Section Publishing

Melody Quinn

December 13, 2022 17:09

Overview

Customers using Ellucian Banner will have the option to publish any section and meeting edits back to their Student Information System. Changes that can be published include:

Edits to section and meeting values
New sections
New meetings
Section deletions
Meeting deletions

The publish operation is supported by utilizing the native Banner Oracle PL/SQL APIs. This requires a JDBC database connection to be configured for Banner SQL execution and to run stored procedures to support the API calls. Ad Astra staff will work with you to establish this connection.

The publishing approach is to keep the publishing action granular and close to the user making the change. If you want your changes to be in sync with Banner, then we encourage publishing it when you make the change. Publishing from Ad Astra will overwrite Banner section and meeting data.

Ad Astra section and meeting changes will be overwritten by subsequent Banner imports unless the feature to “keep changes” is enabled. It is important to either enable this feature or disable imports while editing the schedule or changes could be lost if not published frequently to keep in sync. To enable this feature, please submit a support ticket using the Support button in the lower corner of this article.

Setup

If you already have a VPN tunnel set up with Ad Astra for a previous Astra Schedule or Platinum site, the utility used to facilitate the database connection and data flow (StreamSets) can be run through the VPN and no additional setup should be required. If not, you will need to set up StreamSets through a Docker image. Submit a support ticket and the Ad Astra Cloud Operations team can evaluate your needs and assist you with any setup that is required.

An Ad Astra database user must be created that has access to the following APIs in the Banner instance:

sb_section.p_create	gb_classtimes.p_create
sb_section.p_update	gb_classtimes.p_update
sb_section.p_delete	gb_classtimes.p_delete
sb_facassignment.p_create	sb_term.f_query_one
sb_facassignment.p_update	sb_course.f_query_current
sb_facassignment.p_delete

Enabling Publishing

The Banner publishing feature must be enabled for your institution by Ad Astra. This is a site-level setting that is configured along with your access to other applications in the Ad Astra system.

If not enabled, the publishing options when editing and saving section changes are not visible to users.

User permissions

User's permissions define which Ad Astra users have the option to publish during editing. Learn how to change a user's permissions. User permissions that allow publishing are:

Admin
Contributor with both editing (by selecting a department) and publishing privileges

How do I publish a section or meeting?

When viewing the Section and Meeting details page, if the section has already been edited but not published, you will have the option to publish from this screen. Otherwise, click "Edit" to begin editing.

Once in editing mode, you will have the option to "Save" or “Save and Publish”.

Once the edits are complete and you have published using the "Save and Publish" or "Publish" button, the updates are queued for immediate processing.

When publishing a section back to Banner, ALL values in that section and/or meeting in Ad Astra will be published back to Banner, not just the edited values.

When a section or meeting is edited, the section’s status changes to “Edited”. When published, this status is reset back to "N/A" to indicate the section does not have pending changes. Learn about Ad Astra section statuses.

Publish Statuses

Ad Astra statuses related to publishing will be displayed on the section/meeting details page, as well as the section list tab on the course page within Align and Monitor.

Published: This status is displayed when the publish action was taken and completed successfully.
Publish Pending: This status is displayed when the publish action was taken and is waiting to be processed for some reason (e.g. the queue has lots of items to process).
Publish Failed: This status is displayed when the publish action was taken and could not be completed for some reason.

Supported Actions

The following actions are supported for publishing:

Publish the addition of a new section and meeting using the “Add Section” button. Learn more about adding sections.
- When adding a new section, Ad Astra must get a new CRN from the Banner API. Ad Astra will have no CRN until the publish process is performed, at which time the CRN will be updated on the Ad Astra record as well as inserted into Banner.
Publish the addition of a new meeting to an existing section using the “Add Meeting” button.
- When "Add Meeting" is clicked, the section and meeting pages are displayed with the section information already filled out, inherited from the “parent” section, and they are not editable.
- When the user fills out the required meeting information and then clicks the publish option, the system will use the add meeting Banner API proc to create the new record in Banner, associated with the section via CRN.
Publish edits to Editable Section and Meeting Fields.
Publish the deletion of a section and/or meeting. A confirmation opportunity is provided.

Editable Section and Meeting Fields

Section Fields

Title	Billing Hours	Attendance	Approval Code
Projected Enrollment	Instructional Method	Grade Mode	Cross-List
Max Enrollment	Credit Hours	Session	Campus
Status*	Delivery Method*	Section Code*	Part of Term*

*Required by Banner for publishing.

Meeting Fields

Start Date*	End Date*	Start Time	End Time
Session Indicator*	Days Met	Building	Room
Contact Hours Per Day**	Contact Hours Per Week**	Total Contact Hours**	Override Contact Hours
Meeting Credit Hours
Instructional Method Meeting version of this value: cannot currently be updated via publishing and is read-only from Banner. Section version: can be updated via publishing.
Instructor If Primary is not selected, Percent Responsible, Percent Session, and Percent Indicator are required.*

*Required by Banner for publishing.
**Required by Banner if Override Contact Hours is selected

Banner Requirements, Validation, and Errors

Ad Astra relies upon the Banner APIs to enforce the Banner business logic and provide the validation upon update and insert of records. If a user attempts to publish and the operation is not allowed by Banner, an error will be returned. Ad Astra will reflect that error back to the user in an information dialog message. It is the user’s responsibility to understand the Banner rules for making changes and/or to interpret the error codes and messages.

Ad Astra will enforce the required fields for both the section and meeting information in the UI that the Banner API procs require for a valid record. Incomplete required fields will prompt a validation error upon publishing. Fields required for publishing are noted in the Editable Section and Meeting Fields section.

Known Limitations

A section must have a meeting record in order to publish data for a section in Ad Astra. Therefore, the following is not allowed.
- Create and publish just a section placeholder with no meeting info.
- Edit section information with no meeting and publish those changes.
- Delete a section with no meeting in both the SIS and Ad Astra.
It is not possible to publish cross-list changes for sections. There is no known API that allows for the update of cross-list information.

If cross-list information is edited in Ad Astra, it will not publish and will be overwritten by import. These changes must be made in Banner.