Table of Contents
Overview
Opting Out of Schedule Validation Workflows
Admins
Department Schedulers
Related Articles
Overview
Once a Department Scheduler has finished making section changes and assignments, they will need to validate and then submit their schedule. This could potentially trigger a Schedule Validation Workflow.
Schedule Validation Workflows enable admins to (optionally) define an approval process associated with Submitting the Schedule. A validation request could, for example, be routed to the appropriate Departmental Chair, School Dean, or Registrar’s Office stakeholder.
Once the final approval in this workflow has been granted, the schedule would be considered fully Submitted (Department Submission Status = Submitted).
Validating and submitting a schedule involves both Admins (who assign role permissions, determine whether or not a schedule validation workflow is used, and create the workflows when needed) and Department Schedulers (who are typically the ones validating and submitting the schedule).
Opting Out of Schedule Validation Workflows
Institutions may opt out of setting up Schedule Validation Workflows.
Doing so means that your Departments will have no Schedule Validation Workflow associated with them, and when a user with the appropriate permissions submits the schedule for validation, it will effectively be auto-approved.
The Department “Submission” column in the Homepage will automatically update to “Submitted” to reflect that the schedule has been submitted.
Admins
Related Role Permissions | Workflow Configuration | Integrations
The below information pertains to Admins when getting their platform ready for schedule submission and validation.
Related Role Permissions
Overview
There are several role permissions that define aspects of Schedule Validation Workflows functionality.
Related rule permissions are:
Submit Department Schedules for Validation
Submit Schedule for Validation with Warnings
Edit Sections During Schedule Validation
Edit Sections When Department Status Submitted
Withdraw Section Validation
These need to be defined by an Admin at Academic Scheduling > Settings > Roles > (Select Role) > Course Editor.
You can learn more about how these permissions work here.
How “Edit Sections when Department Status Submitted” and “Edit Sections” Interact
The four scenarios below outline the possible combinations of these two permissions and the resulting functionality.
Workflow Configuration
Overview
PATH: Academic Scheduling > Settings > Workflows
Each Department may (optionally) have its own Schedule Validation Workflow.
You can learn more about workflows here.
Institutions may either create one general Schedule Validation Workflow or one per department, depending on the school's business process.
The only logic jumps that may be configured for Schedule Validation Workflows are ones that key off of “Term” (value must key off of the Term Display Name) and “Department” (value must key off of the Department ID). Any other logic jump inputs will not work effectively for Schedule Validation Workflows, as they require keying off of section/course data inputs that are not applicable to the schedule as a whole. If you have other logic jump inputs, this may result in poor routing; we recommend you test this in your instance and determine whether a separate workflow for Schedule Validation is best suited for you.
The “Can Edit Request” participant permission in Workflows has NO downstream impact for Schedule Validation Requests specifically. This is because the Schedule Validation Request is simply a snapshot of conflicts in the schedule (i.e. a request to approve the schedule as a whole). Any manipulation of individual section data should occur within the Section Dashboard or through Section Change Requests.
Associating Schedule Validation Workflows with Departments
PATH: Academic Scheduling > Departments > Settings > Department Validation Workflow
Overview
Users may associate the appropriate Schedule Validation Workflow with Departments.
This is entirely optional.
For institutions opting out of leveraging Schedule Validation Workflows, this field may be left blank.
Configuration Note for Department Validation Workflow
If you have a uni-directional (GETs) integration for Departments, make sure you check with your Customer Success representative to ensure the Department field for Department Validation Workflow has an “Always Coursedog” Default Source of Truth (DSOT) in order to avoid it being wiped during integration merges.
Integrations
Schedule validation functionality has no impact on integrations.
Department Schedulers
Validating a Schedule | Rule Violations | Monitoring Your Schedule Validation Request
Withdrawing Schedule Validation
Validating a Schedule
How to Do It
Step 1: Navigate to Scheduling > Section Dashboard
Step 2: Click the Departments tab.
Step 3: Click “Validate Schedule” next to your department’s name.
Step 4:
Review errors that are present in the “Review Schedule Conflicts” modal.
You might or might not be able to submit the schedule for validation if warnings are present. This depends on your role permissions for the “Submit Schedule for Validation with Warnings” permission.
Rule Exceptions (associated with rule exception workflows) are NOT prohibitive to submitting the schedule for validation, but they do force users to input a reason for the rule exception request.
If you submit a schedule for validation and there are rule exceptions present (which have not been submitted separately as a Rule Exception Request), separate rule exception workflows for each of these violations will NOT be triggered.
These violations would simply be flagged as part of the Schedule Validation Request and approvers would address any rule exception requests as part of that workflow. In other words, the rule exception isn't technically a separate "request" here.
As such, the reviewer's "approval" of the exception is implicit in the workflow voting. In other words: If they're voting to "approve" to submit the schedule on the final step, they are thereby "signing off" on any rule exceptions.
Users can still be "proactive" about submitting rule exception requests and submit these requests separately PRIOR to submitting the schedule as a whole by clicking on “Submit Rule Exception Request” within a given section.
Step 5: When you are ready, click “Submit for Validation”.
What Happens Next
Upon clicking “Submit for Validation”, a notification will be triggered, and the request will be submitted through the workflow (which was determined in that Department's Settings). The notification can be customized in the workflow step (Author step).
