Astra Schedule Release Notes

7.5.4

7.5.4

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7.5.4

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Release Notes

 

Beta Release 7.5.4

11/21/11

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 7.5.4

 

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.  The 7.5 release is more geared toward event improvement and academic focus is purely on stabilization and user interface refinement.

 

Specific high impact issues corrected in this release include:

Exams: Corrected issue with assign rooms tool for exams inaccurately showing conflicts with sections.

 

Optimizer: Corrected issue with Sandbox run not completing due to timeout.

 

Optimizer: Restricted term deletion with open optimizer runs.

 

Optimizer Results:  Corrected issue generating error (Unable to load record of type: SectionMeetInstance) when selecting the “Bottleneck Rooms” tab from a Sandbox run that was created initially by using another Sandbox run as the data source.

 

Section Edit: Corrected issue with overall visibility of sections that disappear when room type or meeting type preferences are applied through editing the section.

 

Section Edit: Corrected issue that created the inability to save a section edit after a cross list was defined.

Sectioning and Timetabling

Specific high impact issues corrected in this release include:

Corrected issue preventing Students & Orphaned Students tab from loading in Sectioning run.

 

Corrected issues with filters on student List page.

 

Corrected issue resulting in error (Astra.Business.Processors.Timetabling.TimetableManager [ERROR] Timetabling stopped with error at 9/7/2011 2:01 PM. Error = Timetable failure.) in Timetabling sandbox.

 

Corrected issue with setting info being blank when selecting an existing timetabling run from the list.

 

Corrected issue with preference sets not being visible for selection when building a new timetabling run.

Events, Calendaring, and People

New functionality is now available in the Events area of 7.5 Astra Schedule:

7.5+ Enhancements:

Clone an Event: As a time-saving feature, an existing event can be copied forward to a new date or dates.  The clone process creates a new event record and copies all of the event and meeting details, including any assigned resources.  This can be an extremely handy feature for replicating a complex event with several meetings, or for just copying an event that is scheduled frequently.

In-grid Edit: In-grid editing is supported for some of the basic attributes of the meetings.  While in edit mode, click directly in the field to edit a meeting name, date, time, or attendance.

Multi-Edit Event Meetings: Multiple meetings within a single event can be edited all at once using the multi-edit feature.  Most meeting attributes can be edited in this way, including meeting names, types, statuses, times and dates, customer contact, and related activities.  Room and resource assignments can be made in a similar way using the Assign Rooms and Assign Resources options on the meeting list tab.

Notification History: The history of internal and external messages generated for each event is logged and viewable from within the event record.  The notification history log displays the name or description of the message that was generated, the recipient(s), the sender, and the date the message was sent.

Single Meetings: The default meeting option when creating meetings is Single Meeting(s).  Using this option you can enter a time, browse dates on the calendars, and quickly select one or more meeting dates.  Using this option you can create single date meetings, or multi-select dates to create a meeting "group".  Meeting groups are displayed as a single row in lists and can be expanded to view individual dates if desired.  When creating multiple meeting dates as a group, the system will prompt you for a group name.  This name is displayed for the roll-up event meeting row in lists. Meeting groups can be edited and scheduled as a series.

Spanning Meetings: The Spanning option allows you to create a single meeting that occurs continuously from one day to another, across midnight.  In the example below, the single meeting created begins at 8 AM on one day and ends at 5 PM two days later.

Move with Meeting: Because event meetings can have various related activities configured, it can be tedious to manage them when and if the meeting time or date should change.  To make this easier, a "Move with Meeting" flag is available on all related activities. If "Move with Meeting" is marked as "true" for an activity, then it's time and position relative to the meeting time is maintained when the meeting time is edited.  Therefore, if the related activity is directly adjacent to the meeting, it will automatically be adjusted when the meeting time is edited.  Likewise, if there is a gap between the activity and the meeting, that gap will be maintained as well.

Slide: The multi-edit tool includes the ability to not only make specific time/date changes, but also to move the time and/or date of all selected meetings by a certain amount.  This feature allows you to select meetings with varying dates and times and move them all forward or backward by the same number of hours or days.

 

Specific high impact issues corrected in this release include:

Corrected issue with adding multiple rooms to an event meeting from the Event Wizard.

 

Corrected issue assigning a room to a spanning meeting greater than four days.

