Category: Work Reviews

April 11 – April 22

We are continuing work on the tool supporting faculty merit reporting and student data load. Initial implementation of student data load is complete and we are doing iterative comparisons of system loaded data to manually curated data to refine our load process.

The first ECFS application cycle using the Apply portal is finishing up this week. We have identified a short list of projects that will make Apply/Appreview more useful to ECFS.

We have a June deadline for operating system update on our web servers, work continues on the sandbox environment.

Work Complete

Apply/Appreview

• Email template editor has font and font-size picker. Uses line breaks instead of paragraph blocks.
• Material uploaded by applicant through Apply portal properly marked as applicant upload. Not deletable, but can be hidden.
• User view of Apply Cycle configurations (what applicants can apply for using Apply portal). Apply Cycle configuration allows application to be marked complete automatically on submit.
• Email workflow for sending email to applicants who have started an application in the Apply portal, but not submitted it.

Courses

• Daily update is modified to update previous quarter in addition to future quarters. This insures that when quarters end, local courses data is synced to actual in the UW Time Schedule.
• Migration script for faculty merit reporting that updates database for new entities.

MRBS

• MRBS Room schedule has preview image and links to the detailed about page in the COE Technology blog.

Student

• Nightly update runs that will change students with inactive statue to Registered or On Leave. Nightly update also adds new students. This nightly load will supplement the quarterly load which has significant manual adjustments to merge major changes over time.
• UW Quarters table in EDUC project (Person, Testscores, Appreview, new student) which updates on a schedule from UW student web service term resource.
• Adjusted Milestone update schedule to focus on currently enrolled students. Additionally any time a user views a student detail page in STEP that students credits and milestones get updated from the UW student web service.

 

Work Planned

Apply

• User view of Apply Cycle configuration viewable by any Appreview user
• Template and report to send email to applications started in Apply, but no submitted
• Apply Cycle configuration option for applications to automatically be marked complete
• Material submitted by student through Apply portal should not be deletable by staff

Course

• Faculty merit reporting

Students

• Existing STEP system is not updating credit and milestone data frequently enough
• Analyze differences between automated student data load and curated student data, revise load system 
• Update UW quarter data from web service
• Build a system to calculate the quarter a student was first enrolled and last enrolled with in a major/degree path

Test Scores

• All test score types should have a strategy for importing unknown PESB assessment codes
• Create notes on test score data model and load strategy based on six months worth of real world experience

Infrastructure

• Copy all web content from production server to sandbox
• Install and configure Shibboleth on sandbox 
• Review sandbox firewall rules for SSH login 

March 28 – April 8

This cycle we are working on a tool to help faculty complete their annual merit reports. This new report will pull data from various systems relevant to merit reports. A single view will list courses taught, course buy-outs, students advised, students completed, and grants with proposals and awards.

We are also working on an automated load of student data. Currently our student database is loaded quarterly from UW data. However the loaded data goes through a fair amount of manual adjusting. This limits our ability to load frequently and keep the data as fresh as we would like. We are working on building an application that can implement all of the manual corrections so that data can be refreshed on a regular basis. At the same time we are revising our local data structure so the system can provide more useful reporting for student services and advisors.

Work Complete

Apply

• Limit applicant uploads to PDF or Word files
• Helpful message for file too larger error
• Fix Enter Scores list in Appreview included un-submitted applications

Courses 

• Faculty Merit Report

Person 

• Edit person descriptor. Person descriptors briefly answer "who is this?" and guide system authorization decisions. When the system generated summary is not helpful a user can enter a manual descriptor. 
• Auth audit report

Student 

• Design and implement new student tables that support advanced reporting
• Load process for UW SDB (student data) into college database. Initial process, we will look at how this compares to the heavily managed data in STEP and continue to improve the loader.
• Debugging view to compare new student list to existing in STEP

March 14 – March 25, 2012

Last cycle made some great progress in surfacing our authorizations and combining that with other available person data to give an operational picture. We have a couple more tasks this cycle to further refine person data.

