UniTime 3.5 build 187

Technology Update

Clustering

• Improved ability for UniTime to run in a cluster.
  • Remote solver servers connect to each other and the web server(s) using JGroups.
  • Hibernate L2 cache is now replicated across the cluster.
    • However, L2 cache is disabled when Hibernate is used outside of Tomcat (e.g., on a remote
      solver server).
• Clustering can be disabled by setting application properties unitime.hibernate.cluster
  (Hibernate L2 cache) and unitime.solver.cluster (remove solver servers) to false.
• Online student scheduling server can now run on multiple machines at once, with the data
  asynchronously replicated (using infinispan) and one machine being the master (responsible for
  all the updates).
  • To enable replication, set unitime.enrollment.server.replicated to true.

Constraint Solver

• Using the latest version of CPSolver 1.3
• This update contains a new assignment model and multi-core capabilities.

Mobile

• A few initial steps have been made towards a frendlier version of UniTime pages on mobile
  (tables or phone) devices.
• Mobile page layout is using less tables, and there is a new menu.

Student Scheduling

Over-Expected Criterion

• Added ability to provide a custom criterion that decides whether a class is over-expected or
  not.
• Default implementation now falls back to section balancing when there are no expectations.
  • I.e., students can be only allowed into sections that are (or will become) dis-balanced by
    more than 10% if there are no other sections meeting their schedule.

Student Scheduling Reports

• Added an interface that is implemented by all the reports.
• Added time / availability conflicts report: unlike the existing course conflict report,
  conflicts are counted between individual classes.
• Distance conflict report: changed to compute conflicts between individual classes.
• Unbalanced sections report: list sections that are dis-balanced by more than 10%.
• Time-overlaps report: list time conflicts between classes (that do allow for time overlaps).
• Added a page through which various student sectioning solver reports can be displayed:
  • Works for both batch (page Student Sectioning Solver Reports, menu Students > Solver Reports)
    and online (page Online Student Scheduling Reports, menu Students > Online Scheduling
    Reports).
  • All the existing current reports are available (time conflicts, availability conflicts,
    unbalanced classes, distance conflicts, time overlaps).

Student Scheduling Dashboard

• Display Not-Enrolled student requests instead of just the wait-listed ones.
• Distinguish wait-listed unassigned request with the w) hint.
  • This is done in the same way as there is the r) hint for enrollments using reservations or for
    reserved space.
• Filter text field was replaced by the new filter box component (which is used on the events
  page, e.g., as Event Filter or Room Filter).

Student Scheduling Assistant

• Added ability to wait-list an unassigned course request in the List of Classes table.
• Added ability to automatically add course request and alternate course request lines as they are
  needed.
• Time Conflicts: display the allowed time conflicts note (Overlaps with x) in red color.
  • There is also a warning icon next to each class that has a time conflict.

Custom Student Enrollment Interface

• Added an ability to provide a custom class that synchronizes the enrollments with an external
  system.
• The interface can be used to check student's eligibility (an additional step in the
  CheckEligibility action).
  • The external system can request students to enter a PIN number.
  • Discrepancies between the two systems can be detected (e.g., a student may be denied the
    ability to enroll through UniTime if the two systems are not in sync).
• The interface can be used to enroll students into classes (an additional step in the
  EnrollStudent action).
  • The external system may reject enrollment of some classes.
  • If this happens, student is not enrolled into the rejected classes in UniTime as well
    (appropriate error messages are displayed instead).
• Automated qait-listing is disabled when such a custom interface is used.
• This change also includes an example implementation using the new Banner XE (RESTful) interface.

Course Timetabling

Instructor Preferences

• Added ability to automatically inherit instructor preferences to externally managed classes.
• There is a new toggle (inherit instructor preferences) on a department which controls whether
  instructor preferences are to be inherited or not.
• Applicable room and building preferences, global room features and groups can now be inherited
  onto an externally managed class as well.
• If the externally managed department does not allow required time and/or room preferences, the
  instructor preferences are weakened accordingly.

Hierarchical Preference Inheritance

• If there are two or more scheduling subparts in a parent-child relation with the same
  instructional type (e.g., Lec - Lec a - Lec b stacked underneath), inherit preferences and the
  date pattern from the parent subpart whenever possible.
• This behavior can be enabled by setting application property
  unitime.preferences.hierarchicalInheritance to true.