 

Corrected issue with capacity field data not being visible from Ad Hoc Scheduler when assigning a room.

 

Corrected issue with visual representation of recurrence calendar when building event meetings from the Event Wizard.

 

Corrected visual issue with Customer/Contact fields from the “Finish” tab of the Event Wizard.

 

Corrected issue generating error in the application (Error getting value from 'StatusText' on 'Astra.Business.Entities.EventMeetingResource') caused by the event being associated with “soft deleted” user records.

 

Corrected issue with assigning rooms to “event groups” when the group node is not expanded to display all individual meetings.

 

Corrected issue with ad-hoc scheduler is not taking into account capacity changes or expiration dates on effective-dated rooms when displaying available rooms.

 

Corrected issue with the application forcing the user to log in after canceling the creation of an event through the Event Wizard.

 

Corrected issue with expand/collapse of parent/child elements from the event form.

 

Corrected issue with recurring meetings that include the last Saturday of a month being built with incorrect dates.

 

Corrected issue with resource quantity not being visible to the approval process for a requested resource.

 

Corrected issue with “Access Denied” messages being generated when viewing events from the Event List page although the user has “View Events” permission associated to their security role.

 

Corrected issue with “Access Denied” messages being generated when requesting events although the user has “Request Events” permission associated to their security role.

 

Corrected issue with Available Rooms Tool not displaying available rooms after the room filter has been modified in the room selection process when creating an event.

 

Corrected issue with “Access Denied” messages being generated when approving a requested resource from the Notification List.

 

Corrected issue with viewing items in a collection when hovering over Equipment/Services from the resource list page.

 

Corrected issue with Calendar Grid drop-down-list not displaying Resources.

 

Corrected issue with the Available Room and Resource Tool (the Calendar Search Tool) not being able to create a meeting pattern.

 

Corrected issue with Event Calendar Hover links redirecting the user to a blank Event page.

 

Resource conflicts are now handled and identified in a correct manner.

 

Corrected issue prohibiting user to add required items to a collection.

Reporting

Specific high impact issues corrected in this release include:

Enhancement - Added the ability to define the “From Email” address in the report subscription setup form.

Import/Export and System Configuration

Specific high impact issues corrected in this release include:

Corrected issue around application errors being generated when viewing ATE job artifacts have been removed by the system cleanup task.

 

Enhancement – Added ATE signage export functionality.

 

Corrected ATE Job schedule form validation requiring unnecessary elements when building a “Once” job schedule.

 

Enhancement - Support the Ability to Import "Room Characteristics" or Feature Preferences from PeopleSoft for Sections.

 

Corrected issues with transforming data from previous versions of Astra Schedule to 7.5.X structure due to schema differences and or FK/PK constraints.

 

Corrected issue with upgrading Task Agent and retaining connection info as defined in an ODBC data source for appropriate platforms (Datatel Unidata, Jenzabar CX).

User Interface Components

Specific high impact issues corrected in this release include:

Added “Campus” filter to Ad-Hoc scheduler.

 

Improved event management tools.

 

Additonal Resolved Incidents

Event Create / Edit / Schedule

Corrected issue with assigning Equipment/Services from the Event Wizard and specifying quantity when “Track Quantity” is not selected on the equipment or service item.  (Case # 00033984)

 

Corrected issue with “notify contact” element from the Event Wizard “Finish” screen being illegible. (Case # 00034499)

 

Corrected issue generating error (Error getting value from 'ResourceName' on 'Astra.Business.Entities.EventMeetingResource') caused by a resource associated with an event that has been “soft deleted”.  (Case # 00034470)

 

Corrected issue with “Scheduler” filter not being populated with event creator information on events constructed in Astra Schedule. (Case # 00034521)

 

Corrected issue with carrying forward the date ( that is different than “today”) from a selected calendar cell and populating the event request form appropriately. Event request form was always defaulting to current date although a different date was initially selected from the calendar. (Case # 00034729)

 

Corrected issue generating error (ERROR Astra.Core.Ajax.Dispatcher - Ad-Hoc Request failed to initialize (Error 500, path:/INSTANCE/~api/events/eventConflicts, params:eventId=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXX-XXXXX&eventIsNew=false) due associated soft deleted record references. (Case # 00033815, 00033819, 00034996, 00034999, 00035183)

 

Corrected issue generating error (System.NullReferenceException : Object reference not set to an instance of an object.) when submitting an event request. (Case # 00034512)

 

Corrected issue with viewing photos of equipment/Services in the application. (Case # 00033817)

 

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.

