Absence declaration – New ROSI Express reports

Date: April 1, 2020
To:
ROSI Users
From:
Student Information Systems
Re:
Absence declaration – New ROSI Express reports

 

This afternoon EASI released two new reports in ROSI Express. These reports will assist divisions and departments in tracking their students who have self declared absences using the ACORN Absence Declaration tool. These reports can be found in the general Reports tab in the ROSI Express Menu. As with other ROSI Express reports, the output can be viewed on the page or downloaded.

Absence List by Department

 This report provides declared absences of students in courses within a particular department or unit on a given date or date range. The output includes Session Code, Academic Activity Code, Section Code, Primary Teaching Method, Primary Section Number, Person Id, Name, Absence Date, Creation Id, Timestamp, Confirmation Number, and Delete Indicator.

“Session Code”, “From Date” and “Primary Organization Code” are required fields. To specify a date range, add a date in the “To Date” field. Add a “Section Code” if you wish to restrict the courses to a particular section type. To restrict the report to a given department, enter a Secondary Org Code or a list of Secondary Org Codes in the “Secondary Organization Code List” field, separated by commas or blanks. In divisions with no units, leave the Secondary Org Code blank.

Absence List by Student

 This report provides declared absences of an individual student or a list of students on a given date or date range. The output includes Person Id, Absence Date, Creation Id, Timestamp, Confirmation Number and Delete Indicator.

Enter the following required fields: a date in the ‘From Date’ field and a student number in the “Person Id List” field to display a declared absence on a specific day for a given student. Enter a ‘To Date’ also if you wish to display a range of dates. To display more than one student, enter person ids separated by commas or spaces.

Please refer to field help on both screens. We are also preparing a knowledge base article in the Enterprise Service Centre (ESC).

A third report for an individual course will be released later. That information can be obtained now with all courses in the unit in the Absence List by Department report.

EASI – Student Information Systems

Adjustments to summer Y and F course locations, delivery mode

Date: April 7, 2020
To: ROSI Users
From: Student Information Systems
Re: Adjustments to summer Y and F course locations, delivery mode

 

Hello colleagues,

The Provost’s Office and the academic continuity group has asked that all full summer and first summer term course information be updated in ROSI and ACORN to reflect the current arrangements for instruction this summer.  Accordingly, ACE, UTM, and UTSC have removed location information for all Y and F courses for which they had previously allocated classroom space. EASI is in the process of updating the delivery mode on all Y and F courses to “ONL” (Online). Once this is completed the information will appear in ACORN (student personal timetable, course enrolment screen and enrolment cart, etc.), Course Finder and the Course Information System.

While we are updating this information in bulk to speed the update and reduce manual entries in divisional registrars’ offices, there still are some things that timetabling offices should check on:

  • Only academic activities with a type ‘CRS’ will have the teaching method updated to “ONL”. For other academic activity types this might be inappropriate. Divisions should check these and update them if they do meet the definition of an Online activity. (see the attached list for these exceptions. Note, only applies to FAS, Law, UTSC and SGS).
    Definition
    Fully Online Course: A course is considered to be “online” if it has been designed such that all of the instructional interaction occurs without the student and instructor being in the same physical location, with the exception of final or interim assessment requiring attendance on campus no more than once per term.
  • There may be cases where a course does not meet the definition of “Online” or where the instructor has set a different delivery method, these courses should be adjusted when you have that information
  • ACE has only removed the location on those courses for which they are responsible for room allocation. We have checked to see if there are other courses with locations. At the moment there are none but your office should still check the information and be careful not to add any.. (You can find all of your course information in the Academic Activities download (1 D A or 1 D B)).
  • We have made no change to the TBA indicator on courses. You may want to check that this information is accurate.

We have not included S courses in these changes. If these arrangements are extended to July/August offerings we will advise you before making similar changes. We are taking all steps possible to support divisions and avoid local data entry for these mitigations.

N.B., the delivery mode and evaluation settings will copy forward when you perform your activity rollover for next summer.

Please let us know if you have questions about any of this.

EASI – Student Information Systems.

MROL has moved to My Research Portal

Date: March 26, 2020
To: MROL Stakeholders
From: Renee Brost, Chief Administrative Officer, Division of the Vice-President Research and Innovation
Re: MROL has moved to My Research Portal

 

MROL Stakeholders,

The link to My Research On-Line (MROL) has been removed and all users will access MROL via the My Research portal  with their UTORids. This consolidation streamlines access to the system, and is part of the U of T Enterprise Modernization Program.

To access My Research On Line (MROL) once you’ve logged into the My Research portal, click on the My Research tab and then on the My Research On Line sub-tab. If you are prompted to enter a User name and Password when you click on My Research On Line, please clear your web browser’s cache and try again.

How will this change impact you?

Principal Investigators:
Previously PIs could access MROL through a direct link using their SAP credentials, or via the My Research portal using their UTORid.  The direct link has been removed and users will continue to access MROL via the My Research portal.

Business Officers and Project Managers:
The direct link has been removed, and users will access MROL via the My Research portal with their UTORid.

 We encourage you to bookmark the My Research login page and to remove any MROL bookmarks that you have previously added to your browser.

Questions? Contact the help desk at (416) 946-5000 or RAISE@utoronto.ca

This change is part of the larger plan to revitalize the Funded Research Digest (FReD) and My Research On-Line (MROL). The Division of the Vice President Research and Innovation has conducted extensive consultations with end users in the spring and fall of 2019 regarding the revitalization of these systems. Please stay tuned for additional information in the months ahead regarding progress on this project.

