SOHOL Update History

• December 13 2011
• Minor change to booking the confirmation email.
  • Booking confirmation emails now include the date as well as the day and time the meeting will take place.

• July 27 2011
• SMTP Mail Router Change.
  • Changed the code for sending emails when student book and cancel meetings to use the university's new mail router.

• July 27 2011
• Meeting Booking Email Confirmation.
  • Staff can now receive an email confirmation when a student books a meeting with them.
  • This functionality can be turned OFF using the 'Edit My Details' option on the staff SOHOL menu.
  • The default is ON.

• February 28 2011
• Miscellaneous Modifications.
  • After office hours have been created, staff can now click a link to go straight to their meetings page without having to go back to their SOHOL menu first.
  • Some changes to the top menu bar options such as removing the WebCt link which is no longer required.
  • Corrected a glitch where emails were sometimes not sent to students when they requested their login details.
  • Corrected a glitch where staff could only enter 4 characters for their room number. The field now allows 5 characters.
  • A new link has been added to the student top menu bar which takes them directly to the University online directory (http://directory.manchester.ac.uk/advanced.php). This will allow students to search for staff and find their locations.

• February 24 2011
• Modifications to the Login Functionality.
  • When staff or students login they are now taken directly to their SOHOL menu without having to click the 'Continue' link.

• February 23 2011
• Enhancements to the Creation of Meeting Time Slots.
  • Staff can now create office hours with 5 minute time slots.
  • MBS staff now have the option of choosing different time slot sizes like the rest of the Faculty.
  • The default time slot size for MBS staff remains at 10 minutes and 20 minutes for the rest of the Faculty.

• February 17 2011 - Cosmetic Changes Made to the Staff Menus and Bug fixes
• Cosmetic changes to the staff menus.
  • Changed the wording on some of the menu options to better describe what they do.
  • Changed the letter case of the menu items from upper to proper case.
  
  
  • Bug Fixes.
    • Fixed a bug where staff sometimes received 2 emails when a student cancelled a meeting.
    • Fixed a bug where student notes remained after a meeting had been cancelled by a student.

• September 10 2008 - Changes to Student Registration.
  • Students can now register themselves without the need for SOHOL to have student data downloaded from Campus Solutions beforehand.
  • All student data was removed from SOHOL to allow students to re-register.

• April 23 2008 - Version 4.1 goes 'live'
  • Allow 2 people to book the same Datastream timeslot in MBS Crawford.
    • The MBS Crawford Datastream link now allows 2 contiguous users.
    • Datastream timeslots are booked using any one of 2 booking grids.
    • When a timeslot is booked, the corresponding timeslot is greyed out to prevent accidentally booking the same timeslot twice.
    • A few cosmetic changes to the 'View all Datastream bookings' screens so they will print without wrapping round on the page.

• September 27th 2007 - SOHOL Version 4.0 goes 'live'.

• August & September 2007 - SED & SOSS Requirements for Using SOHOL
  • Created menus for SED and SOSS administrators and staff
    • SED and SOSS only get the options relevant to them
    • Administrators can only see, book & cancel meetings for academics within their school
  
  
  • Variable Time Slot Periods
    • SED,SOSS administrators and academics can create meeting times with 10, 15, 20 or 30 minute time slots. The default time slot period is 20 minutes. The time slot period is chosen when the office hours are being created. MBS academics still only use 10 minute time slots as the time slot period is fixed for them. It will stay this way unless MBS staff request variable time slots.
  
  
  • Show Today's Bookings Option
    • An on-screen report is available to all administrators showing just the bookings for the current day. This can be filtered to show all booking for the day or just those bookings not yet taken place.
  
  
  • Students Can Change School/Department Without Having to Log Out and Log Back In SOHOL
    • When students want to book a meeting, they can select academics from individual schools/departments and then book a meeting with an academic within another department by selecting the department from a drop-down box.
  
  
  • Emails Can Now Be Sent to Staff and Students When Meetings are Cancelled
    • When an Academic cancels a meeting (or an Administrator cancels it on their behalf) an email is sent to the student. There is an option for the academic or the administrator to include a reason why the meeting was cancelled.
    • When a student cancels a meeting an email is sent to the academic. The student has the option to include a reason why he/she cancelled the meeting.
    • Each Academic (or an administrator on their behalf) has the option to turn off the option to receive cancellation emails. They do this from within the staff details option on their SOHOL menu. If a student needs to cancel a meeting they are informed that they can still cancel the meeting but the academic will not receive a confirmation email from them. It is then the responsibilty of the academic (or the administrator on their behalf) to regulary check their SOHOL bookings.
    • Students DO NOT have the option to turn of the receiving of cancellation emails.
  