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.

Academic Scheduling:

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.

Global Calendars

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.

Event Management:

Resource Approvers Need Additional Information in the Notification List – (00034270, 00034449, 00034911, 00035146, 00034861) Resource approvers do not have enough information to approve or decline a request.

Avoid the issue – The resource can be approved or declined from the Notification list. To see more information, the approver can navigate to the Events list and drill into the specific Event Meeting.

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue.  It is addressed in 7.4.13 and 7.5.x.

Resource Availability – Resources (Equipment/Services/Collections) are showing as available; they are not decrementing correctly from inventory.

Avoid the issue – There is no way to avoid this issue. Do not test in 7.5.4.

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

Event List is Not Sorting the Column Alphabetically – (00008951) The ‘Name’ column on the Event List is sorting uppercase letters first then lowercase letters.

Avoid the issue – Type all Event and Event Meeting names using title case (i.e. The At Risk Student).

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue.  It is addressed in 7.4.13 and 7.5.x.

Event List Unrecoverable Error When Grouping by Modified Date – (00010961) Adding the ‘Modified Date’ to the Event List and then trying to group by the column causes an error.

Avoid the issue – Do not add the Modified Date column to the Event List page.

Fix the issue – There is no current fix for this issue.  It is in the queue for a future release. Use the Page Configuration button, located in the lowest right hand corner of the application to reset the page to original layout. Click the ‘Page Configuration’ icon à Click the ‘Clear State & Reload’ button. The page will be reset to its original layout.

Cannot Add a New Field to the Event Request Template – (10243) Currently, you cannot add a new field to any Event Request Template.

Avoid the issue – There is no way to avoid this issue. Do not test in 7.5.4.

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

Reporting:

Double Books not Displaying on Double Booked Report – (11063) In MSSQL sites, double booked sections are not appearing on the Double Booked Activities report.  In Oracle sites, neither sections nor events are appearing on the Double Booked Activities report.

Avoid the issue – Double books most commonly occur during import of section data over existing events. Limiting the use of classroom space for event scheduling prior to the import of sections can help minimize double books.

Workaround – The All Activities for Selected Date Range by Building and Room report can be used to manually look for double books in specific rooms.

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

Import/Export:

Unable to Export to Excel or View Raw Table on any list pages – (9177) Attempting to export to Excel from list pages or view “Raw table data” will result in an application error:{ "ErrorCode": 1000, "Message": "Value cannot be null\r\nParameter name: sortOrder", "Source": "Astra.Core", "StackTrace": " at Astra.Core.Dynamic.MethodCaller`2.Call(Object that, C ctx)\r\n at Astra.Core.Ajax.BasicResponder.Exec(Context context)\r\n at Astra.Core.Ajax.Dispatcher.ProcessRequest(HttpContext http)"

Avoid the issue – No steps to avoid this issue currently.

Workaround – None at this time.

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

Deleting campus that was associated to a job produces error – (6598) Deleting a campus from the application will result in an error when accessing previously created ATE jobs that reference the deleted campus: Error getting value from 'ValueEntityFieldValue' on 'Astra.Business.Entities.AteJobParameter'.
Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. Unable to load record of type: Campus. (Id=5d9ba0dd-0cbb-4a0a-9ad5-3ec89ba2c2ee)

Avoid the issue – There are no steps to avoid this issue if it is required that a campus be deleted from the system.

Workaround – If it is necessary to delete a campus, all ATE jobs that reference the deleted campus should be created again without the campus reference.

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

Additional Known Issues

Academic Scheduling

Cannot show alternate meeting patterns when assigning rooms with the Ad Hoc Scheduling tool in production. (“Alternate Meeting Pattern” is currently only an option when using the Ad Hoc Scheduler within a sandbox.)

 

Rooms returned by the Ad-hoc scheduler when filtering by multiple resource preferences may be inaccurate.

