Table of Contents
Overview
What Happens When an SIS Doesn’t Support Effective Dating
Options for Handling Changes in the Catalog
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Articles
Overview
Coursedog has the concept of Effective Dating, meaning that revisions of courses and programs can be created to capture snapshots of the course over time.
Currently, Coursedog can best support effective dating in Curriculum if the SIS has the concept of effective dating as well. Check with your current Customer Success representative (Project Manager or CSM) to confirm.
Some SISs, including Colleague Ethos, Jenzabar EX/One, and Anthology, do not support effective dating (i.e. multiple revisions of the same course or program), nor is it supported for CSV-only clients.
If your SIS does not use effective dating, there are strategies Coursedog can use to enable you to track versions over time, and pair revisions back to your SIS’s matching record. This article will describe several such strategies for both Curriculum Management and our public-facing Catalogs.
What Happens When an SIS Doesn’t Support Effective Dating
Curriculum Management
Most SISs
The Effective Start Date field in Curriculum will be read-only on the course template and all course forms, as well as on the program template and program forms.
Any changes POSTed from Coursedog to the SIS (either through direct edits or proposals) will be immediately made to the course/program record in Coursedog and the SIS.
Colleague Ethos
To use this approach with Colleague Ethos customers, Coursedog will add the Colleague-housed EffStartDate in as a custom field. From there, you can follow regular Coursedog effective dating practices (i.e. manual update of the effective date field).
Catalogs & Handbooks
Overview
By default, the catalog site will always display the most recent version of each course/program record. Consequently, archives of the catalog must be created by generating a PDF.
By default, any changes made to a course/program via a merge from the SIS, a direct edit in Coursedog, or a proposal in Coursedog will be immediately reflected in the catalog site.
If changes should not be made to the catalog throughout the year, any Curriculum proposals should be “held” in a final step of the workflow and only approved when changes should be made in the catalog.
Strategy to Version within the Catalog
To have several versions of catalog live with different versions of a course/program, you can follow the below steps.
Step 1:
Ensure that “Effective Start Date” and a Custom Field (where question type = “Date”) both appear on your curriculum program and curriculum course record.
Effective Start Date should have the “editable” box checked.
Custom Field should become “Date of the First Catalog the First Version of this Record Should Appear In”. This should also be editable.
Step 2: Open the course or program at Curriculum > Courses (or Curriculum > Programs if editing a program).
Step 3:
Set the custom field to reflect the desired date of this record’s first appearance in a catalog.
After this date is set, do not change it on the record. This field will be set one time per record.
Step 4:
Set the effective start date to align with the above custom field (i.e. Date of the First Catalog the First Version of this Record Should Appear In).
From now on, you will edit the effective start date to create new iterations of the course/program.
Step 5:
Navigate to Catalog > Settings > Catalogs.
Click to open the catalog this applies to.
Step 6: Set the effective start date of the catalog as you typically would.
Step 7:
Set a filter to align with the earliest custom date field (Date of the First Catalog the First Version of this Record Should Appear In). You should create two conditions, where one is the defined date, and the other “is before” the date.
The catalog will then filter records to those which have effective start dates in-line with the catalog.
See here for more information on effective start dates.
Options for Handling Changes in the Catalog
If you don’t want to follow the above steps, the below table captures your options regarding effective dating.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can users still create programs or courses in their SIS?
How can I make changes to a course or program without immediately having the catalog reflect it?
How can I maintain one course or program revision in my SIS, but several in Coursedog?
How can I change an older revision of a course/program?
Are there other strategies I can use?
Can users still create programs or courses in their SIS?
Yes. When the program/course first appears in Coursedog, populate the two date fields as described above.
How can I make changes to a course or program without immediately having the catalog reflect it?
By setting an effective start date beyond the start date of the catalog, records will be filtered out.
How can I maintain one course or program revision in my SIS, but several in Coursedog?
By using a static custom field start date and then additional effective start date, following the step-by-step approach outlined above.
How can I change an older revision of a course/program?
This needs to be done in Coursedog.
Go to the course/program, select the desired older record in the top right, make your changes without changing the effective start date, and save as a new version.
This will create a new version on that effective dated entity without impacting other effective-dated records for the program
Are there other strategies I can use?
Though the recommended pathway is outlined above, if your SIS does offer some versioning mechanism, you might be able to use an alternative match strategy. This would allow you to integrate the different versions of your courses/programs between Coursedog and your SIS.
Your implementation Data Engineer will let you know if these strategies are an option for your institution.