We are beginning to work on our student data. Our current student data model only stores current student status (what is this student doing this quarter) and depends on a complex manual process to import the data. Our goals are to support views and reporting that require data about what a student was doing in past quarters and that updates automatically (and far more frequently). This cycle we are documenting requirements and building a data model that will support the new requirements.

This is short cycle for us due to dev time off.

Work Complete

Courses

• All instructor field in CSV export missing data
• Course release demo on dev site for college leadership demo and feedback

Person

• Person descriptors provide a single short description of who a person is, prioritizing the most visible roles. Summary value of appointment, student, applicant and authorization data.
• Export employee email list
• Person search enhanced for speed and now searches person descriptor field as well as numeric fields (Employee ID, Student Number etc.)
• Root of EDUC project displays current user's authorizations in all systems. Public about page doesn't require UW NetID login and includes information on how to request authorization.

Student

• Catalog reports requested from student database. Use as use cases for redesign data model.
• Plans made for new data model that can support request reporting, database diagram created
• Map of STEP student status to UW SDB values
• Plan for automated updates from SDB created

Infrastructure

• Research and resolve maintenance job errors
• Set up a no login required portal to EDUC project. Support public pages and inter system web service. Move authorization strategies to separate middleware classes.

Work Planned

Courses

• Implement authorization for course release
• All instructor field in CSV export missing data
• Faculty merit report
• Add fee info fields to course offering records

Person

• Authorization plan for persons
• Create Reports in Person (CSV export of current employees)
• Add person input better validation
• My Authorizations screen at root of educ/a/ project
• Add job title as a search parameter in the person database
• Improve person search response time

Students

• Catalog reports requested from student data
• List of statuses that a student can be in at a point in time (enrolled, complete, withdrawn…)
• Outline extraction of student status from EDW / SWS data
• List events that should be logged on a student record
• Plan a data model and make an entity diagram

Infrastructure

• Configure Shibboleth as authentication system (CentOS)

 

Feb 29, 2016 – Mar 11, 2016

This cycle will continue work on the shared Person data and authorization systems. We have person data coming into system from several sources and want the data synchronized coherently. We also want tools to efficiently review who is authorized to use our systems.

Work Complete

Appreview 

• "Admit & scholarship" now included in MyGrad needs update
• Update "OSS Evaluation" in App Review to "Status"

Person

• Unified data structure for storing person information, logging changes to person data, and user authorizations. Different components of Person had been built out with each sub-system and we ended up with similar but incompatible records. Migrated these to a common data structure.
• All changes to Person record go through a common Person update manager which prioritizes conflicting input and detects and logs changes.
• Authorization is stored differently in various systems. Previously we pulled raw authorization values into Person reports and translated into human readable synopsis as page was rendered. Changed this to import and store an authorization summary which allows for more flexible reporting options.
• Record authorization date and user that authorized to all system authorizations. To keep the above authorization cache up to date, we need a mechanism to allow various COE systems to report authorization changes to the Person database. We now have an inter-system web service for authorization change notices. 
• Person view has been updated to give more information about person records. Authorizations are only links to other COE system user edit tools if user is authorized. Added missing systems to authorization views (Appreview, Budgets, Person, Room Booking).
• Person log view shows history of Person record and authorization changes.
• Report of persons with authorizations and no current appointments
• Report by COE info system of who is authorized

Infrastructure

• Add IfModule to pubcookie config in all project .htaccess files

 

Work Planned

Person

• Record authorization date and user that authorized to all system authorizations
• Entity caching system to allow pages to include nested data with indirect relationships efficiently
• Person view to display more detailed authorizations per system
• Add MRBS permissions to person authorization views
• Report by system of who is authorized
• My Authorizations screen at root of educ/a/ project
• System context menu indicate current user authorizations
• Appointment job title as searchable field for Person
• Refine person search taking too long to run, strange results on number searches
• Hide auth links for viewer only roles
• Clean up layout, responsive, fixed top menus, more bootstrap oriented

 

Feb 16, 2016 – Feb 26, 2016

This cycle's goals are to launch the Apply portal for ECFS applications, provide a more flexible buy-out record in Courses, make some adjustments to Appreview to support Apply and the current application review process, and implement Person/User reporting that will help us manage system authorizations.

