[Degreeworks-l] Futurama - What's Coming in the DegreeWorks Universe
Leask, Jane
jeleask at samford.edu
Fri Dec 10 09:36:14 CST 2010
Last month Cathy Scott and I attended the DegreeWorks Symposium 2010 in Seattle. One of the plenary sessions was titled the DegreeWorks Roadmap and discussed the tentative release and upgrade schedule for the next couple of years. All dates and planned releases are subject to change, of course, but this is what the SunGard/DegreeWorks folks are planning, nonetheless. The following info comes directly from either the PDF or from the plenary session itself:
DegreeWorks Product Roadmap and Calendar
* The next few Patches/Minor Releases targeted through June 2012 will retain the nomenclature adopted based on the Greek alphabet. After that, they go Disney w/Huey, Dewey, and Louie. All will eventually correspond to a number. Here's what's been proposed so far:
Q THETA Service Pack DW4.0.8 December 17, 2010
Y PSI Minor Release DW4.1.0 July 14, 2011
Z ZETA Service Pack DW4.1.1 (?) December 15, 2011
W OMEGA Service Pack DW4.1.2 (?) June 28, 2012
HUEY Service Pack DW4.1.3 (?) October 25, 2012
DEWEY Minor Release DW4.2.0 March 28, 2013
LOUIE ??? ??? TBA
DegreeWorks Features - What's Recently Been Added, What's Ahead
* A few highlights from the three plenary sessions (Welcome, Release Highlights, DW Roadmap):
Revised/Enhanced Student Planner - A major overhaul is in the works. The final version will have an updated look and will be much easier to use. We should begin to see the first elements of the new look in the July 2011 release.
Pre-Req Checking with Banner Registration - Partially in place-if not completely-but I don't know if we'll be using the feature or not. Haven't fully studied it yet.
Athletic Eligibility Audits - Partially in place. We need to do some additional set up in order to test it. (And to really make use of it, the Athletic Department will need to input more data in the revised/expanded SGASPRT form in Banner 8.) At this time, it's mainly intended for our students under Continuing Eligibility rules, not for those under Initial Eligibility rules or for Transfer students. Those students should be addressed in a future update, however.
Freeze Audits - New feature in DW 4.0.7, but we don't have all the pieces in place yet to test it. This will allow us the chance to freeze an audit for someone at a place in time-whether once cleared for graduation or before a significant change has been made to his/her record (i.e., an undergrad who has been accepted into a grad program). A frozen audit will remain available to review-until deleted-regardless of how many other audits have been run for the student since that date. Once the pieces are in place, users (REG only for now) will be able to freeze audits from the Web, but we should also be able to freeze a batch of audits (such as for a group of students once a degree has been awarded) from Transit.
PC Tools move to Web-based format - Completed in part; Still more to come. We need to configure our server to use Tomcat in order to use Adobe Flex (needed for the Web-based tools). [Forgive me if I've referred to the technical components incorrectly.] We've got an EAG work request out there for this to take place in DW TEST, and I believe Cathy Scott has already been working with the others in EAG to get this set up.
[Note about PC Tools on the Web: Once completed, all three PC Tools (Scribe, SureCode, Transit), plus SHP Entry, will be available in the Web-based environment of DegreeWorks. A major benefit of this is that we'd no longer need to install them individually on a user's computer, which is currently the case for those who access them in Student Records and EAG. However, according to SGHE the PC Tools weren't configured to work w/Windows 7, although somehow our tech/admin guys were able to get them installed on Windows 7 computers here in Student Records. The Web-based option will bypass the need to make the software compatible w/the Windows operating system, although they will need to work within a Web browser.]
For more info on the items listed above, see the PDFs of the three plenary presentations, available at either of the following W: drive locations (depending on which folder you have access to). There are 32 PDFs under the Full PPT Slides in PPT (full screen PDFs) and 28 PDFs under the Thumbnails & Notes Column (small print PDFs). (The three plenary sessions and the WebTreQer session weren't available before the conference, so they aren't available in Thumbnail/Notes versions.). I've also just added a folder w/additional handouts/presentation files from Rick DeBow, at the University of South Florida, from the Curriculum Planning Assistant (CPA) session. Rick was kind enough to share his samples of how he organizes info that helps him when using the CPA and/or DW in general. Look for those docs in the folder labeled Extra Docs-Handouts.:
W:\Workgroups\DegreeWorks\Conference Docs\DegreeWorks Symposium 2010 (PDFs only)\Full PPT Slides in PDF
or
W:\Academic\DegreeWorks\Conference Docs\DegreeWorks Symposium 2010 (PDFs only)\Full PPT Slides in PDF
Here are highlights from some of the other sessions-special and plenary:
* RPEs (Requests for Product Enhancements) are very important. Many RPEs go on to become actual product features in future upgrades. Even if the item seems small, if it's important to us, and/or labor-intensive for us to maintain (such as a particular Web customization), it never hurts to submit it as an RPE. The DW programmers-and other DW users-may agree about its importance and incorporate it into a future version as a standard feature.
* The technical docs have a new naming convention that was adopted to help them work w/the Banner bookshelf (i.e., dw40007scrbu.pdf instead of DGW_User_Guide_Scribe (DW4.0.7).pdf). However, I prefer the old names since they make the docs I need to consult easier to find; the full titles are much more descriptive. I've retained a copy of the original files w/their new names, but I will continue to keep another folder with the files as I've renamed them as well. They are accessible at either W: drive location, under the folder labeled Technical & User Guides.
