SECTIONS: Navigating the Section Dashboard

Tiffany Winters

Modified on: Fri, Apr 19, 2024 at 4:46 PM

Table of Contents

Overview
Sections Tab
Courses Tab
Calendar Tab
Departments Tab
Additional Notes
Related Articles

Overview

PATH: Scheduling > Section Dashboard

This article provides an overview of how to effectively build a schedule using the Section Dashboard.
You will want to ensure courses are properly configured before you make section configurations and/or assignments.
When you navigate to the Section Dashboard, you can choose from four potential tabs/views: Sections, Courses, Calendar, and Departments.
You will have the option to filter your view of the Sections, Courses, and Calendar tabs. You can additionally customize the data displayed within the “Sections” tab by adding or removing columns.
You can build and export custom reports by configuring display columns and adding filters, as well as save these views for future easy access.
Anytime you are editing your schedule, make sure you are viewing the intended term. You can change the displayed term by clicking into the listed term in the top left of the screen (highlighted in red in the below screenshot).

Sections Tab

Overview

The “Sections” tab will list all available sections for the displayed term.
- If you are a department scheduler, it may be filtered down to just your department’s sections.
- Additionally, it is possible that your institution has set a default view that will impact the filters and columns displayed.
From this page view you can also view course and section information; view conflicts; add, edit, or cancel sections; add courses from your Course Inventory; view rule violations; and create, save, and export views.

Status

You can determine whether or not a section has any conflicts by looking at the “Status” column.
Green Check Mark = No Conflicts.
Exclamation Point = Conflicts (hover over the icon to view details).
Red Circle = Integration error.

Actions

All available actions you can take will be displayed under “Actions”.
Options include “Course Info”, “View Section Demand Analytics”, and “Delete Sections” (“Delete Sections” isn’t recommended for most schools/users, and the option won’t be selectable for anyone who doesn’t have the corresponding permission).

Viewing/Editing Section Details

Overview

Click anywhere on the section to view and/or edit its details.
Details will open in a modal.

Conflicts

When you’re viewing details for an individual section, all conflicts associated with the same recurring event will roll up into one.
This is by design to avoid overloading users with multiple conflicts all at once.
If the change(s) you make to resolve one conflict resolves all others, the conflict notice will go away. If the change you make to resolve one conflict doesn’t resolve others, the next conflict will pop up.
In the below screenshot, the first conflict warning is one set of conflicts from one recurring event. The second warning is for a separate event.

Customizing Columns

Overview | How to Do It | Additional Note

Overview

You can customize the values displayed in the Section Dashboard by configuring Columns.
Only columns included in the Section Template – and that you have permission to view – will be displayed

How to Do It

Step 1: Select “Columns” in the upper right corner.

Step 2:

Check/uncheck all fields you would like to display.
If a value is coming from a course field, “Course →” will be listed before the field name.
If a field is nested within a parent card, the name of the parent card will be listed before the nested field display name.
The field’s Question ID will be displayed in parentheses to help support troubleshooting by the Coursedog team as needed.

Step 3 (Optional): You can drag and drop the fields in order to change column order.

Additional Note

If you assign instructors to different meeting patterns, it is not guaranteed that they will be aligned with their associated meeting pattern(s) in the column view.
To view accurate meeting pattern assignments, please open the section.

Adding Filters

You can filter down the sections returned by adding filters based on course and section fields.
Learn more about adding filters here.

Sort Order

You can determine the sort order for commonly used columns like Course Code, Section Numbers, CRN, Department, and Section Status.
If a column supports sorting, you will see ascending/descending sorting arrows next to the column name. Click an arrow to sort sections by that column.

Exporting Results

You can export custom reports that take into account the displayed columns and filters.
Simply select “Export Results” to download your custom CSV.

Saved Views

Overview | Creating a Saved View | Accessing Saved Views
Setting a Default View | Deleting Saved Views

Overview

You can create saved views to quickly access the information you need.
Saved views will automatically apply the combination of columns and filters configured at the time you save the view.

Creating a Saved View

To save the combination of columns and filters:

Step 1: Select “Saved Views” in the upper-right corner.

Step 2: Select “Save Current View”.

Step 3: Give your view a descriptive name to easily access it in the future.

Step 4:

To have this Saved View work only for this year and/or semester, keep the “base filters” boxes checked.
To have this Saved View apply to all terms and/or semesters, uncheck the boxes.

Step 5: Click “Save”.

Accessing Saved Views

If you would like to apply a saved view, select “Saved Views” in the upper-right corner.
This will return all of your saved views that you created or your institution provided. You can search or sort by “Name” or “Creation Date”.

Setting a Default View

In addition to being able to access different saved view at any time as outlined above, you can turn any of those saved views into a “default view” that loads automatically anytime you visit the Section Dashboard.
Learn more about Setting Your Own Default View.
Admins can also create and assign a default saved view to you.
If you have defined your own default view for the Scheduling Dashboard, that is what you will see even if an admin has created and assigned one as well.

Deleting Saved Views

If a saved view has been added by your institution, you cannot delete this view yourself. However, you can delete your own views by clicking the red trash can icon.

Search

Section search in the Dashboard searches three Course fields: “Course Code”, “Course Name”, and “Call Number” (CRN).
Results are always sorted by your selected Dashboard column and by your selected sort order within that column. If you are sorting by any column other than Section Number, results display secondary sorting by Section Number.
To search only for a specific string of characters and ignore any related results, add quotation marks around your search term.
- For example, Lan [SIC] may return sections with Lab in the title.
- To search only for courses with the specific word “Lab” in results, apply quotations and enter “Lab” in the search bar. This will return ONLY sections with the specific string “Lab” in Course Name, Course Code, or Call Number/CRN.
- NOTE: This applies only to the Sections tab search, not to the Courses tab search.

Courses Tab

Within the “Courses” tab you can view all courses that exist within the given scheduling term.
The display columns (Actions, Course Code, Course Name, Section Count, and Departments) are fixed.
Within this view you can add course filters and search (similar to the Sections page) in order to return the desired course results.
All available actions you can take will be surfaced under “Actions”.
When searching this tab, the Dashboard looks at two Course fields: “Course Code” and “Course Name”. Results are always sorted in ascending order by Section Number.

Calendar Tab

View the schedule in either a traditional calendar view, list view (organized by day and time), or room view (see each room’s assignments broken down by day and time).
Within this view you can add filters based on Departments, Start Date, Section Type, and End Date, as well as search in order to return the desired results.
Click “Color By Section” or ”Color by Day” to determine if colors are determined by section or by day. No matter which open you select, the color assigned is random and might repeat (there are five different colors).
- If “Color By Section” is selected, different sections will be in different colors.
- If “Color by Day” is selected (as shown below), all of the sections on a given day will be the same color (and different days will be different colors).

Departments Tab

Overview

You can view all Departments you have access to here.
This view provides an overview of Department status, which indicates where each department is within their scheduling process (“Status” column), department name, associated schedulers, course count, section count, conflicts, and available actions (e.g. “Validate Schedule” and “Show Sections”).
“Validate Schedule” will open up the “Validate Schedule” modal which provides an overview of schedule conflicts.
When you select “Show Sections”, you will be navigated to the “Sections” tab with the “Department” filter applied.

Schedule Status

Hover over the icons in the “status” column to see the status for the listed department’s schedule.
Options include “not started”, “in progress”, and “submitted”.

Additional Notes

To view another term, simply select the term name in the upper-left of the dashboard and navigate to the desired term
If you have the necessary permissions, you can add sections or courses within the Sections, Courses, and Calendar tabs.