Astra Schedule Release Notes

7.4.12

7.4.12

Previous topic Next topic  

7.4.12

Previous topic Next topic JavaScript is required for the print function  

Release Notes

 

Release 7.4.12

9/2/11

Key Bug Fixes & Enhancements

Various bug fixes and minor enhancements may be included in this release.  The following is a list of key incidents by application area.  Please contact customer support for the status of any specific Astra Schedule case number not on this list.

High Impact Fixes and Enhancements in 7.4.12

 

This section contains notes from the Product Managers on specific high-level issue corrections or feature enhancements completed in the most recent build of Astra Schedule.  Please review any issues listed under headings that impact your use of the product prior to installation.

Academic Scheduling

Academic scheduling features in Astra Schedule Version VII took a big leap forward in the 7.4+ product release.  This area has continued to stabilize with each maintenance release.  Clients on a previous version should consider the following enhancements and fixes when considering upgrading to this build.

 

7.4+ Enhancements:

The latest version boasts a new ad hoc scheduling tool in the section edit area that allows schedulers to change capacity and preference needs while viewing room availability. This new tool also makes it possible to schedule each meeting instance of a section meeting pattern into a different room as necessary to schedule around conflicts.  

 

The newly added section list page now provides column and filter customization much like the older Windows versions of Astra Schedule and provides an export/print option that makes it easy to create list reports right from the main section view.

 

With 7.4.7+ exam functionality was added to create and manage exam sessions within the scheduling software, including preference capabilities and exam time roll-forward for future terms.

 

The greatest academic enhancements appear in the optimizer where schedulers now have better reporting of results and scheduling issues.  Optimizer results are now listed in a manner that allows users to focus on bottleneck rooms, over- and under-used meeting patterns, and overall result metrics.  It also provides more detailed information to support the scheduling of infeasible sections, which are those whose needs fall outside of the current room inventory.

 

Specific high impact issues corrected in this release include:

Section Edit:  An issue was introduced in 7.4.12.29 that resulted in all meeting instances being marked as exceptions (and therefore unable to be updated by import or optimization) when a room was assigned in Astra Schedule.  This issue was corrected in build 7.4.12.51 and is a recommended upgrade for any one using a previous version of 7.4.12.

 

When editing optimized sections in a sandbox run, the ad hoc scheduler was showing conflicts from production rather than from the scheduled optimizer sections.  This has been corrected to reflect data based on the optimization.

 

When creating optimizers off of existing sandboxes that have not been published, the final run that you do publish only publishes those few sections (and not the entire list of Sandboxes' room assignments).  This has been corrected to publish all sections touched by consecutive optimization runs.

 

The optimizer was not finding rooms with “event” specific usage policies as available during the run.  This has been corrected.

 

Prior issues with “required” preference settings and data integrity errors have been corrected during optimization.

 

Various errors caused by security settings around users with restricted access have been fixed.

Events, Calendaring, and People

7.4+ Enhancements:

The Events list page has an all new filter tool that allows for searching by additional parameters: Days Met, Event Meeting Status, Event Meeting Type, and My Events. The filter provides multiple select and “Not Equal To” capabilities.

 

It is easier to distinguish single meeting from multiple meeting events on the list page. Multiple meeting events are represented with a ‘+’ (plus sign) that can expand to reveal attached meetings.

 

Event administrators will be excited to learn that “Delete Event” has returned and can be granted (or restricted) through role level permission.

 

“Manage Requests” is now “Notification List”. Users can visit the list to manage their notifications and/or subscribe to the list to get immediate or periodic email updates about their list activity.

 

Specific high impact issues corrected in this release include:

Many fixes were made to the Available Rooms and Resources Search Tool in the Calendars tab including print and filtering issues.

 

Issues with event notifications have been identified and many of them corrected in the 7.4.12 release:

The Notification of Resource Status Changed email is now populated with information. Previously, this email was blank when sent out during the Event Approval workflow

On-demand workflows (approval notifications, etc.) now take precedence over non on-demand workflows

Navigation corrections for guest event requests keep guests from getting page errors.

 

Assigning the Manage Calendars privilege (included in Calendars: Admin Permissions through Role) now enables the Setup tab.

