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SSFNINTR1 - Introduction To Self Serve Notices

Introduction

Within the Self Serve section of the SMS environment, various notices are displayed to students about information they need to know; whether the student has requested it or administration needs to pass information on. These notices can be displayed to a single student, a group of students or all students enrolled in an institution.

Note: The terminology is ‘notice’ and not ‘message’. SMS uses various forms of messages. This can be in the form of a Service Request such as emails, general correspondence notices, or even a message on the screen of SMS giving the user information about wrong field information, etc. To reduce added ‘message’ confusion to users, the term ‘notice’ or ‘notices’ is used in context of the Self Serve environment.

Self Serve Notices can be logged so that administrators can verify that a notice has been sent.

Self Serve Notices can automatically be sent when certain conditions are met. For example, a welcome notice is displayed only the first time that a student logs onto Connect.

The administrator needs to consider what will be contained in the notice. Some considerations are:

• Who the notice is going to,
• Will it be a once-off notice
• What time will it be displayed from and to
• Where the notice will appear (does it need to go to an external system)

Online help files to assist the user in configuring notices and checking the log are:

• SSFF5000 – Maintain Self Serve Notice – allows an administrator to create, update and delete notices
• SSFF5010 – Maintain Self Serve Notice Delivery Condition – allows an administrator to define the notice delivery condition which determines whether or not a notice will be displayed
• SSFF5020 – Maintain Self Serve Notice Delivery Location – allows an administrator to define different display locations for the notices
• SSFF5100 – Inquire On Self Serve Notice Log – allows administrators to view the content of the notice log

Other online help files supporting Self Service Notices are:

• DSPNTCE – Display Notice – this function identifies which notice to display, where to display and to what student(s).
• SSFNINTR2 – Notice Glossary
• SSFINTR4 – Understanding the Web Administrator Facility - Explains the difference between a message and a notice
• SSF-SYS_APPS – Callista Connect System Student Applications
• TOCSSF – Callista Connect Self Serve Facility - Table of Contents

What is a Notice?

A Notice, displayed in Student connect, is a mechanism for delivering general news to students.

Why have Notices?

Some benefits of notices are:

• Make communication to the student easier for the institution;
• Deliver targeted notices;
• Help the student to better self manage their ‘student life’;
• To deliver the right notice at the right time; and
• Reduce calls to call centre.

What’s in a Notice?

A notice itself may comprise:

• Static administrator defined text;
• Dynamic Notice Text (see Maintain Dynamic Notice Text); and
• Formatting (HTML, Font, Bold, Tables etc).

A notice may also have the following attributes:

• Priority Rating;
• Log Notice check box;
• Indication of whether the notice should display once only (Once Only check box);
• Start and End dates;
• Delivery Location/s;
• Dynamic Conditional Controls (see Maintain Dynamic Conditional Controls); and
• A Status field. The Administrator may use the status field:
  • To plan a notice;
  • Switch a notice on; make a notice active; and
  • Close a notice.

The administrator is able to:

• Combine the text (static and dynamic) elements in such a way as to create a notice;
• Apply standard HTML formatting tags (bold, underline, etc). The tags should be able to be applied to the static text and/or the dynamic notice text;
• Indicate the Display Order of a notice. This Display Order field is not necessarily unique across all notices. This allows institutions to define groups of notices (by assigning the same Display Order to multiple notices, thus allowing them to be grouped together) or define an individual Display Order to each notice;
• Indicate if a log record is required when the notice is delivered to a student using student connect.  The default value should be that the notice is logged;
• Indicate if the notice should only display once to a student;
• Define Start and End dates as required, as a means of opening and closing a notice; and
• Define in which Connect pages the notice should appear, or if it should appear to an External System. These are the Delivery Locations.

It is possible to configure a notice to be delivered again in the future. For example, an administrator may wish to re-use the same ‘exam timetable as available notification’ notice each year. The means to re-use a defined notice is easy and flexible.

Considerations When Sending a Notice

Below is an example diagram showing the processing required for each notice. This is an example only and may not reflect the order of processing required, or the handling of multiple records, simply the checks that need consideration before a notice should be marked for delivery.

Static and Dynamic Notice Text

The Notice text can be created two ways. As Static Text that has no database value, or as Dynamic text which does have database values. Dynamic text can contain Static text but Static Text cannot contain Dynamic Text.

Static Notice Text

In the following example, the Static Notice Text would be sent directly to the connect application

Welcome to Connect! <br>To learn more about Connect click <a href=”http://www.youruni.edu.au/connect_info.htm”>here</a> or navigate around and try it for yourself!

and would then appear on the screen like this:

Welcome to Connect!
To learn more about Connect click here or navigate around and try it for yourself!

Dynamic Notice Text

The following SQL, when entered as Dynamic Notice Text:

select 'You have <b>'||count(unit_cd)||'</b> INVALID units in your enrolment/s.<br><i>Please correct these units as soon as possible.</i>'
from student_unit_attempt
where unit_attempt_status = 'INVALID'
and person_id = p_person_id

would (for an example student that has 2 INVALID units) return the following text to Connect:

You have <b>2</b> INVALID units in your enrolment/s.<br><i>Please correct these units as soon as possible.</i>

Which would, in turn display as:

You have 2 INVALID units in your enrolment/s.
Please correct these units as soon as possible.

More complex queries, involving lists of data or multiple table joins, for example, may require an institution defined view or database function to be written into the database and called by the notice text. Any existing database function may also be called to display the most accurate data possible.

A Stand Alone or Embedded Notice

Within Connect, there are two ways a notice is displayed. As a stand alone (direct link) - This means it only appears in the 'Notice' section of Connect. If only stand alone notices were sent, the list would appear here for the student to view. How long the stand alone message(s) appear can be dependent on the Start and End Dates of the notice or whether it appears only once. Once the student views the message it doesn't appear again.

Another way a notice can appear is as an embedded notice. This means the notice will appear in specific places, such as 'Personal Details' on the main Student Connect page. For example, the notice could appear under a Student's 'Personal Profile'. The institution defines the locations that the notice can be embedded into.

Examples 1 of an embedded notice with multiple locations:

Example 2 of the same embedded notice as above but to another student with different location and conditions. Notice parts of the text are not shown as certain conditions are not met:

In the above example, Mr Bruce Integer does not receive the Fees message as he does not have outstanding fees. 

Last Modified on 9 April, 2008 2:41 PM

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