* Notes (in the Audit) - I don't work with them often, but we were reminded that they won't appear until the audit is processed anew. Just a reminder: Advisors can add and modify notes, but we didn't give them permission to delete them. Only REG users can delete notes at this time.
* Athletic Eligibility Audit - We have a new Userclass option in DW 4.0.7 where we can set up access to the new Athletic Eligibility Audit just for them (just Athletics Dept advisors and a few additional people who are advisors, but who also have a need to see these particular audits). But first we need to test it thoroughly; a few pieces to this puzzle are still incomplete.
* Freezing/Deleting Audits - As noted, this is another new feature in DW 4.0.7 that we need to test. It was created in part for the Athletic Eligibility and Financial Aid Audits (the latter of which we don't plan to use right now), but it's also in place for our needs for the graduation check process. Once we get this set up, REG users should have full access to this new feature, but the new ATHL Userclass will also have the ability to freeze (but not delete) audits.
* Find Screen/Search Page Additions - Again, some of the new search fields are the result of the new Athletic Eligibility Audit (Sport), but SGHE also added fields for Academic Standing and Attribute (although we already customized an extra field for Student Attributes). Again, we need to do some additional set up and testing in DW TEST to get this working for us. Another new feature in the DW 4.0.7 Find Screen is the ability to choose multiple major/minor combos (i.e., an English Major w/a Religion Minor). What it doesn't do is allow us to do, however, is simultaneously pull a list of English Majors (regardless of minor) and Religion Minors (regardless of major).
* SHP Entry Via the Web - This will come in DW 4.0.8, but will only work once the Tomcat server and Adobe Flex is set up. Once ready, this will provide much more flexibility in maintaining Userclasses.
Last year, there was a good session on desired product enhancements, where people gathered to discuss what DW features they'd like to see in the future. They didn't hold one of those this year-or if so, I didn't know about it. But here are notes on what people were requesting last year. Compare this to what's in the latest release and what's planned for the future:
* the ability to 'freeze' an audit once a student has been cleared for graduation (Available now in DW 4.0.7. Let's hope it works as promised.)
* more search functionality (such as the ability to search on students w/a grad application on file, for those that use the Banner Grad App feature) (Not yet. Still a dream. The only new search fields are related to the Athletic Eligibility Audit. However, they can't be managed within SureCode; they require adjustment in the xsl sheets, which is strange, since all the other search fields are maintained in the UCX tables. I think I'll submit that as an RPE.)
* concentrations tied to a major in the What-If fields (currently they are not) (This WAS mentioned again in one of the sessions this year, and I believe it's still planned.)
* recently viewed students in a drop down list (Not yet. This would be a great feature, though.)
* major GPA in the GPA calculator (Not yet. Although GPAs are plugged in, you CAN change them yourself. You just have to remember what to type in. But it would be nice if they allowed a block for overall GPA AND Major GPA here and plugged in the data for each automatically.)
* for the SGHE DegreeWorks listserv, a possible 'blog' and/or message board format (The Commons has made this happen. The ability to interact more, and to post/download documents, etc., is really nice. It's limited a bit by the overall format/structure, but if any of you have not yet signed up for The Commons and would like to check it out, you're welcome to. Here's the link to sign up: http://www.edu1world.org/submitform/SunGardHECommonsInvitation/)
Some other notes from the DW Symposium:
* At last year's symposium, 74 customers and 26 staff attended. This year, there were 118 customers and 28 staff. This year they even had action line appointments on site, like they do at Summit.
* They've signed 65 new clients this year, compared to 48 in 2009. They also have 39 new contracts so far for 2010. With more users, we'll potentially get more input on The Commons.
* DegreeWorks institutions range from small to large, with one having only 776 students and another having over 86,000 (single institutions). The largest overall is a multi-campus school, w/over 200,000 students. (Auburn reps were there-I believe they just recently signed a DW contract. So now we're one of three Alabama institutions who are on DegreeWorks, w/University of Alabama being the third.)
* In addition to the three plenary sessions, this year's symposium had 30 individual sessions, compared to 15 last year. The sessions were also divided into three tracks: Basic, Advanced, and Technical.
Neither Cathy nor I could attend all the sessions, and there were often two of interest offered simultaneously. But at least SGHE provided full-screen PDFs of all sessions, so be sure to check out the documents as noted above. The folders even include the PDFs from the 2008 & 2009 DW Symposiums, in case those are of interest. I also added another folder w/Thumbnails of the sessions I attended and for which I had additional notes. I typed them into the PDF doc, in case others wanted to read them or in case I misplace my paper copies.
DEGREEWORKS CALENDAR UPDATE: I've updated the DegreeWorks calendar in Excel and PDF. I'm attaching the PDF version although you can access it from the aforementioned W: drive locations. We recently upgraded TEST to DW 4.0.7 and had planned to do the same to PROD, but since some issues are still unresolved, will now likely wait until spring. If we can't do the upgrade around Spring Break (the only time I see that the product might be used less by students and advisors), then we may have to wait until after Spring Commencement (the other best time). DW 4.0.8 will be released within a couple of weeks, but I don't know if/when we will be implementing THAT upgrade in TEST before the planned upgrade in PROD. All this is still to be determined. At least DW 4.0.6-which is what we're using in PROD-is functioning well and the advisors and students are getting more comfortable with it.
That's all for now. Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks, Jane
Jane Leask
Assistant Registrar (Certifications, Publications, and Programming)
Office of Student Records
Samford University
800 Lakeshore Drive
Birmingham, AL 35229
(205) 726-2912
jeleask at samford.edu<mailto:jeleask at samford.edu>
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