 

The Create Event button no longer appears on the Weekly Grid view if the user does not have the proper permissions. This issue was caused when a user’s permissions were modified from having the permission to not having the permission.

 

The Duplicate Records tool now considers Instructors’ associated courses when merging two entities together.

Reporting

7.4+ Enhancements:

All new space utilization reports in Version 7.4 allow users to truly get room usage information that will provide evidence to support capacity management and efficient scheduling.  These new reports allow for the ability to calculate utilization on a customizable standard week (times and days), calculate utilization during a user defined primetime, calculate seat fill utilization, and get accurate room hour utilization by removing additional cross-list and double book hours.

 

Specific high impact issues corrected in this release include:

Version 7.4.12 also introduces new reports based on room optimization sandbox runs as well as allowing event reports to include or exclude events by status (prior version ONLY allowed Scheduled event meetings with rooms to be displayed).

Import/Export and System Configuration

7.4+ Enhancements:

Task Agent - introduced as the primary processing engine for SIS integration. Structural improvements in the Task Agent vs. previous version (task and difference services) increase the stability of SIS integration job processing. The Task Agent, unlike equivalent components in the 7.3 architecture, is de-coupled from the application, which means that given database connectivity to both the SIS and Astra Schedule, it is allowed to run as a standalone application component and not dependent on calls from the web app to function. The task agent identifies work to be completed by monitoring the Astra Schedule database for “jobs”, vs. the web application in 7.3 sending tasks to the services. Because the Task Agent is a standalone component, it may be deployed remotely from the web server in cases where it is desired that processing be distributed to multiple servers, or because of environmental considerations (firewall, etc).

 

ATE (Astra Transform engine) 2.0 – Is the underlying structure used by Astra Schedule to import or export data and includes many improvements over ATE 1.0 (7.4-) including:

Built in Astra Schedule schema validation enforces data integrity rules for imported data.

Re-architected structure ensures greater data processing stability and consistency across all platforms.

Post-processing queries check for data issues in the Astra Schedule database on all runs, the results may be viewed or downloaded from the application UI.

Consistent hub and spoke processing across import types.

More intuitive and user friendly ATE job forms.

Expanded logging for ATE jobs, including more accurate log information as well as access to job specific log files that may be viewed or downloaded from the application UI. Physical log files stored a single “Logs” location in the application structure vs. distributed across multiple directories by component.

Upgraded job list page that includes accurate status and current progress of running jobs, viewable by any user with access to the job list page.

System cleanup task that removes old log files without intervention from server admins.

Expanded use of system defined parameters used globally by import or export jobs.

Improved job scheduling UI with improvements targeted to increase ease of use, and expand scheduling capabilities over previous versions.

 

Specific high impact issues corrected in this release include:

Issues were corrected for Datatel batch and real-time jobs.

 

Update issues with section exceptions have been corrected to avoid instances being over-written.

Other Resolved Incidents

Academic Configuration

Terms:  Unable to delete terms that have Sandbox records associated with them.  (Case #'s 00032144, 00033147, 00033132, 00031939, 00033568, 00034742)

 

Academic Sections:  Search is causing an error for some Oracle users.  (Case # 00034847)

Calendars

Calendar:  Print option for Available Room and Resource tool does not include the search results.  (Case # 00027634)

 

Calendar:  Print option for Available Room and Resource tool does not include the search results.  (Case #'s 00032828, 00034468)

 

Holidays:  Application error occurs when clicking View Affected Events.  (Case # 00033657)

 

Calendar:  In the Available Room and Resource search tool, expired rooms appear as available in the search results.  (Case # 00034286)

 

Calendar:  Building and Region filter choices are displaying as empty for users that are not restricted to a certain campus.  (Case # 00034012)

 

Calendar:  Unable to read announcements against dark purple background.  (Case # 00034125)

 

Calendar:  Available Room and Resource search tool displays error upon searching.  (Case #'s 00034144, 00034153, 00034224)

 

Calendar:  No data appears on initial attempt to load the Weekly Grid View.  (Case # 00034179)

 

Calendar:  Filtering by Room Type is preventing section records from being displayed.  (Case # 00034180)

 

Calendar:  Print option for Available Room and Resource tool does not include the search results.  (Case #'s 00032828, 00034468)

