Table of Contents
Overview
Section Dates
Meeting Dates
Changing Section Date Values
Changing Section Part of Term
Related Articles
Overview
Both sections and meetings can inherit dates from either the term or part of term. What that essentially means is that the date range for the term or part of term can cascade down to sections and meetings.
Certain conditions must be met in order for dates to cascade, and there are some integration limitations.
Section Dates
Every section in Coursedog has a date range associated with it; this date range indicates when the section is active. If certain conditions are met, date values on the parent term or date changes on the part of term can cascade down into the section.
Required Conditions
If both of the below conditions are met, that means the section is displaying an inherited date value that is cascading from either the part of term or term, and the section does NOT have its own date value.
The “Default From Term” configuration has been enabled for the start and end date field on the section template. This is also known as “Reference Dates”; details can be found here.
When you hover over the section start date (or end date) value, you see a tooltip that says “this input is displaying the Term (or Part Of Term) Start Date”. This is known as “Date Inheritance”.
If a section that meets both of the above conditions is assigned to a part of term, changes to the start or end date of the part of term will automatically cascade down into the section. Otherwise, changes to the start or end date of the parent term will cascade down into the section.
Integration Limitation
When Coursedog sends data to an SIS, the SIS often requires section.startDate and section.endDate fields to be set. That means the "cascading" functionality will only work until the section is sent to the SIS.
Meeting Dates
Individual meetings may have dates that differ from the section dates.
Required Condition
Cascading dates also work for meetings if – when you hover over the meeting start date (or end date) value – you see a tooltip that says “This input is displaying the Term (or Part Of Term) Start Date”.
Integration Limitation
When Coursedog sends data to an SIS, the SIS often requires meeting.startDate and meeting.endDate fields to be set. That means the "cascading" functionality will only work until the section is sent to the SIS.
Changing Section Date Values
Any date field that is displaying an “inherited” value can be overridden with a hardcoded value. If you attempt to override an “inherited” value manually, you will see the below message first:
Once you override the “inherited value” for a specific input, you hardcode a date value to that input, and date cascading will no longer work. If dates change on the part of term, it won’t be reflected on the section because the hard-coded value is considered more “correct”.
If you change the section’s start or end date, this does NOT modify the meeting start or end date. This is to allow for the section and meeting’s to maintain different date values.
Changing Section Part of Term
If a user is changing the part of term for a section (e.g. Changing the value from Full Term to Half Session), this will automatically CLEAR all hard-coded date values assigned to the section and the section’s meeting. Therefore, if a hard-coded date was assigned to a section, changing the part of term removes that hard-coded value, so we can use “date inheritance” from the part of term again.