Instructor Unavailability

• Instructor unavailabilty can include special and course-related events that are approved.
  • These are events for which the instructor is the main contact or he/she is present in the
    additional contacts of the event.
  • This feature can be enabled by setting the application property
    unitime.events.instructorUnavailability to true (default is false).
• If enabled, the unavailabilities will also show:
  • in the Timetable Grid (in the same way as blocking events are displayed for rooms now)
  • on the Instructor Detail page (there is a new section called Instructor Unavailability, only
    visible when there is at least one such blocking event for the instructor).
• The RoomAvailabilityInterface has been extended to provide instructor availability, the default
  room availability service has been extended to provide instructor availability from the events
  as described above.

Course Credit

• Course credit moved from instructional offering to course offering.
  • That is, each course of a cross-list can have a different credit information.
  • This allows for variable credit courses where a student can pick the proper number of credits
    by selecting the appropriate course offering in the cross-list.
• Course credit information is now also visible in the Course Finder dialog of the Student
  Scheduling Assistant page.

Other Changes

Event Management: No Room Check

• Rooms that have the Ignore Room Check toggle enabled can be overbooked.
  • To easily identify such a room, there is a No Room Check note in the room's tooltip and the
    room name is in italic in the Meetings table on the Add / Edit Event pages.
• Meetings that are in a room with no room check never show any conflicts and such meetings also
  never show among conflicting events.

Rooms

• Added ability to provide room pictures.
• Pictures (of a room) can be updated for
  • the current academic session only,
  • the current academic session and all future academic sessions, or
  • all academic sessions.

Application Properties

• All (or most of) application properties are now registered and used through the
  ApplicationProperty enum.
  • This allows for an easy place to see all configuration properties, define their default values
    and short descriptions.
• Application Configuration page was modified to include all registered properties, including
  their defaults and descriptions.

Data Exchange

• Added export of student course requests.
• Student Class Enrollment Import: update student course requests to match student class
  enrollments.
• Room Sharing: added ability to export and import room sharing.
• Student Import, Student Class Enrollments Import: added incremental mode
  • When not in incremental mode, students (student class enrollments) that are not included in
    the XML are deleted (this is the default).
  • When in incremental mode, students that are not included in the file are completely ignored.
• Student Course Requests Import
  • Added ability to cancel a student through the import (cancelStudent element).
  • Added ability to include class enrollments with the course requests.
  • Added enrollment mode (attribute enrollment on the root element) with the following values:
    • update: enrollments are updated to point to new course requests, orphaned enrollments
      (enrollments without course requests) are deleted (this is the default)
    • nochange: all enrollments are kept (previously, this was achieved by keepEnrollments='true')
    • import: import enrollments from the file (default when there are class elements in the file)
    • delete: all class enrollments (of the related students) are deleted

CAS Authentication

• Added provisions for CAS-based authentication.
• To enable CAS, uncomment the CAS Authentication sections in securityContext.xml and web.xml (see
  the comments there).

Localization

• Added en_UK locale: it is much like the default, except of time (24-hour format) and date (day
  before moth) formatting.
• Course Timetabling: Added ability to display assigned times in either 12-hour or 24-hour time
  format (based on the locale).

Constraint Solver

Course Timetabling: Deterministic Student Sectioning Customization

• This custom sectioning assign students to groups in a deterministic way.
  • Students are ordered by their academic information (curriculum) and unique ids and assigned in
    this order to the first available group (configuration or lecture).
• To enable this customization set the following parameter:
  • StudentSectioning.Class=org.cpsolver.coursett.custom.DeterministicStudentSectioning

Course Timetabling: Group Constraint

• Forward checking extended to all hard group constraints (not only meet-together).
• It is possible to avoid forward check on variables with large domains (parameter
  ForwardCheck.MaxDomainSize, defaults to 1000) and to limit the depth (parameter
  ForwardCheck.MaxDepth, defaults to 2).

Course Timetabling: MaxBreaks constraint

• MaxBreaks constraint limits the number of blocks of non back-to-back classes of an instructor on
  a day.
• It has two parameters: a maximal number of breaks and a minimal length of a break between two
  classes not to be considered in the same block.
  • For example, reference MaxBreaks:1:30 translates to a maximum number of one break (two
    blocks) on a day of classes not more than 30 minutes a part.