Work Complete

Apply

• Updates to Apply steps, options, and help text
• Automatic email sent to applicant when application is started and submitted using email templates
• Hard deadline (displayed) and soft deadline (enforced)
• Apply launched to production, ECFS on-campus accepting applications

Appreview

• Link to Apply portal (view application as applicant)
• Apply cycle configuration tool
• Degree view adjusted for Apply required fields
• Mark an application withdrawn
• Display full messages in application log
• Tool to remove an advisor (assignment mistake or change)
• Using report filters no longer breaks enter a decision tool 
• Layout fix where empty coursework box left large empty space above it 
• Implemented download link on Enter Rubric Scores report 
• Ethnicity field moved to its own report taken off general CSV downloads 
• MyGrad deadlines report, auto calculations and edit values tool 

Person

• Centralized person update system that prioritizes input and logs changes
• New implementation of import person data from UW Enterprise Data warehouse for efficiency and consistency. All updates use the shared person update system for logging.
• New implementation of import user data from other information system. Takes user name and limits query to records missing from person for efficiency.
• Weighted name so different name values from multiple data sources do not trigger circular updates

Work Planned

Apply

• Apply admin role in appreview user management
• Link from Apply report to Apply interface
• Add narrative and help text provided by ECFS
• Indicate intent to enroll in program
• Withdraw application option in Apply
• Apply production launch

Appreview

• Application cycle configuration
• Adjust degree view on application detail for optional major/degree values
• Move ethnicity to special report
• Empty coursework box clears past log section in right column
• Deadlines are empty in application detail header
• Method to remove an advisor
• Download link on Enter Rubric Score report

Courses

• Allow faculty buy-out records that are not specifically related to course offering records. Faculty activity report to include information about grants and administrative responsibility.

Person

• Import all current appointments for COE employees
• Revisit person update strategy
• Add MRBS permissions to person authorization views
• Person view to display more detailed authorizations per system
• Record authorization date and user that authorized to all system authorizations
• Report by system of who is authorized
• Create Reports in Person Dbase
• Hide auth links for viewer only roles
• My Authorizations screen at root of educ/a/ project

Infrastructure

• Add IfModule to pubcookie config in all project .htaccess files
• Configure Shibboleth as authentication system
• Fully copy all production projects to sandbox
   

2/1/2016 – 2/12/2016

This cycle's main focus is the Apply portal for ECFS applications. Our goal is to have portal feature complete by the end of this cycle. That gives us some extra time for refinement or early launch before the March 1 deadline.

Work Complete

Apply

• Apply Cycle configuration that allows for different steps per program or time period.
• Authorization scheme that implements row level permissions for applicants. Amy can see her own application, download her own materials, read her own messages but is denied access if she tries to view another applicants material through the Apply interface.
• Refine the page layout. Remove redundant elements. Clean up display for consistency.
• Upload a material to Apply. Ability to replace that uploaded file with a new one.
• Applicant can submit their application. This locks the application for the applicant, but makes the application visible in Appreview.
• Apply step that acknowledges notifications will be sent to UW email address with link to UW-IT forwarding instructions.
• Degree / Transcript step repeats until applicant clicks Done button to allow upload of multiple transcripts.
• Status of application is displayed at top of application page with highlighted information for Submitted, Complete, Admit, and Deny.
• Email sent to application through Appreview are viewable in the Apply portal.
• Events that happen in the Apply portal are recorded in Appreview event log (started, submitted).
• Read-only view of submitted application in Apply accessible by applicant.