Sincerely,
Renee Brost
Chief Administrative Officer
Division of the Vice-President Research and Innovation

 

 

 

AMS Now Available Starting at 5 a.m.

Date: April 13, 2020
To: AMS Users
From: Enterprise Shared Services
Re: AMS Now Available Starting at 5 a.m.

 

To all AMS users:

Recognizing the recent demand for flexible work hours, U of T’s Administrative Management Systems (AMS) are now available two hours earlier starting at 5 a.m.

See all system availability and stay up to date on upcoming planned outages.

This initiative is part of Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration’s (EASI) continuing efforts to improve AMS availability, including increasing system availability to 90 per cent up time in June 2019.

In the future, EASI will continue to improve processes to provide more streamlined and convenient services for a better user experience.

Sincerely,
Enterprise Applications and Solutions Integration

Screenshot of Administrative Web Services webpage

Reminder: AMS FI Fiscal Year-End Closure 2020 – Tonight at 7pm

Date: April 28, 2020
To: AMS Users
From: Production Control
Re: Reminder: AMS FI Fiscal Year-End Closure 2020 – Tonight at 7pm

 

Hi everyone,

This is a reminder that this year AMS will close for FI year-end processing tonight at 7pm and will re-open on Friday, May 1, 2020 at 7am.

ERDD and the Capital Projects Portal and Invoice Workflow will resume regular functionality on Friday, May 1, 2020 at 7am, and uSOURCE will resume operation at 9am.

The following summarizes the AMS system’s availability prior to year-end closing:

Date Status
Tuesday, April 28 Invoice Workflow – Unavailable at 12pm (noon)

System closed to all users at 7pm

Wednesday, April 29 and Thursday, April 30 System closed to all users
Friday, May 1 System re-opens at 7am except uSOURCE opens at 9am

 

You can also check our System Availability page for all system details.

For information on the impact of the year-end closing dates on reporting and processing, please refer to the Financial Services website.

Sincerely,
Enterprise Applications & Solutions Integration

Q&A: How SharePoint Online can help your remote work success

Hands putting two puzzle pieces together

Since 2018, U of T has launched over 400 SharePoint Online sites and has played a key role in helping staff and faculty transition to working remotely. This cloud-based platform enables groups to collaborate, share and publish documents or web content using a variety of template options. It provides a secure place to store, organize, share, and access information from almost any device and all major web browsers.

In this Q&A Heather Postill, an information management analyst with Enterprise Applications & Solutions Integration (EASI), tells us how SharePoint Online can help to streamline your work experience, how it differs from other platforms and why it’s one of U of T’s preferred platforms.

How is Microsoft SharePoint Online different from Teams and OneDrive?
The difference between these applications is mainly one of ownership. Both Teams and OneDrive run on the SharePoint platform, but they all have particular strengths. OneDrive is personal space that is similar to a personal network drive. It belongs to that individual, so you might not want to store departmental files there. In Teams, everyone has equal access to the information so it’s really good for collaboration and dialogue, like you might find with committees and projects. However, if the Team is deleted, all the content stored within it is gone. A SharePoint site is more authoritative and permanent because it’s not tied to an individual or a Team and the content can be more tightly controlled.

Why use SharePoint over Google Docs or Dropbox?
SharePoint is more secure because it’s an official U of T platform and the data is hosted in Canada. As a Microsoft product, it integrates seamlessly with Office and there is also no additional cost to use it. SharePoint offers more capabilities beyond just document management – it has web content features too, so you can build entire internal portals and keep all your information in one place.

How does a U of T staff or faculty member get a SharePoint site?
If you’d like a site, you can request it through your local IT groups. If you don’t have a local IT unit, you can reach us through the IT Service Centre. Designated staff members then become administrators, or site owners, and they design and manage their site to best serve local faculty and staff needs. We’ve created a virtual boot camp to get site administrators started and they can then help to train their users. We’re happy to sit down with users to understand their needs, advise on capabilities and help guide them through the process.

What resources do you offer?
We offer sessions through the Connect+Learn series, which are mostly focused on basic entry-level functionality. Initially, we focused on working with documents and we’ll continue to offer broad-based topics.

As mentioned, we have also have a site administrator virtual boot camp and weekly office hours, which are at an intermediate level. This is an introduction to get people up and running, and our team is also here to support them in their journey.

We have a ton of information on our SharePoint Support Centre, and we also have a listserv – users can find information about this on our Support Centre site.

Finally, we also host a quarterly show and tell, with the next one on May 13, where have volunteers from our community present recently launched SharePoint sites – you can see what people have done and ask them questions about the process.

Divisions or departments can request individual consultation sessions with us by opening a ticket in the IT Service Centre.

What advice would you give to those considering using SharePoint?
If you haven’t used this tool yet, you should give it a try! It’s a feature rich document management tool available to all U of T users – it’s on a secure platform and gives users easy access to information. For many, it will also replace network drives in the future.

Before moving to SharePoint, it’s important to think about all of the information in your area and plan out where it’s going to go and how you’re going to communicate the change to your users. We can help with document management as well – whether it’s for official records management, being able to track document usage or even applying a formal retention policy.

The groups that have already ventured into using SharePoint have found it easy to adapt to remote work and we welcome others to contact us to find out more.

Introduction to SharePoint Lists

Lists are a fundamental building block in SharePoint that provides a way for users to store and view data. Add columns for different types of data, such as text, currency, or multiple choice. Create views to display data effectively. Sort, group, format and filter lists to highlight the most important information. A list can include people, links, pictures, dates, and more. Topics will include:

  • Why lists are cool
  • Differences between lists and libraries
  • Creating columns
  • Formatting lists

Resources

  • Presentation recording [Stream]