Best Practices Data Integrity
Data integrity is the maintenance and assurance of the accuracy and consistency of data over its entire lifecycle. It is a critical aspect of the design, implementation, and usage of any system that stores, processes, or retrieves data. This article describes best practices for system administrators making modifications to activity or Faculty Classifications, sections or fields, and/or making changes to organizational structure.
Best Practices
Merging, Renaming, Deleting, and Changing Parent of Units
- Download and fill out the linked Organizational Structure Change Request Form with the changes desired.
- The form is a Google Doc that will need to be downloaded
- The spreadsheet has four separate forms:
- Merge Request Form
- Change Parent Unit Request Form
- Delete Unit Request Form
- Terms used in the Organizational Structure Change Form:
- Merge Unit: Merging two or more units together preserves the subunit hierarchy of the unit being merged & carries over all data into the target unit. After merging, the original unit can be deleted.
- Change Parent Unit: Moving a unit into a new parent unit. All lower-level hierarchical relations remain the same.
- Delete Unit: Delete a unit from the organizational structure. In order to do this, all faculty, courses, courses taught, prefixes, and committees must first be migrated to another unit.
- Submit a ticket to help@interfolio.com with the completed form attached.
Managing Faculty Classifications
- If the Faculty Classification already exists but has not been used, meaning the classification has not been assigned to any user, modifications should be possible.
- If the Faculty Classification already exists but has been used, meaning the classification has been assigned to a user, modifications will need to be made by the Interfolio Technical Services team. Please submit a change request via help@interfolio.com.
- These modifications include changing the display type, the values in a dropdown, select box list, or a multi-item select box list, and correcting any values that had already been assigned to faculty members.
Key
Symbol |
Explanation |
---|---|
✓ |
Clients can make these system changes. *Clients can make these system changes if no data is associated **Clients can make these system changes, but there will be impact on reporting. |
⚠ |
Will compromise ongoing data loads. Clients should reach out to Interfolio Support to help assist with these changes. Otherwise, clients can make these system changes. |
✕ |
Clients cannot or should not make these changes in the system. Please reach out to Interfolio Support to discuss options. |
Action/Change | Recommendation |
---|---|
Adding a new Faculty Classification |
✓
|
Adding a new value to a default Faculty Classification |
✓** Attempting to add an option to a default Faculty Classification will result in a warning message. Adding new options can break reports such as AACSB or LCME.
|
Adding a new value to a custom Faculty Classification | ✓ |
Changing the Title of a Faculty Classification | ✓ |
Changing the label of a value in a Faculty Classification | ✓* |
Moving a Faculty Classification to Inactive |
✓ This change can be made via the UI but will impact sorting functionality and reporting. Once inactivated, users can no longer use that FC for sorting in the faculty picker. |
Removing a value from a Faculty Classification | ✓* |
Changing the display type of a Faculty Classification | ✓* |
Check out this article on how to Add/Edit Faculty for more information on how to edit the Faculty Classification assigned to an individual faculty member.
Managing Activity Classifications (ACs)
Key
Symbol |
Explanation |
---|---|
✓ |
Clients can make these system changes. |
⚠ |
Will compromise ongoing data loads. Clients should reach out to Interfolio Support to help assist with these changes. Otherwise, clients can make these system changes. *Removing a field will result in data loss. |
✕ |
Clients cannot or should not make these changes in the system. Please reach out to Interfolio Support to discuss options. |
Action/Change | Recommendation |
---|---|
Adding an Activity Classification |
✓
|
Adding a new value to an Activity Classification | ⚠ |
Changing the Title of an Activity Classification | ⚠ |
Changing the label of a value in an Activity Classification | ⚠ |
Moving an Activity Classification to Inactive |
⚠ The AC would continue to be present for reporting purposes if a user sets it to “show in reports” by checking the appropriate check box. Check out this article on how to Customize Activity Classifications for more information on how to activate/deactivate activity classifications. |
Moving an Activity Classification to a different unit | ✓ |
Removing a value from an Activity Classification | ✕ |
Changing the display type of an Activity Classification | ⚠ |
Modifying an existing Activity Classification |
|
Managing Section Changes
Key
Symbol |
Explanation |
---|---|
✓ |
Clients can make these system changes. |
⚠ |
Will compromise ongoing data loads. Clients should reach out to Interfolio Support to help assist with these changes. Otherwise, clients can make these system changes. *Removing a field will result in data loss. |
✕ |
Clients cannot or should not make these changes in the system. Please reach out to Interfolio Support to discuss options. |
Action/Change | Recommendation |
---|---|
Adding a section |
✓ A new section can be added at any time to any form. The recommendation is to add the section at level 1 (typically the University level) so that the section can be provisioned for multiple units either when created or in the future. |
Adding a new field to a section |
✓* A new field may be added to a section at any time However, if data is being loaded by Interfolio into the section, this will require changes by the Tech Services team and a possible change order. Field names must be unique.
|
Changing the values in a dropdown field |
Rather than recreating a dropdown list with different options, values should be added or changed on an existing list in order not to compromise data integrity. Note that institutions bulk loading data through Technical Services should contact Interfolio prior to making changes.
|
Adding a value to a dropdown field |
✓* Note that for non-automated file loads, institutions bulk loading data through Technical Services should contact Interfolio prior to making changes. |
Changing the name of a section (custom or default) | ✓ |
Changing the label of a field in a custom section | ✓ |
Moving a section to Not Shown | ✓ |
Removing a field in a section |
⚠* Warning: Do not take this action. Please contact Interfolio to discuss the use case at help@interfolio.com. |
Changing the field type in a section |
✕ Warning: Do not take this action. This change will severely affect the integrity of the data. Please contact Interfolio to discuss the use case at help@interfolio.com. Reporting of the data either on a vita template or in general reporting will no longer be valid. |
Changing Term/Year selection (One Term/Year to Multiple Term/Year; Multiple Term/Year to One Term/Year) |
✕ Before data are entered into the database, changing the term/year selection should not be a problem.
Warning: Do not take this action. Please contact Interfolio to discuss use case at help@interfolio.com. |
Managing Organizational Changes
Download and complete the request form (do not forget to save it as an Excel file) to manage the Organizational Structure. Check out this article on how to Set Up or Edit the Organizational Structure for more information on what changes admins CAN make to units in the user interface (UI).
Key
Symbol |
Explanation |
---|---|
✓ |
Clients can make these system changes. |
⚠ |
Will compromise ongoing data loads. Clients should reach out to Interfolio Support to help assist with these changes. Otherwise, clients can make these system changes. |
✕ |
Clients cannot or should not make these changes in the system. Please reach out to Interfolio Support to discuss options. |
Action/Change | Who can make this change? |
---|---|
Adding a unit |
✓ A new unit can be added to any parent unit at any time. |
Moving (changing parent of) a unit | ⚠ |
Adding new faculty to a unit | ✓ |
Moving faculty between units |
✓ For bulk actions, please contact Technical Services. |
Combining units | ⚠ |
Splitting units | ⚠ |
Deleting units | ⚠ |
Modifying a unit |
✓ Changing the unit name or unit abbreviation can be done at any time.
⚠ Changing the parent of a unit or multiple units / combining units/splitting units
⚠ To merge, change the parent of, or delete a unit
|