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Locks That Can't Be Ignored

James McHugh

April 18, 2022 17:00

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We needs locks to pertain to staff as well. We actually thought they did until recently they caused an issue. Our financial lock was customized to have one setting which is preventing the registration of students for courses. We have run into the issue in the past of Academic team members in the past simply removing the lock since they needed to do their part which is registering students. This then makes the follow up with these students much more difficult when they are already registered for yet another semester. 

Just now we discovered that even though we limited the staff who have the permission to remove the lock, they can just ignore it anyways because it only prevents the student from registering from courses. We need this lock to have the functionality of preventing ALL parties from doing what the lock is intended to do. This forces departments to address why a student is locked. Our students also do not register themselves so preventing that really doesn't serve any purpose for us. 

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6 comments

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  Matthew R Johnson April 20, 2022 19:18

  Hey James, we're a brand new school just getting ready to do a test run of the system for our Summer term.

  Your post here had us worried xD but we're seeing something a little different from what you report.  So was curious about that. 

  We had Populi specifically set our Registration lock to "Read-only" for advisors.  So if we lock Registration, only Registrars and Academic Admins can remove it.  After seeing your post I had our Registrar and an Advisor double check and can confirm our Advisors are unable to bypass this lock at all.  They cannot remove it and they cannot register a student to a course if it's on either through the course Roster or though the Non-Student view of the Registration Page on a student's profile.

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  James McHugh April 20, 2022 19:35

  Thanks Matthew. From my understanding and what we see now, the restrictions on the lock only pertain to the student. So while an Academic Admin might not be able to remove the lock, they can still register the student. I actually put this suggestion up because we had it happen with a student and when I went to their activity feed to see how the lock had been removed when that person does not have the permissions to remove it, I discovered that it never had been removed. They had simply been scheduled. When I asked Populi about it they said that the lock only prevents the student from registering themselves and it does not prevent staff who have registration permissions from doing so even if the lock is present. This is a screen shot of what a class looks like with locks applied. I can still schedule this student if I desire to, even though it shows me that they have locks applied.

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  Matthew R Johnson April 20, 2022 19:54

  Okay, I think I see.  For us all registration is done by the Advisors and no one else.  The Registrar (our only Academic Admin role user) will register people but only when necessary  in unique cases.  And is usually the one who put the Registration lock on in the first place.  So Advisors, when they go to register a student, will get nothing but red warnings and a lock logo, while the Registrar can still register the student but she won't because of policy.

  You're wanting a lock that even the Academic Admin can't just ignore, but has to purposely remove to get passed.  This is a lock I can get behind.  Up voted.

   

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  Adam Sentz April 20, 2022 20:02

  It's not strictly accurate to say that they only pertain to the student. The case here is that Academic Admins are able to register students for courses regardless of locks. As Matthew R Johnson noted, Advisors can't bypass the registration lock to register thier Advisees. I can see how it might be useful to have to separate registration locks: self-registration (the current one) and a full registration lock that must be removed to before any registration takes place. 

  It might also be worth considering limiting the number of users with the Academic Role if you are having issues with staff registering students who they shouldn't be. If you aren't using self-registration it might work to use the Advisor role for the users who are doing the registration. 

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  James McHugh April 20, 2022 22:30

  Many of our advisors are academic admin because we are a very small school. We do not have the ability to have many employees who are just a Department chair. If they are a chair they are likely a Professor and in charge of registration for their department as well, in addition to loading content into their class. With that being said, I think that when we set up the Financial Lock, we thought this regarded the permissions for who can control the lock and it does not necessarily. It may dictate who can add or remove it, but it does not prevent it from being overridden, bypassed or ignored (however you want to look at it). I don't see the merit in not being able to make the lock apply to any roles other than those you specify, otherwise it is really more like a warning than a lock, a yellow light vs. a red light. 

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  Matthew R Johnson April 20, 2022 22:46

  I realize this is off topic, but according to the documentation the only difference between Academic Admin and Registrar role is access to the "Settings" tab under Academics.  And only one or two people should ever need access to that.  It doesn't fix your needs at all, but I would take all of your current users with Academic Admin Roles  and move them to Registrar role only so people aren't potentially constantly changing the settings for how Populi's Academics work.

  I don't believe this will help with this particular problem and feature request of course.  As Registrars should also be able to register students ignoring the lock.  But if any of those Academic Admins don't need to be manually creating course instances and only need to setup course content, make them Faculty and Advisor roles only.  As Advisors the lock will keep them out.  And you've decreased your problem people until we can convince Populi this is a needed feature.  :D