Sec ID

[David Berndt]

Hello.  We've been having a issue with sections pushing to our SIS in different order than they are listed in Unitime.  I discovered the Sec Id field on this screen that is unique to the Colleague/Banner add on - Colleague Offering Detail.  As you can see the order of section ID are sorting this screen and don't line up in this example with Lec 1, Lec 2 etc.  This is the case for some but not all courses.  I'm not sure how this happened, we copy sections from term to term.  Short of rebuilding everything is there a place where these IDs can be edited or reordered to match the Lec 1, Lec 2 order?  I'd be looking to do this for sections that have not been pushed to our SIS as of yet.   Pasting a screenshotted example:  

[David Berndt]

To add a bit more detail, it seems that when saving out of the class setup screen a process runs in the background to assign section IDs in some kind of order.  Previously these seemed to correspond to with the order of sections on the instructional offering screen.  What is happening currently is courses with more than one section tends to assign section IDs in a different order then listed in Unitime.  I can't find what logic is being followed if there is one.  I can't seem to find a way to control this or reset this from the application.  The end result is the sections export to colleague in a different order than they exist in Unitime thus making it more difficulty to compare sections between Colleague and Unitime.  Hoping to get to the root of why this is happening or at least figure out a work around to correct the order prior to exporting sections to our SIS (Colleague).

[Stephanie Schluttenhofer]

Hi David,

The likely cause of the numbering inconsistencies is sections being deleted, and later sections being added. 

There are two things going on with section numbering.  First there is the UniTime section number which always starts at one and never allows any gaps within a subpart. In the case of the UniTime section numbers, if you have a course with  a lecture subpart that has four sections, they will be labeled sequentially from 1 to 4.  If you delete sections 1 and 2, sections 3 and 4 will be renumbered to 1 and 2.  

If the four sections were given colleague section numbers 001, 002, 003, and 004 then after the first two sections were deleted UniTime section number 1 would have colleague section number 003 and UniTime section number 2 would have colleague section number 004. This is because Colleague section numbers are not changed once they are assigned unless the section is deleted at which point they are assigned a new number that is prefixed with the letter X.

If we consider the course with two sections after the delete and three sections are added to this course, using the class setup page, then in the UniTime section numbering, there will be sections 1 through 5 with the oldest two sections being number 1 and number 2 with Colleague section numbers 003 and 004. The 3 newest sections will have UniTime section numbers 3, 4 , and 5. Since the code for generating Colleague section numbers is designed to fill in the gaps, UniTime section 3 should get Colleague section number 001, UniTime section 4 should get Colleague section number 002 and UniTime section 5 should get Colleague section number 005.

I might have a script that could be used to renumber the sections, but I am traveling right now and don’t have access to my computer to verify the script will renumber sections in the manner you are looking for.  I can check that script when I return from vacation in early November. 

Also, which version of UniTime are you using and what date was it built on? If the deletion and addition of sections does not explain the renumbering, when I return home, I will check to see if something in the sorting was broken as part of an update. 

Thanks,

Stephanie 

On Oct 22, 2025, at 01:17, David Berndt <dber...@gmail.com> wrote:

To add a bit more detail, it seems that when saving out of the class setup screen a process runs in the background to assign section IDs in some kind of order.  Previously these seemed to correspond to with the order of sections on the instructional offering screen.  What is happening currently is courses with more than one section tends to assign section IDs in a different order then listed in Unitime.  I can't find what logic is being followed if there is one.  I can't seem to find a way to control this or reset this from the application.  The end result is the sections export to colleague in a different order than they exist in Unitime thus making it more difficulty to compare sections between Colleague and Unitime.  Hoping to get to the root of why this is happening or at least figure out a work around to correct the order prior to exporting sections to our SIS (Colleague).

On Tuesday, October 21, 2025 at 12:07:26 PM UTC-7 David Berndt wrote:

Hello.  We've been having a issue with sections pushing to our SIS in different order than they are listed in Unitime.  I discovered the Sec Id field on this screen that is unique to the Colleague/Banner add on - Colleague Offering Detail.  As you can see the order of section ID are sorting this screen and don't line up in this example with Lec 1, Lec 2 etc.  This is the case for some but not all courses.  I'm not sure how this happened, we copy sections from term to term.  Short of rebuilding everything is there a place where these IDs can be edited or reordered to match the Lec 1, Lec 2 order?  I'd be looking to do this for sections that have not been pushed to our SIS as of yet.   Pasting a screenshotted example:  

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[David Berndt]

Thank you Stephanie, this does seem to explain the logic behind what I'm experiencing here.  I'm curious if rolling the sections forward maintains this.  If it does, that would explain why it's something that I didn't really notice at first but has been becoming more prevalent in recent schedules that have been published.  I have figured out a few ways to clean in the UI by deleting the higher numbers in order and adding them back strategically so the numbering is consistent.  It does take a while and it's a section by section process so I'd absolutely take advantage of a script if you have it.   We're on Unitime v4.8.4.  