 

Calendar:  Error received when accessing the calendar when using Canadian date/time formats.  (Case # 00034076)

 

Security:  Create Event option is appearing on calendar when user does not have permission.  (Case # 00035579)

Campus / Building / Room Configuration

Rooms:  Deleting a room partition child and re‑adding another partition child causes error.  (Case # 00033683)

Customers / Contacts

People:  Deleting a customer that has people associated causes error.  (Case # 00034446)

Event Create / Edit / Schedule

Event Request Approval:  Approval email is sent before event information is finalized, creating blank notification form.  (Case #'s 00034175, 00034407)

Event Request

Event Request Template:  Unable to add a custom field definition to an existing template.  (Case # 00030970)

 

Room Usage Control:  Rooms configured to disallow requesting are still able to be requested by guests.  (Case #'s 00030494, 00030604, 00031655)

 

Event Request Approval:  Error received when attempting to edit a resource assignment while approving an event request.  (Case # 00030557)

 

Event Request:  Events that do not "require room" still allow guest to request a room.  (Case #'s 00032040, 00032439)

 

Event Request:  Cancelling or submitting an event request from the default site page causes blank page to appear.  (Case #'s 00033640, 00033729, 00034166, 00034282, 00034635, 00034820)

 

Event Request:  Error message received after completing an event request from the Astra Portal.  (Case #'s 00034880, 00034954)

Import / Export

Datatel Interface:  Task Agent errors occur when batch and realtime jobs conflict.  (Case # 00032818)

 

PeopleSoft Interface:  Changes made to cross‑listed sections are not updated in PeopleSoft.  (Case # 00034026)

 

Import/Export:  Section meeting instance room assignment changes are being overwritten by subsequent imports.  (Case #'s 00033888, 00034211)

 

Upgrade Control Panel:  An error is received if attempting to modify an existing installation but not modify the database.  (Case #00034322)

 

Import/Export:  Section imports fail when using non US dates.  (Case # 00034258)

 

Datatel Interface:  Error in real time export jobs with Datatel Unidata.  (Case #'s 00035521 and 00035567)

 

Export Jobs:  Campus and Term parameters disappear from section export jobs and job runs.  (Case # 00035199)

Installation / Upgrade

Upgrade:  The Control Panel was updated to reset all event notifications any time the task agent is installed or modified.  (Case #'s 00034239, 00034250, 00034251, 00034259, 00034531)

 

Master Lists:  New base data elements for new installations are being added to existing upgrades.  (Case #'s 00034424, 00034471, 00034587)

 

Notifications:  Email notifications stop after upgrade.  (Case # 00035284, 00035281)

Platinum Analytics

Platinum Analytics:  Banner program rule import is causing duplicate rule error.  (Case # 00034346)

 

Platinum Analytics:  Error when duplicate student encountered with Jenzabar student import.  (Case # 00034496)

Portal

Portal:  When configuring the portal content for the guest portal, ending the admin session causes error in Oracle.  (Case #'s 00032598, 00032854, 00033158, 00034168, 00034556, 00034675)

Reporting

Reports:  Event reports now include all event meetings with and without rooms and a status parameter so that certain statuses may be excluded from the report.  This resolves the issue of events with no rooms not appearing on reports.  (Case # 00033911)

Room Optimization / Preferences

Room Optimizer:  Error during optimization when a section meeting instance date falls outside of the section date range.  (Case # 00034074)

 

Room Optimizer:  Required room preferences are not being honored.  (Case # 00034115)

 

Room Optimization:  When publishing an optimization that was created from other optimizations (progressive sandbox optimization files), modified sections from previous files are not being published.  (Case # 00034488)

 

Room Optimizer and Ad Hoc Scheduler:  Ad hoc scheduler shows rooms available for sections that the optimizer did not place (due to incorrect conflict checking data source).  (Case # 00035520)

Section Edit / Schedule

Ad Hoc Scheduler:  The ad hoc scheduling tool for sections displays an error if the user is limited by campus.  (Case # 00033901)

 

Import/Export:  Section meeting instance room assignment changes are being overwritten by subsequent imports.  (Case # 00034141)

 

Ad Hoc Scheduler:  Error received when user has limited room scheduling permission but full edit and delete permission.  (Case # 00034498)

 

Section Edit:  Error received when editing a section record when custom fields are enabled.  (Case # 00035306)

 

Section Edit:  An issue was introduced in 7.4.12.29 that resulted in all meeting instances being marked as exceptions (and therefore unable to be updated by import or optimization) when a room was assigned in Astra Schedule.  This issue was corrected in build 7.4.12.51 and is a recommended upgrade for any one using a previous version of 7.4.12.

