Table of Contents
Overview
Required Section Rules & Associated Section Template Fields)
Other Known PeopleSoft Merge Best Practices
Overview
Student Information Systems have many rules and requirements with regards to creating and updating objects. As such, when Coursedog scheduling updates (section data primarily) are merged with the SIS through our integrations certain rules must be abided in order for data to be accepted; otherwise, a merge error or other downstream issues may occur.
Some SIS requirements are built into our platform by default, but for those that are not the Coursedog team is committed to documenting all known SIS specific requirements and sharing those with our partners to ensure best practice set-up of system rules, merge settings, section template etc. in our platform to avoid any issues down the line.
Please find below some recommended Configurations and Rules for PeopleSoft schools we believe will ensure a smoother integration for your institution going forward.
Required Section Rules & Associated Section Template Fields)
Overview | Pre-Delivered Rules | Custom Rules
Overview
It is recommended that all below Section Rules, upon set-up or enablement, be marked as "Required".
The "Required" field in Section Rules settings can be used to specify if the rule must be resolved before a user can attempt to save a section or submit a section change request for that section, thus ensuring that scheduling errors are caught in real-time and resolved before they ever become an issue with the integration.
For a refresher on setting up Section Rules see our Rules article.
Pre-Delivered Rules
Overview | Credit Range Conflict | Instructors Without Meetings | Double Booked Room | Relationship Conflict
Overview
The following rules exist in the platform by default; simply enable and mark as “required”.
Credit Range Conflict
Triggered when a section is assigned a specific amount of fixed credit hours that is outside of the allowed range defined at the parent course level.
Instructors Without Meetings
Triggered when a section has instructors without meetings.
As PeopleSoft requires instructors to be assigned to meetings, this rule protects against creating data in Coursedog that can not be successfully sent to the SIS.
Double Booked Room
You can't assign a room that is already assigned to a section at the time selected.
Set “On Failure” to “Warning” and make the rule required to avoid merge errors.
Note that double booked room conflicts will be ignored for sections that have a "same room" relationship.
Relationship Conflict
When a POST is executed updating the classroom of a section that is part of a combined section group, the classrooms of all other sections in the group will also be updated. However, if the skpMtgPtn field is checked, this will not occur.
In Coursedog, updating the classroom assignment of a section which is part of a same-room Relationship may flag either a warning or an error that states the relationship is being violated (this is done in order to preserve the “same-room” condition of said relationship).
Coursedog will NOT automatically update classroom assignments for all sections in the Relationship (as PeopleSoft sometimes does). In order for this earning/error to be flagged, users must configure the Relationship Conflict pre-delivered Section Rule accordingly.
Custom Rules
Overview | Preferred Room Capacity Is Not Zero | Start and End Times | Start and End Dates
Auto Enroll 1 & 2 Must Be Different | Associated Class Cannot Be Blank Or Zero | Prim Instr Section Must Exist
Overview
These rules need to be created as custom rules within the Section Rules module.
Preferred Room Capacity Is Not Zero
When creating and/or updating sections, PeopleSoft will not let Preferred Room Capacity be empty or zero.
First, Preferred Room Capacity must be an existing field in the Section Template.
Custom Rule/Filter: Where “Preferred Room Capacity” “Is” “0” “Or” ‘‘Preferred Room Capacity” “Is” “Empty”.
Start and End Times
Schedulers need to ensure that Meeting "End Times" are always greater than Meeting "Start Times".
Recommended to use filter so that “Meeting Times” “Is NOT” “Empty” and “Start Time” “Is Always Before” “End Time”.
Users will see the warning be triggered when meeting patterns have not been added yet
Enforcing the use of Standard Meeting Patterns (via Rules > Section Rules > Non Standard Meeting Pattern rule set to “Warning” and/or “Required Rule”) may also decrease the likelihood of this start/end time rule violation occurring.
Start and End Dates
Schedulers need to ensure that Section "Start Date" comes before the "End Date".
If the section start date falls after the end date then an error will be returned from PeopleSoft.
Recommended to use the filter where “Start Date” “Is After” “End Date”.
Auto Enroll 1 & 2 Must Be Different
Each section in PeopleSoft has an Auto Enroll 1 & Auto Enroll 2 field.
If these fields are filled out and the same value, PeopleSoft will reject any updates.
Create a Custom Rule (Note that Auto Enroll Section #1 and Auto Enroll Section #2 must be existing fields in the Section Template before this Rule can be crafted).
Associated Class Cannot Be Blank Or Zero
The Associated Class number must be a non zero number, passed on all create/update operations.
Note that Associated Class must be an existing field in the Section Template) before the Custom Rule (see below) can be created.
Prim Instr Section Must Exist
If a user sets the "Prim Instr section" to a value that does not exist (i.e. a section that is not in PeopleSoft) an error will return.
Assuming that Prim Instr Section always = Section Number the custom rule/filter: Where “Prim Instr Section” “Is Not” “Section Number”
This rule cannot prevent errors on new section creation where the primary instr section is the section being created.
Other Known PeopleSoft Merge Best Practices
Part Time Instructors Cannot Be Assigned to Full Time Sections | Sections Cannot be Combined
Section Numbers Must be Unique for each Course in a Given Term
Relationships (Combined Sections) Must Have Same Instructor | Relationships Meeting Patterns
Part Time Instructors Cannot Be Assigned to Full Time Sections
If an instructor is part time, the job record associated with a section must also be part time. Otherwise PeopleSoft will return an error like this:
There is currently not a way to enforce this in the platform via Rules, nor in the Section Template; however, users do have the ability to filter by instructor type (Part Time, Adjunct, etc.) in the section editing modal when selecting an Instructor. Users should be trained to filter by instructor type where appropriate.
Sections Cannot be Combined
If two sections cannot be combined, it is likely that they do not have the same meeting patterns and room assignments which would result in a PeopleSoft error; however, there is a bug in PeopleSoft where it sometimes returns an error even if two sections have the exact same meeting pattern and room assignment.
If this occurs then remove both meeting patterns from the sections in Coursedog, create the relationship, then try to add the meeting patterns back in.
Section Numbers Must be Unique for each Course in a Given Term
If PeopleSoft has duplicate Section Numbers for the same Course ID in a given term – even if they exist in separate Sessions in PeopleSoft – the Coursedog integration will filter these out.
You will see the message in the Merge Report’s First step, Fetch SIS Data, “The following sections contain duplicate sectionNumbers and courseIds in SIS data and will not be persisted to Coursedog.”
Relationships (Combined Sections) Must Have Same Instructor
Relationships set as "Same Time Same Day Same Room" relationships must also have the same instructor. Otherwise PeopleSoft will return an error.
There is currently not a way to enforce this in the platform via Rules, nor in the Section Template.
Users must be trained to ensure selection of the same Instructor for these kinds of relationships.
Relationships Meeting Patterns
PeopleSoft propagates the meeting data of one section to another section(s) when creating a Relationship / Combined Sections.
In order to prevent Meeting Patterns from being wiped out the relationship should be created when both sections do not have Meeting Patterns OR the section(s) have the same Meeting Pattern data.