Tips & Tricks

1. Tips & Tricks 2009

2. u.Select administrator tips

3. u.Select Header Message • Add to your Header Messages in order to link to web pages both outside u.select (your school website, for instance) and inside u.select. • Presentation includes both types of links

4. Recently added User Message • Added in late August to all u.select sites on Minnesota Server • Link to ‘How to use u.select’ captivate presentation

5. Appearance on home page

6. Clicking on link opens new browser window:

7. User Message set up

8. My Courses View Header Message • On the MY COURSES Page, the goal is to have the student enter their courses and then run a Plan (Degree Audit) in u.select, to see how their courses apply to their intended degree plan. I will show you how to enter a link to another page in u.select.

9. Sample Header Message

10. CREATE A PLANis an active link the student clicks on to be taken directly to the Create a Plan page.

11. How to add/change Header Message • Log in as administrator. Click on Administration in top ‘ribbon’.

12. Select Manage Header Message on left menu Choose Edit for existing header messages. Choose Add button for new messages.

13. Make changes as needed in the message window. Click update button to save changes.

14. My Courses View Header html example: • <b><p>Go to <a href="https://mn.transfer.org/cas/requestPlanningGuide.htm?">CREATE A PLAN </a>to determine how the courses you have entered in MY COURSES will meet the degree/program requirements for the program you are interested in at Minnesota State Colleges and Universities.</b></p>

15. Glossary Messages in u.select • Here are copies of questions received from students in our u.select Help Desk: • I was just wondering what this means CHEMT*** Does this mean it does not transfer? • I was doing an equivalent course search and I found choices to have "TECHT**" and "ENGLT**" as some of the results. I would like to know what is the meaning behind these results?

16. Course Equivalencies – Equivalency by School • No glossary message for BIOLT***

17. Better glossary

18. Also for generic transfer- ELECT***, TRANT***, TECHT***, REMDT***

19. How to create Glossary Messages • Click on Courses in top ribbon

20. Click on Manage Glossary Messages – left menu

21. Choose Add

22. Choose Message Type – CEG target course

23. Enter your Message ID and Message

24. Other messages • Course Equivalencies tables messages • DPMask • Alternate IDs • Flags (You must first let us know you want those to show) • Effective dates

25. Issue: Why do I see a different audit result on u.select then when I request an audit through DA0001CP? • COM values on default MNSCU may not be duplicated on the u.select • The COM on u.select is not directly accessible to institutions.

26. Institution’s COMs • Institutions have default MNSCU, MNTC , WEB communication tables, as well as others for testing and other special audits.

27. u.select’s COMs • Each MnSCU and U of M school has a Communication Table.

28. Your COM on u.select • U.select communication table for your institution contains basic control information copied from your MNSCU COM, and communication fields necessary for processing on u.select.com

29. Changes on your MNSCU COM, which may affect plans on u.select, should also be changed on u.select COM. Changes which might produce different audit outcomes: DUPLCTL, REFY

30. When you make changes to your MNSCU.COM which may impact the plans on u.select, you should contact one of the DARS team so that we can make the change(s) on your u.select COM.

31. DARs audit encoding tipS

32. Repeated courses – GPA effect of Z graded courses • Problem: Student is now retaking courses to improve their grade. Once registered for these retakes, DARS sees these as duplicates and the original bad grade loses it’s GPA effect. Z grade has no GPA effect, so student sees inaccurate GPA until retaken course is graded.

33. Student is currently repeating 2 F’s, so GPA impact of F grades is removed while still in-progress.

34. Setting a REPLAC value of G for In-Progress (Z) grade on grade table changes that.Definition of REPLAC value of 'G' = A course with this GMASTER table field value is eligible to replace another duplicate course but WILL NOT eliminate the GPA affect of the course being replaced.

35. Now the repeated courses will not negate the impact of the bad grades until they get a ‘real’ grade

36. COM.CURYT/COM.CURYTSKIP Using COM fields to affect date range reporting in select from lists

37. Date Ranges on courses

38. Select From list without COM setDate ranges show on courses

39. COM.CURYT set to Fall 2009

40. Date range suppressed when FYT is earlier or equal to COM.CURYT and LYT is 9999 99 – Hist 1404 date range suppressed

41. COM.CURYTSKIP set to Y

42. Suppresses courses with old date ranges – LYT is less than COM.CURYT date – HIST 1333 suppressed

43. COM.REFY – Used for date ranges that change over time Problem: Courses taken over seven years ago will not count without petition. Currently have to update every program tracking that date range every year.

44. Current encoding

45. On the audit

46. REFY set to 2009

47. Reference Year encoding – R-07 9

48. R-079 ???? • R = Indicates a relative date range • + or - = add to or subtract from • 07 = number to add to or subtract from REFY • 9 = term (Fall)

49. On the audit

50. AND’d Courses • Problem – ECON **** is encoded on an A line. The student has taken excess ECON courses yet the sub-requirement will not pick up the additional courses even though the sub-requirement is NOT complete.