2013 Texas Ad Astra SummitMonday, July 22nd

Moving from Centralized to Decentralized Room Approvals

University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas)

PresenterSandy Runowski

Associate Director of RecordsScheduling and Catalog

University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas)sandy.runowski@utdallas.edu

972-883-2196

About UT Dallas• Public, research

institution• Serves 19,000 students• Over 4000 sections per

semester with meeting patterns

• Utilizing 189 classroom or lab spaces

Founded by the founders of Texas Instruments, Inc.

Classroom & Event SchedulingAdAstra 7.4.13.163

Upgraded to AdAstra 7.5.6.130 while deploying room approvals to departments.

The Old Event/Room Approval Process

• One Special Event Request Form

• Events submitted by departmental contacts

• Scheduling Team approved all events and rooms in Astra

Forces Driving the Need for Change

Various systems being used throughout campus:

• AdAstra• Outlook

• EMS• Other 3rd party systems

Challenges Faced• Getting departmental buy in to add rooms to

Astra• Make it advantageous to the departments to

approve the use of their rooms• Setup of Astra to have the approval process

function the way we wanted it to

Getting departmental buy in to add rooms to Astra

• Met with departmental contacts to determined their needs and pain points

• Also met with Physical Plant, Campus Police Department and Media Services

Make it advantageous to the departments to approve the use of their rooms

• The change in the approval process allowed the departmental contact to use the quick event

option and to add events directly on the calendar view

• No more 48 hour lead time to add events in their own rooms

• Event approval for their rooms did not need to go through the Registrar’s Office

Setup of Astra to have the approval process function the way we wanted it to

• Weekly meetings with our Astra Technical Account Manager

• Set up of two separate logins for the Scheduling Team based on the role they are

performing:- Academic Specialist

- Event Approver

Separation of Roles

Academic Approver• Rooms:

– Request (All)– Schedule (All)

• Academic Sections– Edit/Manage (All)

• Events– View (All) only

Event Approver• Rooms:

– Request (Limited)– Schedule (Limited)

• Academic Sections– View (All) only

• Events– Edit & Request (All) Events– Event Schedulers (All)

Set up for departments to approve their own rooms

1. Remove the room from the Event Approver Role

Set up for departments to approve their own rooms

2. Create an event type for that department’s rooms (ex: A&P Rooms)

Set up for departments to approve their own rooms

3. Create an Approval Roll for that Department’s Rooms.

View Rooms (UTDM)Request Rooms (UTDM)Schedule Rooms (Add the rooms you removed in Step 1)View Sections (All)View Events (All)Edit Events (All & Select that dept’s meeting type)Request Events (Special Event Form)View Scheduling Calendars (All)View Reports (All)

Set up for departments to approve their own rooms

4. Set up the Approver Group for the same rooms

Some areas wanted their instructors to be able to request only their rooms.

1. Create an Event Request Template for that school.- Set the Room Approver Group- Add a saved filter to show them only their rooms

2. Create and Instructor-School role- Check only the rooms that are assigned to the

schools room approver group- Request Events: Select the new Event Request

Form for that School

3. The Instructors will need to be setup as users with the Instructor-School role and their Customer Contact has to set to the correct school as well.4. Add the New Event Request Form to the Departmental Room Approver Role.

Portal PageWe also updated our portal page

Training

• Group #1: Room Approvers

• Group #2: Departmental Contacts

Changes for our Team

• Two roles – two logins

• Event Approvals in Notification List

• Check for Incomplete Events

New Challenges

• Holiday Blocker for preventing events begin scheduled prior to the release of the class schedule – now blocks adding events to

conference rooms and conference center.• Now working to apply Usage Policies to our

classrooms and class labs.

Looking to the Future• Expanding the use of Astra to more of the

campus• Investigating the potential use of Astra for

Media Services• Customizing Astra Reports to provide more

directed reports to Physical Plant and the Campus Police Department

Q&A

Sandy Runowski Associate Director of Records

Scheduling and Catalog University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas)

sandy.runowski@utdallas.edu 972-883-2196