Student Faculty Information System

We had our initial meeting in the SFIS Query Instruction Series on July 15. Following an overview of the SFIS Blog, we reviewed some of the fundamental concepts about working with Query in general, and Query Viewer in particular. You can find this information under 1 – Basic Query Concepts and Query Viewer

Each month there will be two occasions to meet and learn and talk about PS Query.  The topics will be announced before each meeting here in the SFIS Blog and in meeting invitations sent to the SFIS Query Instruction Mailing List . If you would like to be added to the mailing list, please send an email to cpike01@wesleyan.edu

The meetings will proceed in two Tracks:

• Track 1 will present Query for users who have not used it as yet or who have only a passing familiarity with the product.  The core of these sessions will be primarily based on the Query Manager module in the Introduction to PeopleSoft Query (that you will also find in the SFIS Blog).  This module will give you a foundation in the terminology, the structure, and process steps that are the essential building blocks of Query.   The sessions will also take into account your questions, ideas and objectives for working with Query in your office.

• Track 1 will meet the First Thursday of the month from 2:00-3:00
• The first Track 1 meeting will be August 7^th at 2:00.
• The topics will be:  working with an existing query and the preliminary steps in creating a new query, including a look at records commonly used.

• Track 2 sessions will be fairly open-ended in that attendees will be users who are more experienced in Query and would like to expand on that knowledge.  They will have an opportunity to discuss typical problems they run across and/or solutions they’ve developed to solve difficult query puzzles.   If there is no specific topic being addressed in a given meeting, we can use the third Module, Advanced Concepts, as a springboard to discussing perhaps unfamiliar methods to achieve results.

•  Track 2 will meet the Third Thursday of the month from 2:00-3:00
•  The first Track 2 meeting will be August 21^st at 2:00.
• For this meeting, we will begin with subjects from the Advanced Concepts module.  We can discuss what other matters you would like to look at in the future.  The topics will be improving query performance and join variations.

The initial meeting in the ongoing series on working with PS Query (for SFIS) will take place on Tuesday, July 15.  If you have not received an invitation, please feel free to attend.  It will take place in Exley Tower, Room 509A-Large from 3:00 to 4:30 PM.

The first part of the meeting will be a discussion of the plans for future sessions.

The remainder of the meeting will discuss the SFIS Blog and the first section of the Introduction to PeopleSoft Query course – Basic Query Concepts and Query Viewer.

The three sections of PeopleSoft Query Instructions are updated and available for your use.  

You can take a look at the Overview or go to each section:

Part I – Basic Query Concepts and Query Viewer

Part II – Query Manager

Part III – Advanced Concepts 

They are in the form of Adobe PDFs derived from extensive PowerPoint presentations. If you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer, you can click on the icon at the bottom to Show the Adobe Reader Toolbar.

• Since these were created as PowerPoint presentations, there are occasional off-screen comments that you can access.  If there are comments associated with a slide/page, you’ll see a small icon in the upper left that you can hover over or right-click on.
•  Imbedded within the slides are two sets of tools:  Study and Activity boxes to reinforce each lesson and Notes and Tips which contain important features of the topic being discussed.
  • Notes and Tips boxes include information, tips, hints, and lists.  These are bordered in red and have the Wesleyan Cardinal in the upper right corner.

• Study and Activity boxes contain either step-by-step directions on using Query’s components for specific tasks or they describe further details on processes.  In Part I and II, the  query that you create from scratch is built on throughout a number of lessons and the steps are found here.  These boxes are bordered in blue and have a magnifying glass in the upper right corner.

Tags: Criteria, Dates, Demonstration, Effective Dates, Expression, Outer Join, Prompts, Query - Advanced, Query Joins, Subquery, Table Ordering, Union, Version 9.0, Wes Function

The documentation for working with External Organizations in PeopleSoft  has been updated.   Take a look at new instructions for Adding External Organizations and Handling Duplicate Organizations.  These are found on the External Organizations page under Procedures.

In addition, there is a new page of links to websites that list ATP Codes (aka SAT Codes or CEEB Codes).