Course Timetabling: Class Weights

• Added an ability to provide each class with a weight.
  • This weight is used in the time and room preferences (the preference is weighted by the
    "importance" of the class).
• For instance, this can be used for classes that are only offered once in a semester to have
  a lower weight.
  • So that there is an incentive to put a class that is taught every week in a preferred time
    even if it bumps two classes (that only meet once) from their preferred times.
• This also allows for things like giving compulsory or elective courses more weight over optional
  courses in the curriculum timetabling, if ever needed.
• This feature can be enabled by the solver parameter Class Weights, two implementations are now
  available:
  • Default Class Weights (default): all class weights are 1.0 (so, all works as before).
  • Average Hours A Week Class Weights: a weight of a class is estimated by the average number of
    hours it takes during the academic session.

IFS: Neighborhood Search Algorithms

• Added a general versions of Hill Climber, Great Deluge, and Simulated Annealing to the solver,
  with three problem independent neighboorhoods:
  • Random move just picks a random unconflicting value to a variable.
  • Random swap tries to resolve all possible conflicts (unlike with suggestions there is no limit
    on depth, however, no new conflict can be created by resolving an existing one).
  • Suggestion move: a variable is selected randomly, a limited depth backtracking is used to find
    a possible change.
    • Unlike in NeighbourSelectionWithSuggestions, the very first found suggestion is returned.
• Added a "simple search" algorithm that combines the ifs, hill climber, and great deluge or
  simulated annealing in a similar way as the examination solver (or the ITC competition solver)
  does.
• This algorithm is enabled by setting the Search Algorithm solver parameter to Experimental.

Student Scheduling: Required Reservation Constraint

• This global constraint ensures that reservations that must be used are used.
  • That is, an enrollment is conflicting when there is a reservation for the student that must be
    used, but the given enrollment does not use it.
• While the domain of the course request already does not allow for such enrollments, such an
  enrollment can be loaded in from the database or XML.
  • This constraint is to prevent assignment of such invalid enrollments.

Course Timetabling: Room Ratio

• Changed the computation of minimal room size to round(room ratio x class limit), instead of the
  previous ceil(room ratio x class limit).
• While using ceiling instead of round has some merit, this fixes the ongoing issues with the
  computation.
  • E.g., minimal room size of a class with limit 25 and room ratio 0.6 was 16 (as 0.6f * 25 =
    15.000001 in Java) instead of the expected 15.

Course Timetabling: MaxWeeks constraint

• The MaxWeeks constraint limits the number of weeks during which the given set of classes are
  taught.
• It has two parameters: a maximal number of weeks during which the given set of classes can be
  placed and a day code indicating what days of week are considered.
• Reference MaxWeeks:3:48 translates to a maximum number of 3 weeks, but only for classes that
  are placed on Fridays and Saturdays
  • (64 for Monday, 32 for Tuesday, 16 for Wednesday, 8 for Thursday, 4 for Friday, 2 for
    Saturday, and 1 for Sunday)
  • If the second parameter is zero, all days of week are considered.

Course Timetabling: Classes with multiple rooms

• For each time, limit the number of room combinations (parameter General.MaxRoomCombinations,
  defaults to 100).
  • Domain is dynamic (not cached) in this case, preferring rooms that are available for the given
    time (for which the room combinations are generated).

Course Timetabling: Max N Hours A Day constraint

• Added ability to consider date patterns (individual weeks).
  • When solver parameter MaxNHoursADay.ConsiderDatePatterns is set to true (this is also the new
    default).
  • For former behavior, set MaxNHoursADay.ConsiderDatePatterns to false.

Course Timetabling: Distribution Preferences

• Added structure One of Each
  • The distribution constraint is created for each combination of classes such that one class is
    taken from each line representing a class or a scheduling subpart
  • For instance, if the constraint is put between three scheduling subparts, a constraint will be
    posted between each combination of three classes, each from one of the three subparts.
  • If a constraint is put between a class and a scheduling subpart, there will be a binary
    constraint posted between the class and each of the classes of the scheduling subpart.