Sectioning

Sectioning and Timetabling:  Add and Remove student options were added next to the Move option in sectioning and timetabling results.  (Case #'s 00032372, 00032075, 00032647)

 

Sectioning:  Students are being scheduled for sections of courses they have already completed.  (Case # 00034480)

 

Sectioning:  Student course load not being honored.  (Case # 00035206)

Security

User Security:  Error received by some schedulers during section scheduling if user has mixed room and section permissions.  (Case #'s 00032987, 00034493, 00034442, 00034536, 00034452)

 

User Security:  Mixing request and schedule region permissions causes error.  (Case # 00034885)

User Interface Components

Notification List Search Filter:  "Type" filter option not displaying the entire icon.  (Case #'s 00032827, 00034158)

Workflows / Notifications / Approvals

Event Notifications:  Event email notifications are not being sent due to task agent issues.  (Case #'s 00034051, 00033858, 00034263, 00034152, 00034292, 00034295, 00034339, 00034266, 00034351, 00034477, 00034544, 00034577, 00033806, 00034710, 00034769, 00034801)

Known Limitations

High Impact Issues

This section contains notes from the Product Managers on specific high-level issues or feature restrictions that are known in the most recent build of Astra Schedule.  These issues are slated for upcoming themed product maintenance releases, but could potentially impact customers that upgrade to this build of the scheduling system.  Please review any issues listed under headings that impact your use of the product prior to installation.

Global Calendars

Quick Event Form Not Scheduling on Holidays (where allowed) – Event Meetings are not scheduled for Holidays (using the Calendars: Add a Quick Event form) even though ‘Allow Event Scheduling’ has been checked on the Holidays and Announcement form.

 

Avoid the issue – Use the Advanced Event form or the Event Wizard to schedule Event Meetings associated with Holidays (where allowed).

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue. It is in the queue for a future release.

 

Managed Calendars upgraded from 7.3.x – (00030087) Managed Calendars upgraded from 7.3.x to 7.4.x are causing errors.

 

Avoid the issue – Either rebuild each ‘Manage Calendar’ in the 7.4 environment or contact Astra Technical Support. Technical Support will work with your Astra DBA to update your database.

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue. It is in the queue for a future release.

 

Announcements(10742) Creating an announcement drops section meetings.

 

Avoid the issue – Do not create announcements in the current version.  If you need to create an announcement for the calendar, create it as a holiday that allows section and event scheduling.

Fix the issue – The only way to correct this issue is to delete the announcement and re-import the term or manually correct each meeting for that day.

Academic Scheduling

Section Create/Edit – (10885)Creating a new meeting pattern on an academic section in Astra Schedule and adding a room assignment will cause duplicate meeting instances to be created on save. This only affects clients that create meeting patterns inside of Astra Schedule.

 

Avoid the issue – To avoid creating duplicate meeting instances, create the new meeting on your section and save it prior to assigning a room.  Once saved you can re-enter the section, place it in edit mode and assign a room.

Fix the issue – If you have created duplicate meeting instances on a section record you can edit the meeting pattern to make the section rebuild the meeting instances.  Save without re-opening the Ad Hoc Scheduling tool.

 

Section Create/Edit – (10636) Data entered on custom fields added to the section form does not appear when re-entering the section.  It is saved to the database table however subsequent edits to the section will blank out the information.

 

Avoid the issue – Unfortunately the only way to avoid this issue is to not use custom fields at the section level.

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue.  It is in the queue for a future release.

 

Section Room Assignment – (5870) Schedulers with request only rights to a room are actually scheduling the room.  The selected room will be labeled as requested on the section meeting however the room usage will appear on the calendar and will be imported back to the student information system as if scheduled.

