Changes to outstanding degree requirements notices (“balance letters”)

Effective May 2015, you will see updated language and data in the “coursework - no grade” section of the outstanding degree requirements emails sent to students once their files are reviewed for degree completion. GSSP will no longer list missing grade information (i.e., individual course title and credit amount) for current term coursework. Rather, this section will reflect the following language:

You have courses on your Graduate Degree Plan (GDP) for which you have not yet earned a grade. This may be because we reviewed your file before grades were due, or because your grades have not yet been submitted. All courses on your GDP must be graded on or before the last working day of your intended graduation month. We will review your file at the end of the month and update your GDP with any newly graded courses at that time.

Action Required: Monitor your unofficial transcript to ensure that a grade is submitted. To request removal and/or addition of course(s) from your GDP, you may file a petition form available at http://policy.umn.edu/forms/otr/otr190.pdf to the Graduate Student Services Office (160 Williamson Hall) for approval. 

FERPA: Since the upgrade, where do I find a student’s FERPA suppression level?

The location of a student's suppression level has remained largely unchanged since the upgrade. When viewing an individual student's record in PeopleSoft, a blue window shade icon in the upper right-hand corner indicates that the student has some level of suppression. Click on the window shade icon to display a pop-up window with the student's level of suppression.

In Faculty Center, when you click on the class roster icon to display the roster, a related content window will open displaying all students in the class that have some level of suppression.

In Reporting Center, most roster-type reports display FERPA suppression level in the last column in the report.

Students can change their suppression level by visiting MyU: My Info and clicking on the pencil icon in the Directory Suppression section.

Upgrade update

Upgraded systems launched on April 20 as scheduled. A huge thank you to all staff that made this transition successful and smooth. The ASR Training Team and business analysts are receiving many inquiries and working through them with users from across system campuses. Help lines are receiving a higher-than-average number of service requests, and things are being worked through as quickly as possible. Your patience is appreciated during this time. Many inquiries are resolved by reminding people to upgrade their browser, clear their cache, and disable pop-up blockers. Please continue to contact your normal support line with any issues or questions.

Using the new final grade entry process

As the semester continues after the launch of the Upgrade, many upgraded systems will be used for the first time. For example, in the next few weeks faculty, instructors, and their proxies will use the new final grading process. As part of the Upgrade, the University’s custom developed grade entry applications were retired and are no longer available. Faculty, instructors, and their proxies will now enter grades by utilizing the MyU: Teaching tab. Here are some highlights of the change and some helpful tips for grade entry.

Please note: the information below is intended to complement what may have been sent from colleges or departments to their teaching faculty, including processes specific to their unit.

Verify access to grade rosters

Faculty, instructors, and their proxies should verify that they have access to all of their assigned grade rosters before the last day of instruction. To do this, access your Faculty Center in the MyU: Teaching tab and view the Grade Rosters for the classes you teach. When grade rosters are created (generally about twelve days before the last day of the term), those with access will see an icon that looks like a person inside a square next to the class in Faculty Center. Click that icon to view the roster. If you do not see the grade rosters you expect, please contact your department scheduler.


Class rosters and grade entry for courses owned by the School of Public Health are available only through the School of Public Health grading system. Faculty within the Medical School and the Law School typically do not access their grade rosters electronically and should contact their administrative support if they have questions.

Uploading grades directly from Moodle

Final grades entered in Moodle can be transferred directly into the grade roster within the Faculty Center. This guide to uploading gradebooks from Moodle to the final grade roster in PeopleSoft outlines the process. Those using this option should make sure that the final grade roster has been created prior to uploading from Moodle. It is important to note that once the grades have been transferred, they still must be reviewed and approved in Faculty Center.

New “NR” grade replacing grades that are left blank

Once the grading deadline has passed, a new grading mark, NR (Not Reported), will be given to students who are not assigned a grade by their instructor. The NR will be treated like a blank grade was in the previous system (e.g., zero grade points, zero credits).

