Overview
Business Background
The Timetabling business process is cyclical, and is followed annually with key events occurring throughout the academic year:
December
Timetablers across the University begin their curriculum planning for the upcoming academic year. This involves identifying the necessary teaching events required for each course. Some courses for which planning will be taking place will have run in previous years, others will be running for the first time.
May
The deadline for curriculum planning for teaching activities which require centrally allocated space is within this month. Once the required teaching activities are known, along with the requirements for their delivery, they are scheduled, and centralised rooms are allocated to them.
August
August sees the switchover from one academic year to the next. What this means is that users accessing web applications such as Web Room Booking, and Web Timetables, will by default present the upcoming (at that point current) academic year.
August/September
Students are allocated to teaching activities in order for these teaching events to appear on their personalised timetables.
The deliverables of this project enable the curriculum planning activity to commence in January, and the switchover to take place in August.
Technical Background
The Scientia Enterprise applications (Enterprise) are the University's chosen application suite for providing a centralised Timetabling service.
These applications interface with an application database known as the Scientia Database (SDB). Each SDB relates to a single academic year. In order for Timetabling planning to be undertaken for next year, an existing copy of the SDB must be "rolled-forward" to the next academic year (14/15 in this case) by January 2014.
Following the roll-forward of the SDB, the associated Timetabling web applications must be configured for this new SDB. Once these web applications are deployed, there is a natural break in the project while business processes which are supported by these tools take place.
The project resumes to support the switch-over from one academic year to the next in August. At this point, what was the next academic year becomes the current academic year, so the Timetabling web applications and outgoing interfaces must by default, relate to the 2014/15 SDB.
Scope
The following objectives and deliverables are in the scope of this project:
| No | Description |
|---|---|
| O1 | Deployment of a 2014/15 Timetabling database and Enterprise Applications. |
| D1 | A Live (King's Buildings) 2014/15 Scientia Database (SDB) with rolled forward course activity information and Authorisation Manager users and roles for 2014/15 course planning. |
| D2 | A Live 2014/15 SQL Server Reporting Database |
| D3 | Backfill of 2014/15 SDBs into Live (Appleton Tower), Test, Dev and TRN environments |
| O2 | Populate 2014/15 SDB with new course data from EUCLID following EUCLID course roll forward |
| D4 | Mechanism to extract course data from EUCLID and populate 2014/15 SDB with this data |
| D5 | Population of 2014/15 SDB with course data to support curriculum planning |
| O3 | Deployment of 2014/15 Web Applications (OneLan replacement, Web Timetables, Web Room Booking and PADS XML [if required]) in Dev, Test and Live env. |
| D6 | Deployment of OneLan for 2014/15 |
| D7 | Deployment of Web Timetables for 2014/15 |
| D8 | Deployment of Web Room Booking for 2014/15 |
| D9 | Deployment of PADS XML for 2014/15 |
| O4 | Roll forward outgoing interfaces which use Reporting Database as datasource |
| D10 | Define, document and test switchover approach for feed to Learn VLE |
| D11 | Define, document and test switchover approach for Timetabling SOA Service |
| D12 | Define, document and test switchover approach for Bookable Rooms web service |
| D13 | Define, document and test switchover approach for Office365 synchronisation tool |
| O5 | In August 2014, undertake switch over to 2014/15 Academic year SDB for web apps and interfaces |
| D14 | Interfaces repointed to 2014/15 database instances |
| D15 | Web Apps repointed to 2014/15 images |
| O6 | Decommission Web Applications |
| D16 | Web Applications for previous year are decommissioned |
Typically, roll-forward of incoming interfaces (student feed, staff feed, course feed, course enrolment feed, programme of study feed) would be in the scope of the annual roll-forward project. These interfaces are being reconfigured as part of a drive to improve Timetabling service stability. As such, they are deemed out of scope of the this project, and an external dependency.
Benefits
This is a compliance project, and must be project will allow 2014/15 Timetabling planning to occur from December 2013, and allow the Timetabling service to continue into the new academic year, 2014/15.
Success Criteria
The following criteria will confirm the project has been successful in each of its objectives:
- By December 2013, Timetablers across the University have access to their rolled forward , and are able to undertake curriculum planning.
- By April 2014, School Gatekeepers have access to the Web Room Booking application for long-lead bookings. Other Web Applications must be available by August 2014.
- In August 2014, all Web Applications will, by default, display/refer to the 2014/15 academic year when accessed by any user in the University.
- In August 2014, all outgoing interfaces that make use of the Reporting Database (RDB) will refer to the 2014/15 RDB