 

Avoid the issue – It is important to acknowledge that request room rights and schedule room rights work exactly the same way in the current version.  If a user must be restricted, remove access from both the schedule and request areas in security.

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue.  It is in the queue for a future release.

 

Room Preferences – (9413) The “Excludes” preference is ignored during optimization and incorrectly displayed in the Ad Hoc Scheduling Tool.

 

Avoid the issue – This issue can generally be worked around using different tactics based on the preference type being excluded. This might include running the optimizer by subjects or restricted to particular areas on campus to better focus scheduling, or creating regions based on the excluded preference and requiring that sections be assigned in regions not containing the excluded item.  I would recommend copying the current preference set into a new temporary set and adjusting as necessary.

 Fix the issue – This issue has a high priority for an upcoming maintenance release.

 

Room Optimization – (10613) When creating optimization runs off of existing sandboxes the final run will only publish back room assignments made in the final run, and not ones made in the previous iterations.

 

Avoid the issue – Save all runs used in progressive optimization and on completion publish them to production in the same order of creation.  (The optimizer is only publishing back assignments made in the current run publishing them in order will layer in all changes and complete the assignments.)

Fix the issue – This issue has been logged as high for an upcoming maintenance release.

 

Room Optimization – (9167) Room count information shown in the Infeasible Tab of the optimizer is incorrect.  This does not however affect the optimization.

 

Avoid the issue – There is no way to avoid this issue, it does not affect system performance but can be confusing to users when trying to fix unscheduled sections.

Fix the issue – This issue has been logged for future correction but does not affect actual scheduling and may not be included in a release for some time.

ATE (SIS Interface)

Import/Export – (10740) Invalid row version error on import job. Error=Row version for (Imported object, Sections, Section Meeting, etc.) object is invalid. This error may be encountered in situations where multiple import processes are referencing the same record (Real time processing the same row in the database that is referenced in a batch import at the same time). The error is an indication typically that another process has modified the record outside of the process generating the specific log output and this message in a given log indicates that the specific process generating the message will not process the data at that time.

 

Avoid the issue – There is no way to avoid this issue. It does not affect system performance but can be confusing to users when monitoring import logs.

Fix the issue – This issue has been logged for future correction but does not affect actual processing and may not be included in a release for some time.

 

Import/Export - (10659) Errors are appearing in the systemlog where batch import is trying to read invalid import files.  (Error:InvalidConstruction (1001) - Setting AteConfiguration.EndPoints - error = Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.:  (Error: InvalidConstruction - The BaseXmlDefinedObject has invalid parameters to its constructor.)

 

Avoid the issue – There is no way to avoid this issue. It does not affect system performance but can be confusing to users when monitoring system logs.

Fix the issue – This issue has been logged for future correction but does not affect actual processing and may not be included in a release for some time.

 

Import/Export – (6984) Banner ATE: Sections that are deleted and recreated in the SIS do not get recreated in Astra Schedule until the new sections are edited.

 

Avoid the issue – Sections that have been created, deleted and recreated in the Banner system and therefore imported and deleted from Astra Schedule may have an issue on re-import of the section. 

Fix the issue – To get the sections to import into Astra Schedule, edit and save the section records in Banner which will push an update to Astra Schedule.

 

Import/Export – (10608) Jenzabar EX ATE: Error condition encountered related to

time/date conversion logic. Error :

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: The conversion of a char data type to a datetime data type resulted in an out-of-range datetime value.

 

Fix the issue – Apply 7.4.12 software update

 

Import/export – (11035) Datatel Unidata ATE: Error encountered on export (Real Time or Batch) .

Error: ErrorOnStream Detail: Exception: (ExNotFound) No such method GetSqlOrList on Astra.Core.Util.Map`2

 

Fix the issue – Apply 7.4.12 software update

 

Import/export – (11077) Reported in Datatel Unidata ATE but may apply to other SIS interfaces: After executing a real time export job, term and campus parameters initially associated with the job are no longer visible from the ATE RT Export job form

 

Fix the issue – Apply 7.4.12 software update

Event Scheduling

Event Meeting Edit - (10660) Room usage is not updating when making changes to existing events if Workflow Times out.  Will not allow you to schedule an event in a room that has been re-assigned, cancelled or deleted event and appears available in the front end.