Appreview

• Contact section shows either MyGrad contact information or Apply contact information.
• Report that shows applications entered through the Apply portal, including applications that have been started, but not yet submitted.
• Applications that have enrolled field (current UW / transfer) have that displayed at top of Degree section in Appreview.
• Mark an application complete in Appreview. This feature only available on applications entered through Apply portal.
• Un-submit an application in Appreview. This feature only available on applications entered through Apply portal. Allows applicant to make further changes to the application in Apply.
• Ability to send a one-off email message to an applicant from Appreview application detail page.
• Report filter for current UW student or transfer student. Important distinction during ECFS application review and communication.
• Add percentile to UW test scores. Layout self reported and offical score sections similarly so they are easily comparable.
• Handle error adding user to Appreview when there is no person record in Person Database.

Courses

• Display UW Time Schedule comments in Courses
• Online/distance as managed field of a course offering. Workflow for planning, comparing with UWTS, and reconciling.
• Investigate course records created locally, but never added to UW Curriculum.

Students

• Masters in Instructional Leadership pathway change. Add EDUC-18 pathway to STEP program menus. Coded to group EDUCX-18 and EDUC-18 students together.

Tech Support

• Update Help Desk staff photos in ticket footer

Work Planned

Apply

• Add material, replace material for Personal Statement and Resume.
• Submit application.
• Update appreview reports to hide un-submitted applications.
• Report to show application from Apply portal including submitted and un-submitted.
• Read-only view of application and application status feedback (Complete/Incomplete).
• Tool to allow applicants with admit decision to enter intent to enroll.
• Settings tool in appreview to maintain Apply cycle configuration (URLs, labels, open date and deadline).
• Appreview interface to mark an application complete.
• Appreview interface to un-submit and application. Support feature, this will allow the applicant to make changes.
• Appreview report filter for current UW students vs transfer students.
• Refine Apply layout. Merge heading and (empty) top menu. Removed caret graphic indicating UW/COE logo is a menu.

Courses

• Make UW Time Schedule comments visible in the course planner. This will be a read-only field.
• Add an Online/Distance flag for course offerings.

1/18/2016 – 1/29/2016

Focus of this cycle is the Apply project, a portal to accept applications to ECFS programs that will be displayed and reviewed in Appreview.

Work Complete

Apply

• Access Control List configuration for Apply. During development the system will be accessible only to specifically authorized users. When system goes live this rule will be removed and anyone with a UW NetID login will have access.
• Changed strategy so program applied for is indicated by entry URL. No progam selection inputs. Application overview, requirements, date will be provided by program website and link on website will drop applicant into Apply for the appropriate program.
• View for application cycle closed or not found (invalid URL provided).
• Contact information form
• Enrolled form (current UW student or transfer).
• Interests form
• Add degree and transcript form. Multi-step form (1. degree info, 2. upload a transcript) with ability to repeat for multiple transcripts. Ability for degree info to be edited and upload to be replaced. Application restructuring happened to allow for complex sub-steps within an application step.

Appreview

• Added "Interview" as pending decision value and report filter (Decision section). Some programs do interviews as part of the application review process. This mechanism allow selected applicants to be flagged and filtered in the system.
• Added average rubric scores to appropriate CSV export files.
• Reviewed and adjusted website theme for Mac Safari, application had some strange behaviors on that browser.

Courses

• Rooms listed in CSV export of course offering data.
• Added credits and grading system to list view in My Courses. We ask faculty to check this list for accuracy and wanted fields that typically need adjusting exposed at list.
• Fixed a non-breaking, but visible error message on the person list view.

Test Scores

• Test score dashboard has latest test score date by test type on dashboard. This provides indicator of recent imports.

Work Planned

Apply

• Access control configuration for #Apply
• Landing page (No Login) will display the programs that can be applied to using this portal with links back to the public COE site for program information. It will also display application period and deadlines and be based on Apply Cycle configuration.
• Report of applications started, not submitted. Existing appreview views will only display applications where applicant has finished and pressed "Submit". We will provide an additional view to look at application in progress.
• Modify detail view for applications not submitted. Applications that are not yet submitted need to be highlighted appropriately.
• Contact information form, applicant enters address, phone, email.
• Current UW student or Transfer, applicant enters whether they are a currently enrolled UW student or also applying to the UW.
• Interests form, applicant answers interest questions that allow ECFS to place people in T&L pathway.
• Add degree & transcript, applicant describes previous course work and uploads a transcript.
• Replace transcript, applicant can upload a new copy of a transcript.

