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SIS 2000+ Group Editor

Sec. 1, Introduction 

The SIS 2000+ system has many instances where the users have a need to define and see a collection of entities (e.g. students, staff members, courses) based on various criteria (e.g. Active Students, Counselors, English Courses), or by specifically selecting the individual entities desired in the collection (e.g. Grade 9 Girls Basketball Team, Chaperones, ESL Courses). As can be seen from the examples, these collections may vary based on the time period of interest (e.g. Active Students could change from one day to the next) and, perhaps, some other variables (school, grade level) so users will need a way to specify this information at the time of the calculation. Additionally, different users (district administrator, school administrators, faculty members) want to be able to define and view different collections (e.g. a counselor may want to see a list of the students assigned to them for each grade level) and they don’t want other users changing their definitions.

The module that addresses these needs is called the Group Editor. Groups defined in this program can be used as queries to filter records in other programs. Accessing groups is especially useful in programs that use student records. For instance, the User-defined Student Group Button in the Banner of an application such as Health or Behavior can link the user to the Group Editor and enable a student group to be applied as a filter to the host application. See Student Banner/Student Group Selection Buttons for more information.

Definition of Groups

The term group is being used to reference a definition of a collection of entities. Each group will have a code and a description. Since we have different kinds of collections (e.g. students, staff, courses), each group will have a type to indicate the kind of collection it describes. The desired collection for a group can be defined using two different methods: Dynamic or Manual. An ‘SQL Query’ is Dynamic in that it is calculated from the database each time the collection is requested. Since the collections are "time dependent", the SQL Queries that are used will need to include parameterized dates and other selection parameters (which must be provided at calculation time). The SQL Query Editor (separate program) is used to define criteria for dynamic groups. A Manual collection, or ‘specific collection’, is a manually created collection of entities to be included in the group. However, these specific collections will be "current" only (i.e. no dates or duration will be maintained for them).

Discussion of Security

Since users don’t want their definitions modified, each group will require a level, (e.g. district, school, or faculty) that defines the kind of user that is allowed to modify it or view the collection defined by the group. Additionally each group will have an "Owner" which will further define which kind of user within the level has access, e.g., a school level group will contain the ID of the school for which it is defined and a faculty level group will contain the ID of the user that created it.

Editing Rules

The rules for the creation, modification and deletion of a group are as follows:

1. If the user is a district database administrator, the groups they create can be district level, school level, or faculty level; when school level, the user can define the school ID for the group from schools in the district; when faculty level, they can define the faculty ID for the group from faculty in the district.
2. If the user is a school database administrator, the groups they create can be school level or faculty level; when school level, the school(s) for which they are a system administrator can used for the group; when faculty level, they can define the faculty ID for the group from faculty in the district.
3. If the user is a faculty member (and not a database administrator), the groups they create are faculty level and their faculty ID is used for the group.
4. If a group is district level, only district database administrators can modify its definition.
5. If a group is school level, only district database administrators and school database administrators for the school for which it is defined can modify its definition.
6. If a group is faculty level, only district database administrators, school database administrators and the faculty member that created it can modify its definition.
7. If a group is district level, only district database administrators can delete its definition.
8. If a group is school level, only district database administrators and school database administrators can delete its definition.
9. If a group is faculty level, only district database administrators, school database administrators and the faculty member that created it can delete its definition.

 
 

Fig. 1

Fig. 2 - main screen, default view
 

1.2 Exit Group Editor
Click on the Close command button at the bottom center of the main screen to exit the program at any time.