Thanks for responding while you are out.  I can make things work for now.  Having a better understanding really helps me better tailor my processes, so I really appreciate this.  David

[Stephanie Schluttenhofer]

Hi David,

I will definitely look for the script when I return home. 

Stephanie 

On Oct 22, 2025, at 18:23, David Berndt <dber...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you Stephanie, this does seem to explain the logic behind what I'm experiencing here.  I'm curious if rolling the sections forward maintains this.  If it does, that would explain why it's something that I didn't really notice at first but has been becoming more prevalent in recent schedules that have been published.  I have figured out a few ways to clean in the UI by deleting the higher numbers in order and adding them back strategically so the numbering is consistent.  It does take a while and it's a section by section process so I'd absolutely take advantageE of a script if you have it.   We're on Unitime v4.8.4.  

Thanks for responding while you are out.  I can make things work for now.  Having a better understanding really helps me better tailor my processes, so I really appreciate this.  David

On Wednesday, October 22, 2025 at 1:46:01 AM UTC-7 Stephanie Schluttenhofer wrote:

Hi David,

The likely cause of the numbering inconsistencies is sections being deleted, and later sections being added. 

There are two things going on with section numbering.  First there is the UniTime section number which always starts at one and never allows any gaps within a subpart. In the case of the UniTime section numbers, if you have a course with  a lecture subpart that has four sections, they will be labeled sequentially from 1 to 4.  If you delete sections 1 and 2, sections 3 and 4 will be renumbered to 1 and 2.  

If the four sections were given colleague section numbers 001, 002, 003, and 004 then after the first two sections were deleted UniTime section number 1 would have colleague section number 003 and UniTime section number 2 would have colleague section number 004. This is because Colleague section numbers are not changed once they are assigned unless the section is deleted at which point they are assigned a new number that is prefixed with the letter X.

If we consider the course with two sections after the delete and three sections are added to this course, using the class setup page, then in the UniTime section numbering, there will be sections 1 through 5 with the oldest two sections being number 1 and number 2 with Colleague section numbers 003 and 004. The 3 newest sections will have UniTime section numbers 3, 4 , and 5. Since the code for generating Colleague section numbers is designed to fill in the gaps, UniTime section 3 should get Colleague section number 001, UniTime section 4 should get Colleague section number 002 and UniTime section 5 should get Colleague section number 005.

I might have a script that could be used to renumber the sections, but I am traveling right now and don’t have access to my computer to verify the script will renumber sections in the manner you are looking for.  I can check that script when I return from vacation in early November. 

Also, which version of UniTime are you using and what date was it built on? If the deletion and addition of sections does not explain the renumbering, when I return home, I will check to see if something in the sorting was broken as part of an update. 

Thanks,

Stephanie 

On Oct 22, 2025, at 01:17, David Berndt <dber...@gmail.com> wrote:

To add a bit more detail, it seems that when saving out of the class setup screen a process runs in the background to assign section IDs in some kind of order.  Previously these seemed to correspond to with the order of sections on the instructional offering screen.  What is happening currently is courses with more than one section tends to assign section IDs in a different order then listed in Unitime.  I can't find what logic is being followed if there is one.  I can't seem to find a way to control this or reset this from the application.  The end result is the sections export to colleague in a different order than they exist in Unitime thus making it more difficulty to compare sections between Colleague and Unitime.  Hoping to get to the root of why this is happening or at least figure out a work around to correct the order prior to exporting sections to our SIS (Colleague).

On Tuesday, October 21, 2025 at 12:07:26 PM UTC-7 David Berndt wrote:

Hello.  We've been having a issue with sections pushing to our SIS in different order than they are listed in Unitime.  I discovered the Sec Id field on this screen that is unique to the Colleague/Banner add on - Colleague Offering Detail.  As you can see the order of section ID are sorting this screen and don't line up in this example with Lec 1, Lec 2 etc.  This is the case for some but not all courses.  I'm not sure how this happened, we copy sections from term to term.  Short of rebuilding everything is there a place where these IDs can be edited or reordered to match the Lec 1, Lec 2 order?  I'd be looking to do this for sections that have not been pushed to our SIS as of yet.   Pasting a screenshotted example:  

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[David Berndt]

Want to add one other thing I noticed.  In this case, I just made a class offered that had previously not been part of the schedule.  The course had copied from the previous year, but no sections ran last year, so I would think these would have built in order.  To build these sections I chose 'make offered' and created the configuration to include 3 sections.  After saving the configuration this is what was built on the instructional offering detail screen.  

I did figure out that removing lec 1 from the class setup, updating, and then adding the 3rd section back in via the class setup is a way to manually reorder things, so I was able to clean this up by doing that.  I just wonder why the 3 sections didn't initially build in order and how to look into that further.  Thanks!