 

Avoid the issue – There is no way to avoid this issue. It does not affect system performance but can be confusing to users when trying to fix unscheduled sections.

Fix the issue – Have the system administrator rebuild the room usage table.

 

Can Not Delete Event and Event Meeting Types - (00030430) Trying to delete any record from the ‘Event Type’ or ‘Event Meeting Type’ Master List results in an Application Error.

 

Avoid the issue – Please work with Astra Technical Support. Technical Support will work with your Astra DBA to remove any unused Event Types.

Fix the issue – This issue has a high priority for an upcoming maintenance release.

 

“No Event Requesting” Usage Control Allows Users to Request Rooms – Users with room requesting permissions can request a room where room default Usage Control is set to ‘No Event Requesting’.

 

Avoid the issue – Event Schedulers/Approvers should be aware and ‘Decline’ requests for use of space that meet this condition (a separate Notification Group can be established to assist in tracking misuse.

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue. It is in the queue for a future release.

 

Cannot Cancel Events with Event Meetings that do not require rooms – User cannot cancel events that have event meetings where ‘Room Required’ is unchecked.

 

Avoid the issue – Edit the Event à click into the Event Meeting à check ‘Room Required’ à Save the Meeting à Change the Status of the Event to ‘Cancel’ à Save the Event.

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue. It is in the queue for a future release.

 

Two Event List Filter controls, Event Status and Event Meeting Status, are not behaving correctly – Multiple Event and Event Meeting Statuses are displaying when the user returns to the Event List after editing or viewing an Event or Meeting.

 

Avoid the issue – use the ‘checkbox’ or ‘X’ to remove any Event Status or Event Meeting Status that is not appropriate for the current search.

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue. It is in the queue for a future release.

 

Event Meeting Room status – Scheduler cannot change an Event Meeting status to ‘Tentative’ or ‘Pending’.

 

Avoid the issue – Change the Event Meeting status to Pending or Drop the room assignment.

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue. It is in the queue for a future release.

Event Workflow

Usage Policy Exception - (00034766) If a usage policy exception was created that limits requesting and scheduling of sections into a particular room, this policy prohibits approving of any activities (including events) into that room via the room requesting/approval process. The usage policy functions appropriately when performing basic event scheduling that does not require approval. The bug occurs when trying to approve a room that has an exception usage policy.

 

Avoid the issue – Event Schedulers/Approvers should be aware and ‘Decline’ requests for use of space that meet this condition (a separate Notification Group can be established to assist in tracking misuse).

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue. It is in the queue for a future release.

 

Resource Administrators and Notification Lists – Resource Administrators cannot access notification list unless they are granted edit event rights.

 

Avoid the issue – Grant Edit Events rights for Resource Administrators. Setup à Roles à Edit Role àEdit Events (Check) à All.

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue. It is in the queue for a future release.

Customers/Contacts

People Edit - (00034904, 00035103) Administrators and Users cannot open People record if the record does not contain an email address.

 

Avoid the issue – Use caution when using the Duplicate Records tool. Validate that you are retaining a legitimate, unique email address for the record that you will be keeping.

Fix the issue – If you have issues, contact Technical Support. Technical Support may be able to work with your Database Administrator to identify and correct the issue. This issue has a high priority for an upcoming maintenance release.

 

People Edit - User Can Delete a Customer that has been Associated to an Event

 

Avoid the issue – Prior to deleting any Customer, search for Events associated to the Customer, through the Event List page. In the Filter pane of the Events page: Set the ‘Time Period’ to ‘All’; Plus out Customer and check-box the appropriate Customer name; make sure that no other filter criteria is set; click the Search button. Modify the found events to the correct Customer/Contact. Once all events have been modified, you can disassociate the Contacts from the Customer, and then delete the Customer from the list.

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue. It is in the queue for a future release.

Install/Upgrade (data integrity)

Install/Upgrade – (10909) Warning messages in upgrade to 7.4.12.

 

Avoid the issue – There is no way to avoid this issue, logs should be monitored when upgrading. The possibility for data integrity issues exists in cases where the warning messages are encountered and data is not restored for the tables referenced. In many cases these tables are empty making the warning messages benign.