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

Attempting to view large numbers of rooms (> 1000) in the “Daily” view mode may cause browser rendering issues and result in slow/unresponsive performance. Ad Astra recommends adding filter criteria when viewing the calendar in the “Daily” to avoid any related issues

 

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

 

Exam meetings colors may be inconsistent when changing the calendar view

 

Calendar hover info panes for double-booked events will only display information for one of the two events

 

Some user roles may be able to see the meeting details of events marked “Private” by the event creator

 

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

 

IE 7 users may experience issues with opening the Simple Event form when attempting to launch it from within a filtered calendar view

 

When filtering down to a single room view on an effective-dated room, scheduled events may not be visible

 

Events set as “Featured” may not display the hover information from the Calendar view (does not impact any other types of events)

Events which require multiple rooms for a single meeting are not currently supported (user may schedule each room as a separate meeting as a workaround)

 

Room assignments for events with multiple pages of event meetings (ie, > 15) may not be saved when using the Event Wizard to create the event

 

The notification schedule is not accessible by a user that does not have Event scheduling permissions

 

Attempting to delete an Event Meeting Type that is currently in use will result in application error

 

Some user roles may not be able to schedule events on Holidays that have been configured to allow event scheduling

 

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

 

System will not prompt two or more users with the “event approval” permission who are accessing the same event concurrently

 

E-mail notification capability regarding changes to assigned rooms and resources is not currently functional

 

Resource availability checking logic in the case of 2 or more concurrent users trying to book the same resource for the same meeting time (or 1 user booking the same resource into 2 overlapping meetings) may not inform users of resource double-booking.

 

Events which have not been edited in v7.5 (and thus updated with workflow status) may not be retrieved when attempting to filter by event status ONLY in the Event List page

 

Users may experience application issues when attempting to cancel events which contain more than one event meeting and have been assigned resource(s) in “Tentative” status

Import/Export

Importing Room resources using Excel for any records in which the RoomSISKey contains a trailing space will result in a loss of the room’s saved features

 

Job status for On Demand section import jobs will not display on the Section Form when job does not complete (ie, ends in “Error” status)

People

User can delete a Customer that has been associated to a scheduled event

 

Selecting “Merge” when adding a new person record will result in an application error

 

People records cannot currently be searched via email address

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

 

MSSQL users experimenting with creating advanced reports will need to grant full access to their Astra Reports user (does not impact Oracle clients)

 

Some Platinum reports with multiple rows for column names will have the first row for the column header when exporting to Excel

 

Reporting:  Reports that include sub‑reports cannot be used in report subscriptions due to issues with how the sub‑report 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

Resources

Clicking “view impact” of Holidays (on select Activities) results in an application error

Sandbox – Sectioning & Timetabling

Timetabling is not currently functional in v7.5

 

Statistics in Timetabling are not updated after changes have been made to any Sections or Students

 

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

 

Linked sections may not be able to be scheduled in a Timetabling run

 

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

 

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

 

Students are not currently being removed from the “Students in Conflict” tab after all conflicts have been resolved

 

The “Possible Times” column is not being populated correctly in Timetabling Results

Sandbox - Room Optimization

Using a Room Optimization Sandbox as the section data source for a subsequent Room Optimization run will return 0 results

 

Due to the implementation of the new Sandbox for optimizer processes, pre-existing optimizer runs will not convert to version 7.5

 

Some longer meeting type names may be cut off in the Sandbox criteria settings filter

 

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

 

Users may experience performance issues when executing Room Optimization runs on terms with large number ( > 5000) of sections. (Note: adding additional preference rules has been found to improve performance after encountering this issue)

Security

“Guest” user account must be mapped to the “guest” role (in user setup) for proper application functionality

Filters & List Pages

Selecting a saved filter from any list page will insert GUIDs—rather than their corresponding list item—into the search filter criteria boxes (filters will still work correctly)

Upgrades / Conversions

Any event that was saved in v7.3 will, when edited in 7.5, 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 7.5 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 7.5

 

Events with a room assignment from a previous version of Astra Schedule may create double-bookings during an upgrade to 7.5. Impacted users should run the Double-Book Report following an upgrade to correct this

 

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

User Interface Components

Editing the properties of custom fields requires user to choose a new name for the custom field when saving any changes

 

Start and End Time fields may not display correctly when user chooses “Export to Excel” or “View Raw Table” option on certain pages with these fields