Interfolio — Best Practices Data Integrity

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.

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	✓ Title must be unique. If a Faculty Classification already exists with the same title, modify the title slightly. The option to add an underscore or abbreviate the title is available. This is true even if the Faculty Classification is set to inactive and then recreated. If a Faculty Classification was created with a display type and the display type needs to be changed, the system allows certain kinds of changes. Only some display types can be used as filters in reports: Dropdown select box and Multi-item Select Box. A Faculty Classification can be created with only one value.
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	✓ The title must be unique. If an Activity Classification already exists with the same title, modify the title slightly. Add an underscore or abbreviate the title, if desired. This is true even if the Activity Classification is set to inactive and then recreated. Only some display types can be used as filters in reports: Dropdown select box and Multi-item Select Box. If an Activity Classification was created with a display type and the display type needs to be changed, that may not be possible. Please contact Interfolio to discuss options.
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	✓ If the Activity Classification already exists but has not been used, meaning the classification has not been assigned to an activity by any user, modifications should be possible. ⚠ If the Activity Classification already exists but has been used, meaning the classification has been assigned to an activity by 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 Changing the values in a dropdown select box Correcting any values that have already been selected by a faculty member.

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. The impact of the change after data have been entered into the section impacts reporting but does not break it. The impact of the change after data have been entered does affect the backup data and the data available via API extract. All fields related to the term/year will be in the report. So if the change was made from the four fields (start term/year and end term/year) to two fields (term/year), all four fields will still exist in the database. 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. The change of the unit abbreviation may impact the success of base data files that are being loaded. Base data files that may be impacted: faculty file, current position file, secondary unit assignment file, prefix file, and the support account file. Please update these files accordingly. ⚠ Changing the parent of a unit or multiple units / combining units/splitting units If there are faculty assigned to the unit, it is best that this function be completed by the Interfolio Technical Services team to be sure that the unit, faculty and all data points are moved successfully. There are a number of data points associated with both faculty and unit. It is ⚠ To merge, change the parent of, or delete a unit Download the linked Organizational Structure Change Request Form. The form is a Google Doc that will need to be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet. Please fill out the request form with the changes desired, and submit a ticket to help@interfolio.com with the completed form attached.

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