Fix the issue – This issue has been logged for future correction.

 

Install/Upgrade – (10635) Error may be encountered upgrading from 7.3 to 7.4 on Oracle platform. ErrorException: ORA-04020: deadlock detected while trying to lock object.

 

Avoid the issue – This error is unavoidable and the cause is currently unknown. The issue is specifically related to upgrade, however, so backing up the Astra Schedule database prior to upgrading limits exposure to data loss. If the error is encountered and a backup exists, the database may be restored to the point prior to upgrade and a different approach may be taken to replace the existing application instance and connecting it to the database. Contact technical support for assistance in completing the upgrade.

Fix the issue – This issue has been logged for future investigation and correction.

 

Install/Upgrade – (10931) Upgrade process will now deactivate all existing notification jobs and schedule a new one because of issues in upgrading scheduled notification jobs.

 

Fix the issue – Apply 7.4.12 software update

Reporting

Double Booked Activities Report(s) - (10886) The report is not recognizing double books that occur on the selected "Start Date" parameter.

 

Avoid the issue – Enter the day prior to your desired start date in the parameter field.

Fix the issue – This issue has been logged for future correction but does not affect actual scheduling and may not be included in a release for some time.  This is an issue with a stored procedure calculation.

 

Scheduling Preferences – Section Report - (10891) This report not working in Oracle based systems.

 

Avoid the issue – Unfortunately this issue is unavoidable in Oracle.

Fix the issue – Verify that the desired preference set is attached to the term in question and open section to view preferences.

 

Event E-mails - (10116) Date and time are not aligned in the notification/summary e-mails on some email clients.

 

Avoid the issue – Set default email settings to send notifications in *.pdf format.  Also, some clients have found changing the selected HTML option to alleviate this issue.

Fix the issue – Edit email templates in Crystal to customize as desired.

Accounting

Establishing Accounting Users in ObjAcct - (00033167) Astra Users with Account User rights in role level security are not established in the ObjAcct database.

 

Avoid the issue – Currently, there is no way to avoid this issue.

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue. It has been marked as a critical issue for a future release.

 

Same Building on Multiple Campuses - The accounting application currently has a field length limitation that can prevent Astra Schedule from being able to uniquely identify rooms if there are buildings and room named the same across multiple campuses, or if there are otherwise unusually long building and room names.  In this case, an error will be encountered when exporting the room information from Astra Schedule to the accounting application.

 

Avoid the issue – Identify rooms with a concatenation of building and room that fits within the field length limitation.

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue. It is in the queue for a future release.

Other Known Issues

Accounting

The accounting application currently has a field length limitation that can prevent Astra Schedule from being able to uniquely identify rooms if there are buildings and room named the same across multiple campuses, or if there are otherwise unusually long building and room names.  In this case an error will be encountered when exporting the room information from Astra Schedule to the accounting application.  (Incident:  5441)

Calendars

Users with Calendars set to the “Month” view will only see one event per day when multiple events are scheduled within the same day.  (Incident:  7817)

 

Exam meetings colors may be inconsistent when changing the calendar view.  (Incident:  7769)

 

Calendar hover info panes for double-booked events will only display information for one of the two events.  (Incident:  7816)

 

Some user roles may be able to see the meeting details of events marked “Private” by the event creator.  (Incident:  1628)

 

Calendar functions are not currently compatible with the Safari browser, and some display resolutions in IE 7 & 8 may render the time control and text boxes incorrectly.  (Incident:  5836)

 

IE 7 users may experience issues with opening the Simple Event form when attempting to launch it from within a filtered calendar view.  (Incident:  8147)

 

The Event Status filter is not currently functional on the calendar.  (Incident:  10977)

Events

Deleting a canceled event meeting (meeting is in “Canceled” status) will not remove the event meeting from the event list.  (Incident: 5757)

 

Setting an event recurrence of “every 30th day” when setting up an event in the Event Wizard will skip February.  (Incident: 7604)

 

Some user roles may be able to schedule events on Holidays that have been configured to not allow event scheduling.  (Incident: 11016)

 

Rooms designated as “tentative” or “requested” (as part of an event creation workflow) may still appear as “available” to other users with the event request permission.  (Incident:  2103)

 

