UniTime 4.0 build 12

Bug Fixes

Online Student Scheduling Server

• Get course by name or by name and title: fix the case when there is a dash in the subject area
  abbreviation or a course number.
• Improved handling of the case when a student is enrolled into the same offering multiple times,
  under different course names.

Course Timetabling: Database Load

• Ensure that an instructor distribution preference is loaded in only once when the following two
  conditions are met:
  • a) inherited instructor preferences is enabled on an external department,
  • b) both the external department and the instructor's department are being loaded in.

Data Exchange: Session Restore

• Fixed ability to import a new instructional type (id was not set).

Other Improvements

Online Student Scheduling: Eligibility Check

• When there is no student record matching with the external id of the authenticated user:
  • "You are not registered as a student in {0}." message changed to "You are not eligible to
    register in {0}.".
  • Do not display the message when in the assistant mode (enrollment is not enabled).

Solution Reports: Violated Distribution Preferences

• Added a column counting the number of violations (violated pairs).
• Include flexible group constraints in the list.

Suggestions: Flexible Constraints

• Include flexible group constraints in the Distribution Preferences counters.
• Include flexible group constraints on the Violated Constraints list.

Batch Student Sectioning: Database Loader

• Minimal Perturbation Problem: Add current class assignments as selected choices.
  • This helps keeping students close to their original enrolment when the original enrolment is
    not in the domain.
• Added ability to load student groups as request groups.
  • Request groups are loaded in only when the solver paramter Load.RequestGroups is set to true,
    default is false.
  • Solver parameter StudentWeights.SameGroup (defaults to 0.1) can be used to change the impact
    of the same group criterion.
  • Request Groups solver report has been also added.

Localization

• Added ability to let users to choose the locale by defining the unitime.locale manager settings.

HQL Reports: Reference Tables

• Added ability to include any reference table (room type, distribution type, etc.) as query
  parameter.

Scripts: Import / Export XML

• Added ability to export a script in XML format.
• Added ability to import XML with one ore more scripts.

Events: Standard Notes

• Added Select button when selecting a standard note (both Standard Notes dialog and Approval
  dialog).
• This fixes the issue of not being able to select a standard note on a mobile device (due to the
  inability to double click).

CAS Authentication

• Added ability to always translate the returned external user id by setting
  unitime.authentication.cas.id-translate to true (defaults to false).
• Added ability to lookup multiple attributes in the CAS ticket (the
  unitime.authentication.cas.id-translate can contain a comma separated list of attributes).
  • Each attribute may or may not be translated (the unitime.authentication.cas.id-translate can
    contain a comma separated list of true and false values, one for each attribute).

External User Id Translation

• Added ability to translate user names (as returned by the authentication) to the external user
  ids that are used by UniTime.
• Configuration (default SQLs are using the users table):

  • Enable custom SQL user id translation

  • tmtbl.externalUid.translation=org.unitime.timetable.spring.security.CustomSQLExternalUidTransl
    ation

  • SQL query converting user name to external user id

  • unitime.custom.sql.uid2ext=select external_uid from %SCHEMA%.users where username = ?

  • SQL query converting external user id to user name

  • unitime.custom.sql.ext2uid=select username from %SCHEMA%.users where external_uid = ?

Events: Course Title

• Time Grid: Added ability to display course title in the header of an event in the time grid.
• This only happens when the application property unitime.events.grid_display_title is set to true
  (defaults to false, current behaviour).
• Only applies to class events (course related events and examination events can relate to
  multiple courses and can have multiple titles with ambiguous choice which one to display).
• When multiple course title exists, only the first one is displayed (e.g., in the case of
  a cross-list, it should be the title of the controlling course).
• Format: course title (instruction section)
• Example: Fundamentals of Biology II (Laboratory 12038-042)

Events: ICS Export

• When the grid display title is enabled (see above), course title is used as event name (summary
  field).
• Added ability to include instructor names in the description of an event.
  • Tis only happens when the application property unitime.events.ics_instructors_in_description
    is set to true (defaults to false, current behaviour).

CPSolver updated to version 1.3.52 (was 1.3.47)

Student Sectioning: Minimal Perturbation Problem

• Priority and equal weighting: added ability to minimise perturbations.
• Difference of an enrollment (from the initial one) is computed as a number between 0 (completely
  different) and 1 (the initial enrollment).
• It is computed as average using the following schema (over all sections of the enrollment):
  • An initial section counts as 1,
  • same choice section counts as 0.9 (parameter StudentWeights.SameChoice),
  • same time section counts as 0.7 (parameter StudentWeights.SameTime),
  • and different time section counts as 0.
• Non-initial enrollment weight is penalized with weight StudentWeights.Perturbation (defaults to
  0.100) using the following formula
  • weights *= (1 - difference * StudentWeights.Perturbation)
• When MPP is enabled, solution info contains the following three new properties:
  • Perturbations: same section assigned (% of initial section assigned over all course requests
    with initial enrollment)
  • Perturbations: same choice assigned (% of same choice section assigned over all course
    requests with initial enrollment)
  • Perturbations: same time assigned (% of same time section assigned over all course requests
    with initial enrollment)
• Note: same choice means same time and instructor.

Student Sectioning: Reservations

• If reservations are allowed to assign students over the limit during the batch student
  sectioning, do not count the enrollments with such reservations towards course, configuration,
  and section limits.
• This is to avoid issues with the order in which enrollemnts were made.

Student Sectioning: Parallel Solver

• Course, Config, Section, and Reservation contexts now implement the CanInheritContext interface.
• This speeds up the creation of an inherited context.

Batch Student Sectioning: Request Groups

• Added ability to keep students of the same group together.
• Measured as an average probability of two students (of a group) that are requesting the same
  course being given the same section (of the same subpart).
• There is a new weight (named StudentWeights.SameGroup, defaults to 0.1) expressing how much this
  criterion affects the student weight (in both priority and equal weighting).
• This means that if a student is being enrolled into a completely different section, weight of
  such an enrollment is decreased by 10%.
  • (the metric reflects how much are the students spread between the sections of the course)

Course Timetabling: Added MaxDays Flexible Constraint

• The MaxDays constraint limits the number of days of week during which the given set of classes
  are taught.
• It has one parameters: a maximal number of week days during which the given set of classes can
  be placed.
• For instance, reference MaxDays:2 translates to a maximum number of 2 days a week.