Additional resources available on One Stop Faculty website

How-to guides on entering grades, making changes to grades, and more are available in the Grades section of the One Stop Faculty website. Grading due dates, frequently asked questions, and grading and transcript policies are also available.

Tech tips

• A good first step for those encountering difficulties is to clear their browser’s cache.
• Browser type and version can affect grade entry. Those having trouble should try updating their browser or using another one. 
• Grade entry will work on mobile browsers (e.g., phones, tablets). Some pages have been designed to respond to multiple screen sizes, and some have not. Non-responsive pages should still function, but may be less aesthetically pleasing and could present anomalies. 

How the class waitlist process will work after the Upgrade

The class waitlist process is undergoing some major process changes as a result of the Upgrade. We would like to provide some additional information and resources to guide you and your students through this transition.

Background

Currently, students usually find an alternate class, add themselves on the desired class waitlist if one exists, and wait for a spot to open up. If a seat becomes available, they would be invited to enroll in the class from the department offering the class. The invitation includes a permission number that allows them to register. With that in hand, they then have the opportunity to adjust their enrollment to avoid time conflicts before registering for the desired class.

What’s changing?

The new class waitlist process eliminates the invitation step and automatically enrolls students when seats open. Students will receive an email if they are successfully enrolled from the waitlist. However, this auto-enroll process will not complete if the student was added to the waitlist and is enrolled in another class that has a time overlap. Instead, they will receive a notification alerting them that there was a conflict. The student can then resolve the conflict by dropping the other class before the auto enroll process starts again.

Along with the auto-enroll class waitlist process, the University will begin using delivered functionality that allows students to have the system automatically drop them from a conflicting class if a seat becomes available for them. Rather than placing themselves to the waitlist from the “Add” function, they will use the “Swap” functionality in the enroll tab. This will place them on the waitlist (that can be prioritized by faculty or departments), but in a way that tells the system to drop them from the conflicting class if a seat becomes available for them in the desired class.

What’s the timeline?

• During the systems interruption (approximately April 10-20): Students will be unable to add or remove themselves from waitlists. An email will be sent the week of April 13 to Twin Cities students who are currently on a waitlist informing them that they will be unable to add or remove themselves from a waitlist during the system down time and what the process will be after the Upgrade. They will be directed to the how to guides on the One Stop website and to contact One Stop (or the Office of the Registrar in Crookston) with any questions. 
• After go-live (April 20): The new auto-enroll process will start on Friday, May 1 for the Twin Cities campus. Students on a waitlist approximately two days prior to this will receive an email stating that the process is about to start, and if they do not wish to be auto-enrolled, they need to remove themselves from the waitlist immediately.

Resources

For students

How to swap classes
How to future swap classes
How to enter a permission number
How to add yourself to a class waitlist

For staff and faculty

Waitlist and Auto-Enroll UPK

Clearing Cache and Cookies

Sometimes your colleagues will not be able to access the new system pages. The most common cause for this problem will be un-cleared cache. This means that the computer is storing outdated snapshots of former web pages, and they need to be cleared out so the new pages can load.

Many times the fix is as simple as hitting the “Refresh” button. But if that doesn’t work, you can clear cache for a specific browser, and clear cookies too, by following the steps outlined in the online resources below.

How to Clear Cache and Cookies in Firefox

http://it.umn.edu/how-clear-cache-cookies-firefox

How to Clear Cache and Cookies in Safari

http://it.umn.edu/how-clear-cache-cookies-in-safari

How to Clear Cache and Cookies in Internet Explorer

http://it.umn.edu/how-clear-cache-cookies-internet

How to Clear Cache and Cookies in Chrome

http://it.umn.edu/how-clear-cache-cookies-chrome

Scheduled outage for ECAS and PCAS

Due to the Upgrade, ECAS and and PCAS will be unavailable for viewing, submitting, or approving proposals from April 10 at 1:00 a.m. until Go Live, scheduled for April 20. During that time, the ECAS and PCAS websites will be redirected to a webpage explaining the outage. Proposals that are in process during the outage can be approved when the systems become available again.