  
  • Option For Administrators to See Staff in their school/department Not Using SOHOL
    • Within the 'View Staff Details' option on the administrator SOHOL menu, there is an option to allow administrators to view staff currently not flagged as using SOHOL for their office hours. It is now possible for administrators to flag academics as using SOHOL without having to use the MATS Access Client.
    • Administrators will still need to use the MATS client for adding new staff to the database or deleting existing staff from the database. They will also need the MATS client to view and edit student details.
  
  
  • Students can now change their SOHOL Password
    • Students are required to enter their current password once and enter their new password twice. If they forget their password they can have their password emailed to them by clicking on the 'forgot your password link' on the student SOHOL login screen
  
  

• 13 March 2007
  • Bug Fix
    • Meetings times that are due to expire in a weeks time now DO NOT appear for that week. This prevents students from accidentally booking a meeting for office hours that will expire before the weekend routine is run and had a chance to remove the expired office hours.
  
  

• 07 - 08 March 2007
  • Extra Functionality
    • Provided a facility for students and staff to have their passwords emailed to them.
  
  

• Version 3.0 - June/July 2006
  • System Design
    • Changed the look of the system to use the MBS logos styles and colours
    • Various aesthetic changes have been made to each screen to make things easier to read.
  
  
  • Usability and Configuration
    • Removed depreciated HTML tags
    • The system is now more easily configurable for different departments and user types
    • Different headers, navigation and options can now be made available for different departments.
    • Easier to provide each department with only the options on the menus that they require.
  
  
  • Extra Functionality
    • SOHOL can be used by any faculty department to allow students to book meetings with their academics.
    • To avoid confusion, admin. can only set up and view office hours for the academics in their department.
    • When a student logs in SOHOL they now select a Department/School. This is so they will only see the academic staff in that department. The default department/School is MBS.
    • A WYSIWYG HTML editor has been added for adding and editing plasma screen messages
    • SOHOL now supports multiple plasma screens.
    • A department can now have any number of plasma screens.
    • A message can be put on any one of the plasma screens and will only appear on that screen.
    • Messages can be easily copied or moved from one plasma screen to another.
    • Students logged into SOHOL will see a list of all the plasma screens for all departments and can look at the messages on each screen relevant to them.
    • The Admin. plasma screen console only allows admin. to view/edit and delete messages on any of the plasma screens in their own department.
    • Students can now add a short note (Max. 500 Characters) to a meeting to give an academic some indication of why they want to see them. They can also edit and delete the note if required. The notes can be viewed by the academic with whom the student has booked the meeting. It is hoped that this will allow the academic staff to better prepare for their meetings and make better use of each 10 minute time slot.
  
  
  • Bug Fixes
    • A bug has been fixed where office hours created with new templates sometimes appeared out of sort order when viewing office hours and meeting times. Office hours will now always appear in the order:
      Week No (i.e. 1=This week, 2=Next Week ), Day (Monday to Friday) and Time (09:00 to 18:00).
    • Unbooked Datastream sessions that have passed are now greyed out so they can't be booked by mistake

• November 2004 - Version 2.1 goes 'live'
  • No changes to SOHOL functionality, but major changes to the database table names. SOHOL has now been upsized from MS Access 97 to SQL Server 2000 and exists in the same database as MATS

• September 2004 - SOHOL Version 2.0 goes 'live'.
  • Version 2.0 included the following enhancements/changes
    • Added a facility to prioritise plasma screen messages so they can be grouped in order of importance as well as date and time entered.
    • Various cosmetic changes to some of the screens.
    • Test message button added when Adding or Editing plasma screen messages. Can now test messages to see what they would ACTUALLY look like on the plasma screen BEFORE adding them to the plasma screen.

• September 10th 2003 - SOHOL Version 1.1 goes 'live'.
  • Version 1.1 included the following enhancements/changes.
    • Academic staff and admin staff can book students on meetings.
    • Easier to make meeting times available or unavailable.
    • Various cosmetic changes to screen layouts.
    • End Week routine now tells the Administrator when it was last run and when it has to be run again.

• July 2003 - Corrected American to UK date format problems with the plasma screen console.
• January 2003 - Facility for academics to view all Datastream and office hours bookings.
• January 2002 - Admin. can now view and delete staff meetings without having to login as each academic.
• November 2002 - A facility to add messages to the plasma screen was added to the admin. menu.
• September 12th 2002 - SOHOL is linked to the MATS system using the same staff/student MS Access data tables.
• August 30th 2002 - SOHOL Version 1.0 goes 'live'.