ORP Strategic Planning Application
From CTLpedia
Introduction
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 Office of Research and Planning Strategic Planning online application. Step-by-step instructions on how to create and edit a departmental strategic 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. For example, it could be stated:
- View All Plans For The Center for Teaching and Learning Department
It will instead be stated:
- View All Plans For <department name> Department
When you see the <> arrows around a piece of text it just means that some value should go there which probably applies specifically to your case when using the application.
Known Issues and Bugs
None at this time. Please report bugs and errors to the Office of Research and Planning.
Frequently Asked Questions
If my department is the same 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 (2007-2010). 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 drop-down box near there.
- Select a strategic goal for each initiative before you enter the text in the boxes.
- Since the plan changed this year if you copy an old plan check to be sure that the appropriate goals are listed for each initiative. There is a drop down menu that will allow you to change the related goals.
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 goal 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 administer options.
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 administrator 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 administrator to add you to the list. If you are a chair or manager of a plan call the Office of Research and Planning or the CTL to be added. You should already be in the plan but
What if several programs are in one planning area?
Be sure to enter your plans under the same goals. (The goals 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 must be entered and one goal selected before you will see a box for resource needs. It will appear when you begin to plan.
Logging In
The login screen of the planning application expects you to login using your MyMCC username and password. If you do not have one, or don't know what this password is from, please call the Mesa campus help desk.
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 then 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: (<start year>-<end 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: (<start year>-<end 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 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 wont delete a plan instantly just by clicking.
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 strategic plans.
To do this 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 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 the user to add and selected the user's role then 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:
1. Select the years to create the plan for. 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 not. 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. In it you can add, edit, and delete initiatives, goals, and needs to a 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, goals, and needs already in place on this page.
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 goals column. This is because the college's goal text has changed from what you had before. Simply select the 'edit' link next to the initiative with the note to correct the problem.
See the section below on editing initiatives for an explanation of how it works.
After correcting the goal by editing the initiative the page will reload and the corrected initiative may move to the bottom as seen here:
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:
- Enter the Initiative text.
- Select a primary goal and objective letter in the drop-down boxes provided. If you need a secondary goal select one in those drop-down boxes as well. The secondary goal is optional and you may leave it alone if you do not need one.
- 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 it's 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 except the edit page already has information in it.
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 delete strategic 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.
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.