Once the schedule has been fully submitted (i.e. the Department Submission Status displayed in the Home Page is “Submitted”), the Department's ability to edit sections might be "frozen" for further edits depending on the role permission configuration for “Edit Sections during Schedule Validation”. Also see details on Withdrawing Schedule Validation below.
Any pending rule exception requests submitted separately (for example, rule exception requests submitted before the schedule was submitted for validation) will affect what is shown in the “Validate Schedule” screen.
This means that, if a Rule Exception Request was submitted separately and is pending, the “Validate Schedule” screen will not require the end user to submit another request.
If a Rule Exception Request submitted elsewhere is approved, then the yellow cone in the conflicts report of the Schedule Validation request is removed (the Schedule Validation Requests updates in real-time rather than having a local payload be created). It is also removed from the Section Dashboard > Sections tab as well as the section editing modal.
Rule Violations
Overview | Required Rule / Errors (Red Banner) | Rule Warnings (Yellow Banner) | Rule Exceptions (Yellow Banner)
Overview
As schedulers manipulate section data, they might encounter three types of warnings.
Required Rule / Errors (Red Banner)
If the Department Scheduler violates a Required Rule, they will encounter an error (red banner). They are unable to save the section (and, by extension, unable to submit the schedule for violation) until they resolve this violation.
Rule Warnings (Yellow Banner)
If the Department Scheduler violates a rule that is set to trigger a Warning upon violation, they will see said warning in the section modal (yellow banner). They are able to save the section. Depending on their role permissions, they may or may not be able to submit the schedule for validation with warnings present.
Rule Exceptions (Yellow Banner)
If the Department Scheduler violates a rule that is associated with a workflow, they will see this in the section modal (yellow banner). They will also see the “Submit Rule Exception Request” button within the banner, so that they can submit a rule exception request prior to submitting the schedule for validation if they wish. They can do so by clicking “Submit Rule Exception” (in the yellow banner), which will then prompt them to input the reason.
The ability to submit a rule exception request from within the section modal will only be available once a Section ID is in existence, since the request needs to be tied to a Section ID. This means that for NEW sections, users will need to Save the section first (to create the Section ID), and then click back into it in order to see this Submit Rule Exception Request button.
When submitting Rule Exception Requests from within the section view, there is no message confirming the exception request was submitted or linking to the exception request. However, if users click in the “Submit Rule Exception” modal a second time, they will be made aware that the Request is currently pending to avoid duplicate submissions for the same rule exception within a given section. Additionally, users can go to the Requests dashboard to validate the request status.
One edge case to be aware of is that, technically, a user may submit a rule exception request from within the section modal and then click “Cancel” instead of “Save” in the Section. This will result in the rule exception request having been submitted for something that is ultimately not a violation (since the "rule violating" value was not Saved). Note that this edge case poses no data integrity issues; the approval of the rule exception will have no effect on the section's data (i.e. the "rule violating" value will not be pushed from the request onto the section once the request is approved).
Rule Exceptions do not prevent users from being able to save the section. If these violations are still present when a scheduler goes to submit the schedule for validation, they will still be able to submit the schedule for validation as long as they provide a reason.
Monitoring Your Schedule Validation Request
Requests Dashboard
You can access Schedule Validation Requests in the Requests dashboard (the Request Type is Schedule Validation).
The functionality within each request is analogous to standard Workflow functionality. In the left panel of the request, users view the same information as what was shown in the “Validate Schedule” screen of the Section Dashboard (i.e. a summary of applicable existing warnings, rule exceptions, etc.). This display is updated in real-time (e.g If a warning is resolved in the Section Dashboard, the Request will reflect that).
Homepage
You can get a snapshot of the Schedule Validation Workflow Status and Department Submission Status on a departmental basis on the Academic Scheduling Homepage.
Validation Column
This column displays the status of the validation in the workflow (analogous to the Status displayed in the Requests dashboard).
Submission
This column displays whether the Department Schedule is Not Started, In Progress, or (fully) Submitted.
Withdrawing Schedule Validation
Overview | How To Do It | Downstream Impact
Overview
Users with the “Withdraw Schedule Validation” permission are able to withdraw Schedule Validations.
The “Withdraw Schedule Validation” option only appears once the Schedule Validation request has been approved.
If the Withdraw Schedule Validation role permission is set to DENY, users with this role will be unable to withdraw (unsubmit) the schedule for validation.
As a workaround, they can navigate to the Schedule Validation Request and delete it entirely (assuming they have the Delete Requests permission set to ALLOW).
If you delete the Schedule Validation request, the department's submission status will go back to "In Progress".
How To Withdraw a Schedule Validation
Navigate to Academic Scheduling > (Click on Department ) > Validate Schedule and click “Withdraw Schedule Validation”.
Downstream Impact
Withdrawing the Schedule Validation will have downstream impacts on the Department Status and on the Schedule Validation Request (if any). If the Department has no validation workflow assigned, the Department Status will be updated back to “In Progress”. If the Department has a Schedule Validation Workflow assigned, the existing request will be permanently deleted and the Department Status will be updated to “In Progress”.
Example
If the Business Department has a Submission Status of “Submitted”, after withdrawing the Schedule Validation, the Business Department’s Submission Status will become “In Progress”, and the original Schedule Validation Request will be permanently deleted.
