Making Changes to Your Organizational Chart
We recommend finalizing your organizational chart at the start of the Academic Year, before adding in any outcomes or results.
We recommend that you make your changes through Core Data, in order to make them available in additional products. For more information, please refer to our Core Data support documentation. However, if you want to make Outcomes-specific changes, you can do so without affecting other products.
If you are using Outcomes for Blackboard, changes should be made through Blackboard in order to make them available in Outcomes, as you do not utilize Core Data.
What changes can be made?
There are four general types of changes or modification that can be made
Additions
Relocating Organizational Units
Hiding Organizational Units
Non-Identifier Changes
Some types of changes, such as moving or hiding organizational units, cannot be made once data has been entered for that organizational unit (or its related units) for that particular Time Period. The system works to protect historical data in your Outcomes platform.
Additions
You can add additional units, courses and sections to your organizational chart via Core Data, or Institutional Hierarchy for Blackboard.
For Core Data: The Organizational Units file, Courses file and Sections file all work on an add/update protocol. This means you don't have to re-create your entire organizational chart just to make additions. Instead, campuses can prepare the files with the additions only.
For Blackboard: Institutional Hierarchy updates should be made in the Administrator Panel.
Once updated, you can navigate to Settings > Organization Tree > Pending Updates > Added to Data Management to sync the additions to Outcomes.
Please keep the reporting features in mind when thinking about changes and follow the standard guides provided by Technical Resources.
You can also add units manually in Outcomes. We strongly recommend contacting Support about your goals in doing so, as it should only be done in rare cases where adding is a unit or course is only needed in Outcomes. For Blackboard institutions, any manually created units created in Outcomes, will not reflect in Blackboard for feature access.
Relocating Organizational Units
You can manually relocate organizational units and courses in your organizational chart. If there is an outcome created in an organizational unit or any of the units/courses within that unit, it cannot be relocated. You must delete the Outcomes data before relocating the unit.
In order to relocate org units or courses, you can navigate to Settings > Organization Tree. From there, select Move, and search for a new parent unit to put it under.
You can relocate organizational units and courses in Core Data or Blackboard, however these relocations are only applied to Outcomes during the Reinitialization of an Academic Year. Reinitializing will permanently delete any Outcomes data added for that year, so we recommend finalizing the location of your courses and org units at the beginning of the Academic Year.
Hiding Organizational Units
Once an Organizational Unit has been created it cannot be deleted. However, you can hide an organizational unit so no one sees it or contributes data to it. Hiding a unit cuts off access to it by any user. When a unit is hidden, anything within that unit will also be hidden; this includes other organizational units, courses, and academic programs. If a campus still wants to access these other units, courses, or programs, they will need to be relocated.
If there is an outcome created in an organizational unit or any of the units/courses within that unit, it cannot be hidden.
In order to hide org units or courses, you can navigate to Settings > Organization Tree. From there, select Edit, select the Hide Unit / Course checkbox, then save.
Additionally, the Bulk Hide feature on the Settings > Organization Tree screen will allow you to enter the external identifiers of multiple units, courses, and even sections to hide. Please be aware that sections cannot be unhidden once they are hidden, while units and courses can be hidden/unhidden at any time.
Non-Identifier Changes
Non-identifier changes refer to changes that will not affect reporting functions. This includes changes to the Name, Course Number, Acronym, and Type fields.
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Changing the Name field will change the displayed name of the organizational unit in various places in the platform without affecting reporting capabilities.
Changing the Acronym and Type does not have any real effect on your Outcomes platform.
These non-identifier changes can be made in Core Data, then synced to outcomes with Settings > Organization Tree > Pending Updates > Metadata Changes.