Infrastructure

• Work on sandbox server

Cycle 23: 11/23/2015 – 12/04/2015
Cycle 24: 12/07/2015 – 12/18/2015

This is a consolidated work review for Cycle 23 and 24. It has been "heads-down, power through it" time and the blog update got back burnered.

We have had a very busy couple weeks getting Appreview Plus launched and the rough spots ironed out. SOARS is officially and fully retired so from this point forward "Appreview Plus" will just be Appreview.

School Psychology and TEP Elementary were the programs actively reviewing during the transition so thank you to Paula, Janine, Patrick, Jonathan and the other active users for excellent feedback and paitence while we got things settled.

Work Complete

Appreview

• Launched Appreview (Plus) on December 1, 2015.
• CSV spreadsheet download of application report views
• Added contact phone numbers and address to CSV spreadsheet download
• Final decision displayed on application detail view as a "Workflow Bar" which includes: application complete/incomplete message, final decision entered, advisor assigned, and applicant intent.
• Application header blurb (top of application detail page) links back to the application detail page
• Areas of interest added to Application header blurb 
• Users can add themselves to a review committee with a button click
• Adjust reviewer dashboard to highlight important information and clickable report sections
• Text file application items are displayed in a web page pop-up window instead of being downloaded to view on user's text application
• Users can edit their own comments
• Enter scores report says when an application can no longer be scored
• Can create new Rubric scopes (these map rubrics to applications)
• Changed report default period to "Current Applications". Current is defined as applications to begin in a future quarter.
• Report state is preserved when browser back button is used. Added a link button that will show a URL to the current report state so reports can be shared among users via email, etc.
• Mark a Rubric Score with "Definitely Interview" flag
• Definitely interview flag is visible on score report and desiscion report
• Join a review committee and enter a recommendation from the Rubric Score tool
• Super users can delete Rubric Scores that were created in error
• Various Rubric bugs (scorer name stored, total caclulated on complete, cells properly highlighting in edit tool)
• Improved OSS degree evaluation tool to make faster during bulk data entry
• Applications awaiting decisions report
• OSS ability to see application materials the way they are presented to reviewers
• Attachments uploaded by COE staff can be deleted
• Degree institution uses MyGrad "Other" for institution name if available
• Resolve issues with emails not always getting recorded in log
• Handler for email batches where template fields don't have replacement values
• Email batch view shows which emails are pending, sent, or failed
• Add review template, then review each email workflow
• Improvement and fixes to OSS Send Email Tool: selector has option to show already sent in report pickers, Javascript helper to Select All on send email view, Added Email [[TEMPLATE_FIELDS]] help message to views where templates are edited, batch reporting has better details, including time batch was started
• Revise Appreview Plus initial load strategy to only pull purely local data from SOARS, use Grad School web service XML for all other fields
• Multiple revisions to the update Appreview from Grad School strategy to properly detect changes in fields including OSS entry and recommendations that do change the application last changed date. Update process became massive and took to long to do regularly, implemented a "quick" and "full" update to run on different schedules. Update triggering bug in PDO/database interaction, made adjustments to code and database configuration to alleviate. Fixed bug corrupting person record that corresponded to update id.
• Update from Grad School information available on Appreview About page
• Added secondary update, query UW data warehouse to ensure we get UW system key (student identifier) ASAP
• Automated merge process for duplicate Person records. New applications create extra Person record because they have no identifying fields until 48 hours after they submit application.
• Remove various testing and development default values
• Fixed application material not respecting show/hide configuration
• Fixed allow download of material items that don't have filenames in MyGrad
• Transcripts and Recommendations that are uploaded to "Other" category (instead of to specific degree or or recommender) are now accessible
• Fixed "Calendar Year" option in report picker Period was not staying highlighted

Courses 

• Add EDUCM for new Education Methods curriculum abbreviation
• Faculty activity report include independent study credits

Students

• Non-UW members of Doctoral Committees now available from Grad School and displayed in STEP

Test Scores

• Imported recent test score data feeds for WEST-B, WEST-E, NES, Praxis. These scores are visible in appreview.

