MCC Online Departmental Planning Form Guide

The Office of Research and Planning supports college decision making through the collection, analysis and dissemination of information. The office supports strategic, operational and departmental planning; studies related to institutional effectiveness; student outcomes assessment; and college accreditation activities.

Objective

Familiarize the user with the MCC Online Departmental Planning Form application with step-by-step instructions on how to create and edit a departmental plan.

Outline

• Document Conventions
• Known Issues and bugs
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Logging in
• Dean/VP
• The main menu
• Viewing your department's strategic plans
• Assigning Roles (users, editors, and managers)
• Adding a new strategic plan
• Editing a strategic plan
  • Adding initiatives
  • Editing initiatives
• Deleting a strategic plan
• Finding Help

Conventions

There are conventions in this document to describe certain elements in general. When you see the <> arrows around a piece of text, just insert your own department's information. For example, "View All Plans For <department name> Department" might become "View All Plans For The Center for Teaching and Learning Department."

Note: you can view an enlarged version of each screenshot in this guide by clicking on it; a new window will open with the larger image.

Known Issues and Bugs

1. MAC users may receive an error that they can only access the form on campus, even when they are using a computer on campus. Please call the MCC HelpCenter (1-7217) to resolve this issue involving a DNS setting.

2. The form is currently not accessible through VPN. If you must access the application from off campus, please work with TSS to setup a remote desktop connection on your home computer. (This allows you to control your work PC through another PC. In essence, you will still be using your campus PC and will be able to log into the planning application).

Please report any additional bugs and errors to the Office of Research and Planning.

Frequently Asked Questions

If my department plan is the same or similar as last year, can I copy my old plan and use it as a starting point?

Yes. Select "create a new plan using the current strategic plan" from the main menu after you log in. The user doing this will need to be a manager or editor in the department.

Once you've clicked that, you'll be on the "Create A New Plan" page. There is a radio button near the bottom of that page that says "Do you want to copy from a previous plan?" Select the button for "Yes" and select the plan to copy from in the nearby drop-down menu (this will most likely be one of the plans near the bottom of the drop-down list).

• Select a strategic priority for each initiative before you enter/edit and text.
• The new strategic plan refers to strategic priorities instead of strategic goals; language in the planning application has been changed to reflect this. If you copy an old plan, you will need to select the appropriate related strategic priorities for each department initiative. You can click the edit button next to each initiative to accomplish this.

If my department has moved into another department can I use the copy a plan option?

The system will not allow you to copy a plan into another department. However, once you have entered a strategic priority, you may copy and paste initiatives from your old plan into the new one.

If you need to assign this task to a secretary or other person, the administrator/manager of the plan can make any person an editor on their plan by using the administrator options (discussed below).

What if my Dean or direct supervisor changed?

The form will ask you who you report to. Be sure to select your administrator before you begin. This is how your Dean can read your plans.

Note that it is important that this be done any time there is a change in the direct report for your department. They won't be able to see your plan if you don't!

What happens if I try to access my plan but I can't get it?

The manager of the plan can give access to anyone. The types of access are Read, Edit or Manage. If you aren't able to edit, please ask your plan manager to add you to the list. If you are a chair or manager of a plan, call the Office of Research and Planning (1-7213) to be added.

What if several programs are in one planning area?

Be sure to enter your plans under the same strategic priorities. (The strategic priorities should be common for each area.) Use care to not overwrite what your fellow planners have entered.

What if I don't see the box for entering the resource needs?

At least one initiative with one strategic priority must be entered before you will see a box for resource needs.

Logging In

The login screen of the planning application expects you to login using your MEID username and password. If you do not have one, or don't know, please call the MCC HelpCenter at 480-461-7217.

If you are the VP of a department, check the box next to 'If you are a Dean or VP check this box'.

Dean/VP

If you haven't logged in to the planning application before, or your VP has changed, you will see the following screen displayed after logging in with your username and password.

Select the VP which oversees your department and continue.

The Main Menu

Upon logging in, you will see one of the following screens depending on your role in the system. From here you can select a variety of things to do in the application.

General User

• View All Plans Created For <department name> Department
• View The Strategic Plan For The Current Three-Year Planning Cycle (<starting year>-<ending year>)
• Logout
• Get Help

Editor

• View All Plans Created For <department name> Department
• View The Strategic Plan For The Current Three-Year Planning Cycle (<starting year>-<ending year>)
• Create A New Department Plan Using The Current Strategic Plan: (<starting year>-<ending year>)
• Logout
• Get Help

Manager

• View All Plans Created For <department name> Department
• View The Strategic Plan For The Current Three-Year Planning Cycle (<starting year>-<ending year>)
• Create A New Department Plan Using The Current Strategic Plan: (<starting year>-<ending year>)
• Manager Options
• Logout
• Get Help

Viewing your department's strategic plans

When you click on "View All Plans Created For <department name> Department" at the main menu of the Welcome page, you will see the following page:

At this screen, as a general user, you can look over any of the plans that your department has created. If you are an editor or a manager in your department, then the page will be slightly different as seen below:

Editors and managers can add, edit, and delete strategic plans. These operations are denoted as the icon of the sheet of paper with the X over it (delete) and the sheet of paper with the pencil over it (edit). Adding a plan is done by clicking the link at the top of the page or from the Welcome page.

