MyU and PeopleSoft outage

On Saturday and Sunday, April 1-2, an upgrade to the PeopleSoft development platform, PeopleTools, will occur. While the upgrade work is underway, MyU and PeopleSoft applications will be unavailable. 

Specific impacts to note:

• PeopleSoft (and dependent applications)
• APAS
• Grad Planner
• MyU (and dependent applications)

Aside from downtime during the weekend, no significant impact for end users is expected. No action is required as a result of this upgrade. Access to Moodle courses and University email will not be affected.

The upgrade ensures that our PeopleSoft systems remain stable and secure, and we retain vendor support. We encourage you to mark your calendars for the upgrade weekend so that you can plan around the service outage accordingly. During the weekend of April 1-2, updates will be available on the University’s Service Status page.

Registration times available

Depending on your campus, registration for summer 2017 and fall 2017 is underway or beginning soon. Students can find their specific registration time by logging into MyU and selecting the Academics tab, then the Registration sub-tab. Twin Cities students will see their registration times there starting March 24. The registration appointment time table is also available on the One Stop website.

Update classes before registration begins

Collaborative Class Scheduling (CCS) users should make sure classes offered for summer 2017 and fall 2017 have correct dates/times, grade basis, and credit values entered prior to registration beginning.

On the Twin Cities’ campus, registration for summer begins April 11. CCS is currently open for summer 2017 and available for schedulers to make updates. Registration for fall begins April 13. CCS will reopen for emergent changes on April 1. Other system campus staff may check with their Registrar’s office for details.

Updates regarding ARFs

The Provisioning and Access Request (PAR) group continues to work on new ServiceNow catalog request items to make the process of submitting Access Request Forms (ARFs) easier. The request items replace the need to attach a PDF to an ARF. Visit OIT’s Enterprise Access Requests self-help page to view the forms that are currently supported.

Recent forms to note are CS Student Systems and Data (CS PeopleSoft), which is used to request access following the completion of student data inquiry training, student data update training, etc., and Change of Employment (COES). COES is used to report when one of your employees has a change, such as termination of employment, which affects their access.

Delete unwanted ECAS proposals

ECAS currently has over 700 unsubmitted course proposals at the departmental level. This number suggests that editors may have created some proposals inadvertently, due to ECAS auto-save functionality, without having the intention to complete and submit them. (As a reminder, once an editor clicks Submit/Continue on the ECAS Course Set Up page, a proposal row is immediately created.)

To all ECAS editors, please review your department’s current list of ECAS proposals and delete any proposals that are not needed. You can find your list of proposals by clicking on the departmental link, under the approvals section in ECAS.

Changes to UM Manage Wait List Position

Effective January 29, 2017, the following improvements were made to the UM Manage Wait List Position page:

• Search results only display classes with students on the wait list.
• Search results display a Wait List Total number column.
  
  

• The UM Manage Wait List Positions page displays the enrollment capacity and enrollment total in the Class Info area.
  
  

Grade entry deadlines and reminders

Fall 2016 grades (regular session and second 7-week session) are due on Thursday, December 29. A complete list of grading due dates, how-to guides, and policies, are available on the ASR website.

Grade rosters are now available in Faculty Center. Please encourage instructors to log into Faculty Center ahead of time to check that they have a final grade roster for the classes for which they expect to enter grades. If instructors do not see their expected final grades rosters, they should contact their department’s class scheduler.

New class cancellation email

Starting on December 16, 2016, students who are enrolled in a class that is canceled will receive an email notifying them of the cancellation. The email process will run daily from PeopleSoft. The email includes the following information:

• The subject, catalog number, section, component, and credits of the canceled class(es).
• Admonition to review their class schedule in MyU.
• Direction to contact their advisor or the offering department about the cancellation.
• Direction to contact One Stop with any other questions.

If you have questions about this information, contact Stacey Tidball, Director of Continuity and Compliance, at tidball@umn.edu.

New Astra Academics UPK topics available

Three new Astra Academics UPK topics have been released:

• Filtering Academic Sections
• Adjusting Columns for Academic Sections
• Assigning a Classroom

The UPK topics can be accessed by clicking on the “help” link in PeopleSoft or from the ASR Training and Support webpage, under Astra Schedule.

New ‘Leave of Absence’ reason codes

The Student Program Plan page in PeopleSoft now contains new Action Reasons associated with a Leave of Absence. When you add a leave row for a student, please select from the following list of reasons:



The newly revised Leave of Absence form requires undergraduate students to report a reason for their leave, beginning spring semester 2017. Even though an Action Reason is not a PeopleSoft required field, selecting one will ensure that a reason is reflected in APLUS.

ServiceNow application update

The Provisioning and Access Request (PAR) group within OIT is in the process of creating new ServiceNow catalog request items to replace the PDF forms that in the past have been attached to the standard Access Request Form (ARF). These new request items collect all information needed for a request, so attaching the PDF is no longer needed.

As of November 3, the following request items have been released:

• ECAS Central Admin Approval Access
• ECAS Department & College Approval Access
• PCAS Central Admin Approval Access
• PCAS Department, College or Campus Approval Access
• Reporting Center (CS & HR)
• Scholarship Entry Access
• STARS Access

If you are selecting access through Enterprise Access Request Forms (ARFs) and Attachments, you will automatically be routed to these new requests in ServiceNow.

