I received an email from Nathan that he was unable to send transcripts and was getting the error "Current Status ZZ: error reported". EDI.Smart has never been extremely help with error handling, so I had to do quit a bit of digging through the transaction log to figure out what was going on. I noticed that it appeared to be the same data set that was the hold up, but it had one too many numbers in the identifier. I traced it back to the original transcript that had an error in the data file when it was created and then it appears that on resending the transcript, it added a 1 to the end of the ID, thus making it invalid from that point on. I modified the original data set and scheduled it to resend and it came back just fine. I'm still not sure why it was originally messed up, but at least I know everything is still working. We've been able to receive transcripts the entire time, and I didn't see any other outgoing issues from our end, ie acknowledgments. Hopefully it was just a weird glitch that won't recur, but I'll keep my eyes on it to make sure.
On the topic of EDI...
I went with Bill and Soukup to the OUS IT Directors Meeting at UO yesterday since they were discussing, in part, dual enrollment, atlas, and transcript/data interchange. I had received this xls document that outlined all the schools that are communicating using EDI. Considering any school that is EDI capable is able to send and receive transcripts via EDI, you would think this table would be completely filled in, since all OUS campus are now EDI capable. I'm a little baffled that it seems so sparce. There is the formality of partnership agreements, but that does not prevent anyone from send to another school. I'll discuss this with Nathan later this week to see if we can formally fill in this table soon.
As for the meeting, I have some very strong opinions on the way it was conducted, but since I was only there as an onlooker, I didn't feel it was my place to voice those opinions. It could have been a very useful and informative meeting, except for one attendee that nitpicked and complained about every single detail the entire time. Not only that, but this person came in late, had (loud) side conversations with other attendees there, and insisted that there were topics that were of no use to this attendee, and therefore should be skipped and move on to a different part of the agenda (of which this attendee was perfectly aware of before the meeting). All in all, being completely disrespectful and abrasive. Even if this person did have valid concerns, they were completely buried in all the harping that came out. I felt terrible for the speaker, who obviously had spent considerable time and energy researching and interviewing those entities these projects will affect the most to bring back and report to this group.
I’m currently taking the Community Leadership program put on by the Ford Family Institute and went through how to hold effective meetings in our last class. I was surprised to see a shining example of every characteristic of a disruptive attendee from my class notes in this one person.