BE CAREFUL! If you delete a strategic plan it is GONE FOREVER. There is a confirmation box that appears when you click delete so don't worry, you won't delete a plan instantly just by clicking.

Clicking the sheet of paper with the X over it does not instantly delete a plan; you must confirm the choice!

Assigning Roles (users, editors, and managers)

You don't have to edit everything yourself if you're the manager of a department; you can assign other individuals in your department the capability of editing the department plan.

To assign editing permissions, select the manager options from the main menu. If you are not a manager, you will not have this menu option. If no one in your department is a manager role in the application, contact the Office of Research and Planning (1-7213) to correct the issue.

Once in the manager options section of the application, you will see the following screen:

Select the button at the bottom of the page that says 'Manage Department Users'. After clicking the button, you will be taken to a similar page with options available for all the users and a search form.

Editing a User's Role

To edit the role of a user in your department, select the icon with the pencil over a sheet of paper next to the user's information. This will bring up the following popup window. Select the role for the selected user and click the 'Change Role' button to finish.

Adding a User

To add a user to your department that is not already there, fill in one or more of the search fields and click the 'Search for New User' button when you're ready. A screen will appear which has radio buttons listing all the users found matching the given information. Select the radio button by the user you wish to add and select the user's role from the drop-down box at the bottom of the page.

Note: you can only add one user at a time.

Once you've selected both the user you want to add and their appropriate role, click the 'Add Selected User to My Department' button at the bottom.

Adding a New Department Plan

From the main menu or the View All Created Plans page of the application, you can choose to Create a New Department Plan using the current planning cycle. When you click this link, you will be presented with the following page:

Creating a strategic plan

1. Select the appropriate year range for your plan. This will be a radio button with several options looking like...

• 200x/200y
• 200z/200w

2. Select whether you want to copy from a previous plan or create a completely new plan. If you decide to copy from a previous plan, use the drop-down box to select which plan to copy from. 3. Click create plan.

Editing a Plan

This section is the heart of the planning application. You can add, edit, and delete initiatives, strategic priorities, and needs within your department plan.

Starting from a blank plan

This is what the blank plan page will look like after it has been created. You can start adding initiatives using the link at the top of this page.

Starting from a copied plan

If you copied a plan, then you should see a full set of initiatives and needs already in place on this page. You will need to realign your initiatives with the new strategic priorities.

If you copied forward a plan from a previous year and the college has changed the strategic plan, then you will see bold red warnings in the related strategic priorities column. Simply select the 'edit' link next to the initiative with the red note text to correct the problem.

See the section below on editing initiatives for an explanation of how it works.

After copying a plan you may see red warning notes, click edit to resolve the problems.

After correcting the strategic priority by editing the initiative, the page will reload, and the corrected initiative may move to the bottom as seen here:

Initiatives with warnings are listed first, and the corrected ones appear last.

Adding and Editing Initiatives

Adding
To add an initiative, click the 'Add a New Initiative' link at the top of the plan page (you must be an editor or manager to see the link). A window will pop up (make sure your browser is not blocking popups from this website) and look like the following screenshot:

Add a new initiative.

• Enter the initiative text.
• Select a primary strategic priority in the drop-down box. If your initiative is related to more than one strategic priority, you may select a secondary strategic priority from the appropriate drop-down box. The secondary strategic priority is optional; you do not have to select one if it doesn't apply.
• Needs
  • To add a need enter the text for the need in the 'Add Related Needs For This Initiative' text area and click the 'Add Need>>>' button next to it. You will see the need appear in the box below it.
  • You can edit or delete that need by clicking on it in the box on the bottom (this is called a combo box) and clicking either the '<<<Remove Selected Need' button or '^ Edit Selected Need'.
  • When you edit a selected need, its text appears in the 'Add Related Needs For This Initiative' box. Edit the text there and click 'Add Need>>' again to save it.

Click 'Add And Save This Initiative' to save the information to the plan.

Editing
Editing an initiative (by selecting the 'edit' link from the Edit Options column brings up a page very similar to the Add initiative page.

Edit an initiative.

Just edit the information as described above in the Adding section and don't forget to save it when you're done.

Deleting a Plan

Editors and Managers may delete their department plans. This operation is denoted as the icon of the sheet of paper with the X over it (delete) on the View Strategic Plans page.

BE CAREFUL! If you delete a strategic plan it is GONE FOREVER. There is a confirmation box that appears when you click delete so don't worry, you wont delete a plan instantly just by clicking.

Clicking the sheet of paper with the X over it does not instantly delete a plan, you must confirm the choice!

Finding Help

Clicking on the 'Help' link anywhere in the planning application will take you to a page similar to the following screenshot. You can find contacts and phone numbers as well as a link to this page.