The reports run using Faculty Success rely on the dates entered for each activity record. Leaving dates blank for a record can result in that record being unexpectedly included or excluded on reports. Therefore, at least one significant date must be entered on every activity record.
Records in Faculty Success generally have date fields like academic year, start and end dates, and dates accepted or published. When you run a report, you are required to specify a start and end date. Faculty Success compares the report date range against the dates on the records to determine which records to include on the report.
You may have some date fields, however, that you do not want used to determine whether records should appear on reports. This is where the concept of significance comes in. Only date fields set as significant are used to select records for a report. All non-significant dates are simply data points for a record. While these data points can be used to organize or further filter records for reports, they are not used to determine whether the record falls within the report date range.
Any date field can be set as significant or non-significant. This setting can be altered via a work request.
This information is now included in the Configuration Report, which is available on the Home screen. Simply go to any screen-specific worksheet and locate the fields with a Data Type of "Date". The Other Attributes column to the far right of the worksheet will indicate whether that date field is significant.
Each component of a date field is configured as an individual field in the application. While some attributes of these date components can be set separately, date significance is not one of them. Date significance is set uniformly across all components of a given date field. This means, for example, that "Month", "Day" and "Year" are all marked as significant, and that you cannot remove significance for "Month" and "Day" while leaving it in place for "Year".
However, this new feature does NOT require that all date components have a value before the record can be saved. Only the "Year" field is required on a significant date with this feature in place.
No, at minimum just the "Year" component of one of your significant date fields is required in order to save a record with this feature enabled.
Yes – the Contracts, Grants and Sponsored Research screen is a particularly tricky one when it comes to requiring at least one significant date. When designing this screen there are a few key things that you consider:
- Should the screen capture only funded contracts, grants and sponsored research? Or should it also capture anticipated and pending submissions?
- For funded contracts, grants and sponsored research, is it reasonable to provide a start date and an end date of funding for all records? Or is it important to be able to capture open-ended or ongoing activities?
- Are records for this screen created through a data import, manually by faculty, or another way?
These decisions can each have an impact on whether this enhancement will work well with your current significance settings for dates on this screen.
The most common significant date fields on this screen are "Start Date of Funding" and "End Date of Funding". If you have concerns about requiring users to provide at least one of these signifcant dates whenever a Contracts, Grants and Sponsored Research record is added or edited through the user interface, we recommend contacting your Success Consultant to review the design and intentions of your screen and talk through potential options.
No, this enhancement only applies to fields with a Data Type of "Date". You may have seen in the Configuration Report that other fields, like the "People at..." User Reference fields, also have a significance indicator noted. This is something you can ignore entirely in relation to this enhancement.
In such a case the user will be presented with an alert when they select Save. Here is an example, citing the significant dates on the Intellectual Contributions screen in our Base Instrument:
To ensure this record shows up on reports, please fill-in at least one of these dates prior to saving:
Expected Date of Submission
Date Submitted
Date Accepted
Date Published
No, this enhancement only applies to records added or edited through the user interface. It will still be possible to import records without data in the significant date fields through CSV Data Imports and web services.
The date requiredness feature will only go into effect for the user if they have access to edit the significant date fields on a record. If the significant date fields are read-only, hidden or locked – perhaps because you import records for this screen – and a given record contains no data in those significant date fields, the user will be able to save the record with the additional information provided on non read-only, hidden or locked fields.