When creating an event and booking a resource with a quantity, available quantity is not calculated properly within the same event. When adding new meetings or editing existing bookings the correct values are calculated. Requested resources that have been approved are also calculated correctly.  (Incident:  11017)

 

System will not prompt two or more users with the “event approval” permission who are accessing the same event concurrently.  (Incidents:  Bugs 4046, 4044)

 

E-mail notification capability regarding changes to assigned rooms and resources is not currently functional.  (Incident:  Bug 6973)

Import/Export

Customers who employ ODBC Datatel Unidata drivers to connect Astra to their SIS may experience fatal driver issues when running two concurrent or overlapping ATE jobs (ie, one real-time job plus one batch whose schedules overlap). The best practice is to avoid concurrent ATE job scheduling, which has been determined to resolve this issue.

 

After importing events via the Excel import utility, customer data must be reexported to ObjAcct before users can effectively access Events and Customer related functionality.

People

People records cannot currently be searched via email address.  (Incident:  3107)

Platinum Analytics

Users viewing the Rule Walker in Internet Explorer 8 on 1024 X 768 resolution may not be able to view all the rules (IE 8 only)

Reporting

For multi-institution clients ONLY, filtering parameters for several of the reports will show filters for all institutions rather than just the single institution that is assigned to the site

 

Reporting:  Reports that include subreports cannot be used in report subscriptions due to issues with how the subreport parameter is handled.  This currently includes the following reports:

Events by Date and Time with Notes

Events Detail by Date Range

Events Detail by Reservation Number

Events for Selected Resource with Meeting Notes

Rooms by Building

Rooms by Region

Rooms by Room Type

Rooms for Selected Building

Rooms with Selected Feature by Building

Percent of Rooms in Use by Day and Time for Selected Room Type

Percent of Rooms in Use Selected Room Type by Size

Sandbox - Room Optimization

Assigning rooms to specific section meeting dates (section meeting instances) has no effect when editing a section from a sandbox. Only the room assigned to the first instance will be used as the Section Meeting room

Sandbox – Sectioning & Timetabling

The “available courses” modal window may not show all the sections of a course when moving students to another section

 

Timetable Sandbox runs do no currently display in IE

 

Timetabling is not currently functional for clients with Oracle backend

 

Updating a room or time assignment for sections in a Timetabling Sandbox results table may require user to manually refresh the page when switching tabs in order to display the update(s)

 

“Show Patterns with Student Conflicts” checkbox not currently working as designed within the Ad-Hoc Scheduling tool

 

The number of Student Conflicts may be incorrect when accessing the Ad Hoc Scheduler in Timetabling

 

In the Sections tab of the Sandbox results, the “Time Status” field is not reflecting dynamic updates when user makes changes to the corresponding section

 

Timetabling users may notice an issue in which students appearing on the “Students in Conflict” tab are still visible following the resolution of the conflict

 

Section status may not change to “Unscheduled” in the Section modal window of a completed Timetabling Sandbox run after dropping its room assignment.  (Incident:  7773)

 

Associating a required Time Preference to sections can cause them to appear as “infeasible” in the Sandbox results viewer

Security

Users with mixed restrictions for request, schedule, view, and edit rooms may encounter errors in the ad hoc scheduler.

System Configuration

• Holiday Section Conflicts: Section meeting instances are cancelled and flagged as exceptions upon section creation.  However, at this time, holiday configuration actions that should impact existing section records will not perform this work. Holidays that block section meetings must be created before sections are created.

Upgrades / Conversions

For Astra clients on an Oracle db instance, workflow files larger than 16KB cannot be uploaded via the application’s workflow uploader tool due to a file size limitation with Oracle.

 

Any event that was saved in 7.3 will, when edited in 7.4, move back to the beginning of the workflow process

 

Event & resource requests in pending status (ie, waiting for approval) will be lost in conversion

 

Configuring the 7.4 workflow engine for Events requires a SQL script (NOTE: UPGRADES ONLY; New installs will not require this step)

 

Portal configuration data does not upgrade from 7.3.x to 7.4.x

 

PeopleSoft clients who utilize the audit table as part of ATE configuration may need to regenerate this table post-upgrade

User Help

The application user help is not currently context-sensitive