The number one goal of 2023 is to improve performance, both for the system and for the user. On the system side, we are making updates that will exponentially improve how fast schedule views are loaded. On the user side, we are developing even more sophisticated and elegant tools for you to assess and manage your produced schedules.
Day and Eve Merging
We've greatly simplified how you account for an evening curriculum. No more semester hopping, as it is all now in one easy place. And with the dedicated Day-Range report, you can organize a term's curriculum between day and eve offerings in a matter of minutes and even have fun doing it!
Multi-box Rolldowns
When you click on a class in the Step 4 or 5 schedule views, if it has multiple sessions, ALL of the instances will unfold at once which vastly improves visual reviews of the schedule. AND it even manages to unfurl all the blocks for those pesky tethered courses that have irregular meeting patterns.
Effort Reporting
Some may have noticed a new option we snuck into the Step 5 Schedule Reports. The Effort Report lists all teaching faculty on a schedule, the number of classes (and credits) they are teaching on that schedule, as well as a breakdown of how many times per day they are teaching.
Support for alternating weeks
We can now natively support classes that meet every 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th week. Just pick the needed cadence, and the system will pepper the course into the schedule accordingly.
Color Coding
We created a dozen color-sets to choose from including one custom color palette based on a school's branding guidelines. With these color sets, you may now assign colors for your public graphical view based on course type or program/department.
Partial-Term Profiles
Have a mini-term within your fuller semester? A week for compressed courses? While we know it's lots of fun clicking those little calendar dates, you can now establish pre-set date blocks to make quicker work of setting the start and stops for partial-term courses.
Enhanced Performance
The big, Big, BIG update this year is faster schedule load times. This work is still underway and has been our number one focus this off-season. Those with smaller schedules may not have noticed much of a slowdown, but people with larger courseloads have felt it more. This sort of behind-the-walls plumbing work is rarely exciting, but, But, BUT this one has multiple tangential updates I believe will be exciting for everyone. So, in addition to experiencing lightning-fast page loads, this work will also pave the way for the following three updates:
Improved Filtering
A few years ago, we implemented sticky filters that remember and restored your last filter settings. The next evolution will be more sophisticated tools to refine how you can review your schedule. This is still in the design phase, so I can't reveal a whole lot other than to say from what I've seen, I predict folks are gonna be pretty giddy about the improved flexibility.
Change Tracking
Another side benefit of this work is better update tracking so you can see and track the modifications made to a schedule through your Step 5 polishing. This is going to immensely improve administrators' confidence and efficiency in the post-production work that happens to all schedules.
Schedule Parity Tool
And as if improved filters and a working audit trail of your updates wasn't enough, we are also working on a tool that will allow you to compare schedules between your parent system and ofCourse. This will make sure all the changes made in ofCourse successfully made their way to the parent and made it there accurately.
Of those above three pending updates, it will be curious to see which one wins the box office as I think they will all be enjoyed by many—if not all.
And before you think your adoration for what is coming cannot grow any more, 2024's number one capital project will be exam scheduling.
And you thought you loved making schedules in ofCourse now? Wait until you get your hands on all of these new toys!
Each year, and every new feature makes the world's most loved university scheduling tool more lovable. .
As always, see you on the scheduling pitch.
Troy.
More ofCourse feature updates
November 10, 2023
Troy Dearmitt
Troy is the CTO & Co-founder at ofCourse.