Course information can be viewed as normal during this period.

FERPA: Are admissions files included as part of the education record?

The short answer is, yes. They contain personally identifiable information about the student and are maintained by the institution, so they are considered an education record. As such, if a student requests access to his or her admissions file and it hasn't been destroyed (following the University's retention policy) the student has the right to view the information. The one caveat to this is letters of recommendation the student has waived the rights to see, the waiver excludes those records from student review. If the information is still maintained and the student has requested to view it, the record cannot be destroyed at that point even if according to the retention policy it could have been.

Final Student Experience Preview session scheduled

The final Student Experience Preview session is scheduled for Friday, April 17 from 12-1 p.m. in Rapson Hall, room 58. The session will include demonstrations of class registration, bill payment, and viewing financial aid. Also covered will be how MyU and the One Stop website will work together after the upgraded systems launch. This session is created for those who support students (e.g., advisers, student services staff). No RSVP required.

Job Aids for the Upgrade

The training team has published User Productivity Kits (UPK) on several topics for the Upgrade. These UPK topics provide a tour of University of Minnesota PeopleSoft processes and can be accessed from the Help button in PeopleSoft 9.0, or at asr.umn.edu/upgradetraining. If you would like a printable job aid, use the “Print It” mode of a UPK.

Voice messages to the helpline now open ServiceNow tickets

To provide better service to our users, voice messages left on the Student Records Help Desk support line (621-625-2803) now trigger ServiceNow tickets to open for the Training and Support Team, just as emails sent to srhelp@umn.edu have been doing for the last few years. Staff are reminded that they need only leave a voice message or send an email, as doing both would open duplicate ServiceNow tickets.

Change to Prelim Oral Exam (0807) milestone reporting

As we continue to make improvements to student milestones, Graduate Student Services & Progress (GSSP) would like to make you aware of a milestone reporting change from the Graduate Education Student Report for Majors/Minors (G032) in UM Reports.

If a student passes their prelim oral exam with reservations, GSSP staff enter the Prelim Oral Exam (0807) milestone as “Pass with reservations,” which is then indicated in the UM Report as “P-R.” Instead of adding another milestone once the reservations are resolved, GSSP staff are changing the initial milestone to “Pass (P) - reservations removed.” This method is beneficial to the student, as they will only see one milestone on their record in the new MyU portal. However, it was noticed that after the milestone is changed to “Pass (P) - reservations removed,” there is no record indicating the student completed exam reservations in the UM Report; the record in the report is blank.

To see the student’s full 0807 milestone record, view in:
PeopleSoft by following Main Menu > Records and Enrollment > Enroll Students > Student Milestones
(Pre-PeopleSoft Upgrade): UM Reports > Graduate Education Student Report for Majors/Minors (G032) > click on the student name or ID
(Post-PeopleSoft Upgrade): MyU > Key Links > Reporting Center > Student Services > Student Records > Graduate Education Student Report for Majors/Minors

Due to the reporting changes addressed above, GSSP recommends referencing the Milestones page in PeopleSoft for the most current and complete milestone data. Please view this Milestone Tutorial (UPK) to view the full milestone changes that will occur from 8.9 to 9.0 PeopleSoft.
Any questions regarding this update can be directed to gssp@umn.edu.

Upgrade - GSSP process modifications

As you know, the PeopleSoft Upgrade cutover period has been established (starting April 10 with an anticipated April 20 go-live). The Graduate Student Services and Progress (GSSP) office is working to adjust processes to accommodate system downtime and reduce delays in students' degree progress.

We want to make you aware of a website dedicated to GSSP process modifications for the cutover period. As we will be taking our automated forms (i.e., workflows) offline prior to and during the cutover period, this website will serve as the place where students and staff can access interim forms should they need to complete processes during system downtime.

This information will also be shared with students in the March 23 issue of the Graduate and Professional Student Update (GPU). As always, we appreciate your patience and understanding.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at gssp@umn.edu.