If you are choosing the request from the ServiceNow Request Catalog, you will see these new ARFs listed under a category called Access Request Forms. You will continue to find other requests not related to provisioning and access under the existing User Support Services category.

You can expect to see additional new Access Request Form request items added to the new Access Request category in future releases. Please use these new Access Request Form request items as they become available when requesting access to systems.

Auto-enroll from waitlist begins

The spring 2017 (1173) waitlist auto-enroll process begins on the following dates:

• Duluth: November 20, 2016
• Morris: November 21, 2016
• Twin Cities: November 22, 2016

Find final exam information

In the last two months, newly redesigned websites launched for both One Stop and Academic Support Resources (ASR). The new One Stop site has resources for students, whereas the ASR site has resources for faculty and staff. Due to this delineation, you will notice that some resources have moved or shifted. Specifically, final exam schedules and regulations have new URLs and navigation paths to note:

• Final exam schedules (onestop.umn.edu > Academics > Class search resources > Final exam times)
• Final exam regulations (asr.umn.edu > Training and support > Faculty/staff resources > Final exams)
• Final exam change request form (asr.umn.edu > Applications and work tools > Final exam change request form)
• Scheduling Examinations, Final Examinations, and Study Days policy

Online training course availability

Due to the Moodle Lifecycle Process, access to student records online training courses (e.g., Student Data Inquiry, Student Data Update) have been limited to those who are on the University campus network, effective October 1, 2016. Those who are off campus may access our online training via Virtual Private Networking (VPN).

ECAS updates

Several new updates went into the Electronic Course Authorization System (ECAS) on September 25. Users will notice the following changes:

• New functionality added to identify Twin Cities Freshman Seminars with an attribute instead of using 19xx catalog numbers or topics courses.
• New functionality to identify Twin Cities Learning Abroad courses in ECAS.
• New functionality to the Course Equivalency field to gather information on cross-listing as well as course equivalency.
• Improved text descriptions for the following sections: Student Learning Outcomes, Writing Intensive, Course Syllabus, and Strategic Objectives-Consultation.

Additional ECAS improvements are in the works. The following changes are anticipated for implementation on October 23:

• Remove the CCE Catalog Description field for all system campuses.
• Remove 'Additional Course Information (for catalog production)' field for Morris campus.
• Remove the Student Learning Objectives, Writing Intensive, and Strategic Objectives & Consultation sections for Rochester.
• Improve functionality and text description of the Instructor Contact Hours field.
• Add functionality for the Community-Engaged Learning course attribute (all campuses except for Morris).
• Adjust which courses are routed to the Twin Cities’ Graduate School approval level.

De-combining class changes

Previously, whenever a CCS user de-combined a class, the meeting pattern(s), instructor(s), and classroom were deleted for all sections of the combined section ID. A new system modification now allows such classes to retain their meeting pattern(s) and instructor(s). Classroom assignments are affected as follows:

• The classroom assignment will still be removed for the section that is de-combined. 
• Any classes still left in the combined section table will keep the classroom. 
• If all classes are deleted from the combined section, the classroom is released.

Search for online classes by Mode of Instruction

In an effort to reduce confusion on how to search for online classes, the "Online course" course attribute has been removed from the both the class and course searches. Effective immediately, users should use instruction mode "Completely Online" in the Class Search to search for online classes.

In the Course Catalog Search, the text "online sections may be available" will display in the results if the course has the ONL course attribute, but "Online course" is no longer a search option.

In CCS, users will notice that the ONL course attribute is now view only. This attribute is present when the course has been approved in ECAS to be offered online. CCS users should use the instruction mode of "CO" (Completely Online) to indicate a particular class section will be taught online.

New ASR website launched September 12

A redesigned Academic Support Resources (ASR) website launched Monday, September 12. The new ASR website hosts information on training, support resources, ASR departmental contacts, and links to applications managed by ASR. Watch a short video introducing the new site.

The url for the site remains the same (asr.umn.edu), but internal links have changed. This means you may need to update any bookmarked pages you have from the old ASR site. Redirects have been set up for the most commonly accessed pages.

You can find our complete list of trainings under Training and support > Register for training. Our quick start guides and other support materials can be found under Training and support > System support resources.

Topic suggestions for future SR Help Workshops

If you’ve been to a previous Student Record workshop, you know we tackle topics that can be complicated. What new topics would you like to learn more about? What haven't we covered?

Previous topics have included grades, wait lists, class permissions, big picture, and CCS advanced topics. Share your new ideas with us!

CCS consultations

When a recent Collaborative Class Scheduling (CCS) training class happened to consist of only two staff from a single department who were there for refresher training, we changed the topic and turned the class into a CCS consultation. We spent the time working through different questions they had about CCS. We covered wait lists, prerequisites, combined sections, how ECAS and CCS interact, multiple component setup, and grading—a good morning's work!

If you are a trained CCS scheduler who, along with other schedulers in your department, would like a similar session with one of the trainers, just let us know. CCS can be a thorny, complicated system. We are happy to help you understand it more fully.