Self-Service Delivery of On-Demand Documents M1.11

1. Self-Service Delivery of On-Demand Documents M1.11 Presented by: Denny Savage Associate University Registrar The University of Alabama

2. Introduction • Purpose: • Share a method of providing online delivery of dynamic documents to students via Self-Service • List the benefits of attending this session • Identify the business opportunity • Understand the technology • Explore possibilities for application • Gain ideas for business solutions at your own institution • Get information on technologies that can complement your institution’s development palette with minimal to no $$$.

3. Letter of Transiency

4. Letter of Transiency – Old Request Process 8 Academic Divisions Students from 6 of the 8 divisions go to divisional student services office to request letter Arts & Sciences students request in-state letters from divisional student services office and out-of-state letters from University Registrar Nursing students request all letters directly from University Registrar

5. Letter of Transiency – Old Request Process (cont.) Most students fill out form internal to their college of enrollment to request transient letter. College staff member then prepares the letter which is sent to University Registrar for verification. Students requesting letters directly from the University Registrar fill out a form as well for the classes they intend to take as a transient student. These students are required to know the class they intend to take at the transient institution

6. Letter of Transiency – Old Request Process (cont.)

7. Letter of Transiency – Old Request Process (cont.) University Registrar employees check articulation records for each course on every letter submitted to determine if course equivalency already exists. If the equivalency exists, the letter is finalized, mailed, copied, and filed. If the equivalency does not exist, the letter is turned over to our transfer credit department to begin the process of determining the equivalency. Once equivalency is determined, the letter is finalized, mailed, copied, and filed.

8. Letter of Transiency – Possible Path of Request • Student • College Staff • Transfer Credit Staff • Registrar Student Workers • Advisor • University Registrar Staff • University Registrar Staff • University Registrar Staff

9. Letter of Transiency – Pain Points Entirely too much paper Too labor intensive for students & staff No reporting ability Higher costs involved No efficient means of tracking requests or recalling past requests 4,000 – 5,000 letters/year = 1,600 – 2,000 hours/year 1 FTE ~ 1937.5 hours worked/year

10. Letter of Transiency – The Idea Develop an online system that students will be able to access through a single sign-on portal within self-service Banner Tie the request system to articulation tables that already exist Restrict access to certain student types that are approved to request letters of transiency Put the onus on the student to produce and deliver the letter Develop reporting capabilities from the online request system

11. Letter of Transiency – New Request Process

12. Letter of Transiency – New Request Process

13. Letter of Transiency - Course Selection

14. Letter of Transiency - Equivalencies Table

15. Letter of Transiency - No Equivalency?

16. Letter of Transiency - Information Verification

17. Letter of Transiency – The Final Product

18. Letter of Transiency – Sample Reports • Four distinct reports have been developed so far: • Number of requests by institution, by term • Number of requests by division, by major, by term • Detailed listing by student, by college, by term including detailed class info • Number of requests by UA course, by college, by term

19. Letter of Transiency – Benefits Access to the letters 24/7 from any internet connection Transient letters in hand in under 2 minutes Create as many letters as needed Ability to save and send letters in pdf format potentially expediting the admissions process The only time that University staff get involved is when equivalencies do not already exist Number of requests since going live in February 2010: 14,157

20. A Look at the Technology

21. Letter of Transiency • Information already exists in the Banner transfer articulation tables, so it was just a matter of presenting that to students online. SOBSBGI -Transfer Institutions SHBTATC -Transfer Course Catalog SHRTATC -Transfer Course Equivalency

22. Letter of Transiency The official letter is dynamically generated using BIRT for Eclipse, an open source reporting tool running on a Java application server.

23. BIRT Business Intelligence Reporting Tool

24. BIRT • BIRT is an open source reporting tool developed by Actuate corporation (there is also a commercial version with more features). • Delivery of Rich Data Visualizations • Flexible and extensible • Easy to integrate into existing applications • Event Handlers (Javascript and Java) • Developer community (www.birt-exchange.com) • Eclipse-BIRT download available at www.eclipse.org

25. Eclipse BIRTReport Designer Palette Options

26. BIRT data source Data Explorer

27. BIRT data set Data Explorer

28. BIRT data set Data Explorer

29. Build report Then your data elements are available in the data explorer. You can drag them from here and drop them into the containers (grids, tables, dynamic text) you’ve built on your report using the Palette.

30. BIRT Preview Pane There is also a preview pane that allows you to see the effect changes to your report without having to deploy it. Always check output after deploying to ensure it looks just like you want when displayed in a web browser or through the BIRT Viewer.

31. BIRT XML Output End result is an XML source file that has all elements of your report design specified. Includes the information for your database connection and the SQL you defined for your Data Sets. Even images are stored as binary data in this XML file.

32. BIRT Runtime Engine Place this file (*.rptdesign) in the reports directory of a server where you’ve installed the BIRT-Runtime-Engine. We have this running on an Apache Tomcat web server. Report is then able to be viewed in the formats you allow in your environment (as a webpage, .pdf, .doc)

33. APEX How APEX fit into our solution

34. APEX • Oracle Application Express – (apex.oracle.com) • Allows for quick development of web applications • Quick learn for developers with a lot of database (SQL and PL/SQL) knowledge who do not have much web development experience • Still, you need some familiarity with html & web programming concepts. • Available for download if you have an Oracle database license • Installs on database server(you may need assistance from your DBA and/or server administrator). • Plan some ground rules around APEX development in your environment.

35. APEX Application APEX Application Builder is used to create a new APEX web application. APEX is installed on the database and is aware of any database components for which it has access. You can define multiple pages. Some pages have special purposes (e.g., Login and Page Zero). You can also create forms, reports, and interactive reports.

36. APEX Development Environment Create pages, page regions, buttons, items. Look is template driven and you can customize. You can also create computations, validations, processes for page rendering, page actions, and security. You define the authentication scheme for your application as well as authorization schemes that can be applied at the page level. Conditional items and processes allow you to secure your pages even more granularly (hiding regions, items, or buttons based on user’s permissions).

37. APEX PL/SQL Process Here is an example of a PL/SQL process (anonymous block) embedded into the APEX application. Upon page submission, this process inserts a record into the database.

38. APEX and Javascript Here is the call to the BIRT report via a Javascript function that gets executed on-button-click Same javascript call could have been made from an SSB page.

39. Summary Closing Thoughts • Get creative with your business solutions. • Identify processes that are painful for staff and students and see how you might apply technology to help. • Explore BIRT • Explore APEX • Try it yourself! • If you come up with a good idea, put it to use at your institution. • Big wins with your students and staff can be relatively easy and inexpensive.

40. Questions? (once again…no technology questions!)

41. Thank You! Denny Savage denny.savage@ua.edu Jennifer McMillan Technical Consultant jennifer@ua.edu