Multiple Systems

• Scrub UW NetID input: when user enters myuwnetid@uw.edu in a form expecting a UW NetID the @uw.edu part is automatically stripped off.

10/26/2015 – 11/06/2015

Launch day is in site for Appreview Plus. We expect to have the new system live in time for our Quarterly Review & Planning meeting on Thursday November 19th. This coming cycle is focused on implementing the Rubric system and Email system. Email was pushed back so we could tackle our interactive report filtering system (similar to how courses database works).

Work Complete

Appreview Plus

• Report of applications that need update in MyGrad
• Rubrics edit tools and scoring tools
• Email system. Edit email templates, reports with applicants that need emails, send emails with multiple workflows, logging and review, email to log system for testing, email via Mailgun.

Courses

• Break down of independent study Student Credit Hourse by supervising faculty. Improvements to faculty activity reports.

Students

• Add milestone for dissertation credits
• Report of near completers, students with more than 27 dissertation credits

 

Test Scores

Work Planned

Appreview Plus

• Email system. This will have the same function as current SOARS system but with more flexibility for selecting recipients and better logging of what was sent.
• Rubrics. Basically we are implementing the Rubric editing and scoring system as it exists in SOARS with some refinements and the goal of making it more easily usable by programs beyond TEP.

Students

• Track dissertation credits in credits table.

Test Scores

• More scores to put in system. Continued refinement of import system with goal of making this an administrative process instead of a developer process.

10/12/2015 – 10/23/2015

We made an adjustment to the Appreview Plus plan based on conversations with initial users. Filter reporting project was moved up and email system was postponed.

This cycle our main focus continues to be the new applicant review system, on track for a November launch. We will be meeting with SME to demo the early work complete and make sure we are on track. We also are building a couple test score reports for reporting required by PESB State of Washington.

Work Complete

Appreview Plus

• Report filters. Implemented interactive report filters following the convention from courses. In list views the report parameters are displayed as headings. Clicking the headings provides access to "picker" inputs which allow you to choose options and change what is included in the report. We have pickers for time period, programs, degrees, decision status and advisor status.
• Attachment type clean up. We were using one string for attachment types imported locally and a second for files from MyGrad. This was causing some file not found errors. Fixed now.
• Review committees management tools.
• Authorization system. Refined permission system and user roles. Reorganized URL generation system, simpler, clearer, works better with authorization scheme. User edit forms.
• External user management tools including a download configuration as spreadsheet, edit it, upload it to change external user configuration. 
• Application material settings.
• Program settings.

Test Scores

• SQL reports for PESB reporting using configured requirement rules and evidence rules to match test score to PESB requirements.

Recruitment

• Customized prospective student forms for use at recruiting events.

Students

• Added latin endorsement to teaching certificate configuration.
• Updated ECFS pathways for T&L students.
• More work on dissertation credit milestone.

Infrastructure

• Fixed time synchronization problem on web servers.

 

Work Planned

Appreview Plus

• Configuration tools including: user management, external users, review committee configuration, program configuration, material configuration.
• Workflow reports for OSS: needs decision, needs update in MyGrad.
• Email system. This will have the same function as current SOARS system but with more flexibility for selecting recipients and better logging of what was sent.
• Data update improvements (stretch goal). We've booked 9-10 days of development work for the cycle, but if we can get ahead of it we will be working integrating with the Grad Schools new version of the application web service and revising our initial SOARS import process to only grab the new/local data.

Courses

• Bring in enrollment details for independent study course offerings to allow for precise calculation of student credit hours per instructor.

Students

• Update temporary data used for ECFS students to correctly represent multiple ECFS pathways.
• Report of doctoral "near completers" based on number of dissertation credits completed.

Test Scores

• Reports for PESB