Preferences. This report helps Curriculum Coordinator send follow up emails to a targeted list.
• (Complete) Automatically create and assign Wildcard Titles for courses that historically had different names. This was a long term need, but became immediately urgent for the major revision to curriculum for Measurement & Statistics.
• (Complete) Deploy OnCourse to production, start automated nightly updates. OnCourse is next major version of the Courses database, still in early development. To provide better historical Course information in our existing Courses database we are using the data from OnCourse. Separate Courses database nightly update of curriculum data from UW Student Web Service. Update from OnCourse.

NARF

• (90% Complete) Several updates are pending user acceptance in NARF including cancel links during creation, request counts on section nav links, date sent field for the new sexual misconduct form, and a top submitter report. Details will follow on release.

Person

• (Complete) Show supervisor for positions in the Person database. Import this information with Person nightly updates from the EDW. Person database is used to manage college database authorizations and supervisor helps understand who users are and who to contact with questions.

Placements

• (Complete) Made several improvements to the Institution record editing tools to allow IR Office to maintain this data and support PESB reporting. Identify institutions as WA Public Schools, this impacts what records get reported and what properties must be research (e.g. OSPI Building Code). Allow selection of WA School District. Allow delete and merge of institution records.
• (Complete) Provide a button that copies all of the certification requirements and test score evidence configuration from the “First Issue” certificate type to the “Emergency” certificate type.
• (Complete) The mentor search tool searches email field as well as name.

Infrastructure

• (Complete) Upgrade JavaScript build tooling for all (8) college database projects. One of our core build tools (laravel-mix) has moved to a new major version that has a different interface for major libraries. We have updated all college database projects to use the same library versions and setup routines.
• (Complete) Prune old and backup tables. In data model migrations we sometimes leave copies of old data in case anything goes wrong. We’ve gone through and cleaned out this old, now redundant, data.

11/30/2020 – 12/11/2020

Work Complete

Add Codes

• (Complete) Launched new Add Codes form that gathers structured input from students requesting to enroll in COE practicum and internship sections. This system prompts the student for details based on course and initiates an email to edcodes@uw.edu. (Replaces legacy “Practicum” form.)

Applicant Review

• (Complete) Internal Graduate Applications allows Student Services to create new application records visible to reviewers. We use these for current students who are continuing to additional degree programs or changing major.
• (Fixed) When changing the report parameter for Period (e.g. Year and Quarter) the modified adjusted parameters are no longer displayed twice.
• (Complete) When sending email using a template that includes Advisor name, applicants that don’t have an advisor assigned cannot be selected as recipients.
• (Complete) Remove MyGrad ProgID (Application Profile identifier) from structural data model. We still track what MyGrad application profile an applicant used, but this is an optional annotation to the application record. This change allows us to better support purely internal applications.

Student

• (Complete) Revised student milestones for ECFS program.

Test Scores

• (Complete) Added a Match All maintenance routine. Test Score system regularly searches for matching student and applications for test scores imported in recent months. This version of the routine search all unmatched test scores in the system, useful especially during Teacher Education application cycles.

TREQ – Travel & Requisitions

• (Complete) In print view task title is always displayed. (Previously completed tasks just showed type of task, who completed it, and when.)
• (Complete) In Pending Task report the title of the pending task is used as the overall status of the order. This provides more specific explanation of order status at the list view. We made this change to better support tracking “Confirm Receipt” tasks.

In Development

Axiom

(50% complete) We are building automated data feeds to support the fiscal team’s budgeting tool: Axiom. Daily extract was updated to include Starting Balance amount for relevant budgets.

Faculty Effort Report

(80% complete) This tool will facilitate generation and approval of faculty pay allocations outside of home budgets. Recent work includes tools to manage the faculty list, adding inline help, and refining the user interface.

11/9/2020 – 11/24/2020

Work Complete

Applicant Review

• (Fixed) Resolved a bug that happened when an Apply Portal application step was both an alias and an archived step. The Apply Portal configuration tries to simplify or hide old configuration options to make configuring new cycles easier.
• (Complete) Created a program list (identified by UW Major Abbreviation + Pathway Code) and moved the Grad School ProgID (which correlates with program but actually describes what application profile an applicant filled out) to its own record. This cleans up denormalized data and prepares for future requirement: create internal applications.

Courses

• (Complete) Added Modality field to Courses, replacing Asynchronous. This field describes the delivery strategy for a course section. We remodeled this field because 1. it represents both synchronous / asynchronous but also remote / in-person, 2. UW has provided official definitions to be used in UW Time Schedule, 3. to represent when we still need response from instructor.
• (Complete) Editing an instructor’s name now updates all the course sections where that person is instructor. To provide the simple instructor listing in tables views (example “Jane Doe +2”) the multiple instructors model is processes and an instructor short description is created per course section. These instructor short descriptions need to be regenerated when a name is changed.

Test Score

• (Complete) Reworked test score matching tool to make it more readable. Search tool is highlighted. Test score person data is presented in alignment with same fields from COE applicant/student data. Removed the SSN partial fields which are sensitive data and not used in the person matching logic.
• (Fixed) Process that matches “recently” added test score to person records was using the wrong comparison and trying to match old records instead of recent records.

Student

• (Fixed) Placements download CSV spreadsheet was not working.

In Development

Axiom

(50% complete) We are building automated data feeds to support the fiscal team’s budgeting tool: Axiom. Using a daily schedule job, our system extracts relevant records from the UW Enterprise Data Warehouse and transforms it to the representation required by Axiom, including adding custom organizational structure. This generates daily data files that are collected and loaded by Axiom.

Faculty Effort Report

(80% complete) This tool will facilitate generation and approval of faculty pay allocations outside of home budgets. Recent work includes email notifications for approvals and a toggle view that allows user to see just the exceptional allocations or switch to a view that includes distributions to home budget.