Year in review: Product updates in 2024

The goal of 2024 was to grow the suite of post-publication tools available. That is, things to help you after the base schedule has been polished and shared. As all schedule makers know, changes happen right up until the first day of classes. These changes include a variety of things like adding new classes, changing the day, time, or room for existing classes, noting the end-enrollments, or, and this is a big one, maintaining the parity between the ofCourse schedule and the schedule entered into the parent system.

Change-Tracking System

This is one of the more sprawling updates made in the last several years. It is possible you barely noticed its arrival in November of 2024--ever the mark of elegant design. But there is a LOT happening in the background here, most notably after a schedule is moved from ofCourse to the parent system. Once that happens, you can enable the Change-Tracking System and after doing that, each and every modification made to your schedule (in ofCourse) is recorded. This is so you know exactly what updates need to be made in the parent system to ensure parity between the two. This feature, like the Collision Management System, will certainly improve the quality of sleep for all schedule makers.

Alternative Preference Collection Form

For schools that enforce a block schedule, you have a new preference form option that may better present viable teaching day/time options to your faculty. Not all setups will benefit from this new option, but if your school enforces a more rigid rule-set to when classes can be placed, it might be a good choice for you. If you'd like to know if your school is a fitting candidate, drop us a note and we can give it a look.

Schedule Replications

Some schools may benefit from perpetuating a past schedule forward and modifying it for a new term instead of building each term anew. This is something suited for larger schedules, like ones with more than 300 classes, but it is possible smaller format schedules could benefit too. If you'd like to see if this might be a fit for your school, let us know and we can talk it through.

The above features are in production and ready to go. The following items are still in active development from 2024 and are planned for release in 2025.

SIS ID Support

Some parent systems employ unique identifiers, beyond the course code, to reference classes (e.g., Peoplesoft's CRN numbers). Now you can connect those unique numbers to your ofCourse data and include them on the ofCourse shared schedules. This way if those numbers are critical for student enrollment or just in-house conversations, having this data attached to your ofCourse output will surely prove helpful. (Scheduled for release March 2025)

End-Enrollment Data

You can get these numbers from your parent system, but if you would like to store them in ofCourse as well so they become part of your historical reporting, you now have the ability to do so. It just involves a reasonably quick and painless data update which once made, will become part of the ofCourse body to data. (Scheduled for release March 2025)

Exam Scheduling

We will be rolling out our first version of an Exam Scheduling module in 2025. This will surely not be our final version of this feature but will be a first step to making the exam schedule information part of the ofCourse output. (Planned for April 2025)

Email Confirmations

You will now get notifications regarding failed messages that come from the ofCourse system. These failures can happen for a number of reasons, but the most common would be that an email address has been improperly entered or no longer exists. This gives you tools to proactively address these issues before the recipient even knows there is a problem. (Scheduled for release May 2025)

Parity checks between ofCourse and your parent system

This is an exciting and impactful feature that will allow you to compare the schedules that live in ofCourse to the schedule that has been entered into your parent. The new Change-Tracking system will help you see that the changes made in ofCourse make their way to your parent. This Parity Checking System will ensure that the data entered into the parent was entered correctly. (Scheduled for release June 2025)

In Summation

As with years past, the ofCourse system continues to earn its title as the most loved scheduling system. For any who may not have picked up on the nuance of that tagline (the most loved scheduling system), it is for two reasons. First, the people who WORK on this system love working on it and embrace the challenge of making it the best scheduling system ever created. Second, the people who get to USE this system love it more than any other scheduling system out there.

Saying all of that reminds me of a conversation I had with a new schedule admin last week. He is responsible for producing a schedule that has more than 300 classes on it. A few months ago he lost his schedule-maker. Then he lost his dean, who he reported to, and is adjusting to a new boss. They were a new client, and I helped him work through his school's first-ever schedule runs. As we waited for the solver to produce his very first computed schedule (which took 38 seconds 😉 ), he and I were chatting. I asked him how he was feeling about things, as I knew he'd been up against it, given all the tumult around him. He said, "I feel strangely relaxed." This is certainly not anything near what I expected him to say. Further, I feel like that might be one of the greatest compliments ever given to this system. That we can step into a challenging situation (300-course schedule) at a challenging time (resource turnover below and above the admin) and create space for them to work in serenity is, to my eye, a resounding win. If this is something that can bring calm and confidence to schedule makers, I have the sense we have succeeded ten times over, and am grateful for that.

I hope you, too, find yourself strangely relaxed during your next scheduled builds.

As always, see you on the scheduling pitch.

Troy.

More ofCourse feature updates

2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016