HE,FE,Higher education,enterprise architecture,business process,system analysis

In the years I have been working with student records software have also dealt with user defined fields. These fields are popular with institutions as they give the flexibility to define attributes that will be unique to the needs of the institution. But the come at a cost and I am sure many institutions have had similar experiences to the ones I have worked for.  It is time to describe this experience so that other institutions can realise they are not alone when it comes to custom attributes for data within their student records.

Discovering the gap

Institutions quickly realise that there are gaps between the information model they need and the model within proprietary software, and this becomes the gap that would need to be fulfilled. Many institutions actually use existing fields and change the purpose for them and that is sometimes to have them available on the same screen as the rest. Normally user defined fields are either hidden within a second screen or put on one side of the screen. Many institutions would see this as an inconvenience, but sometimes this can backfire on them as there are sometimes relationship dependencies between the fields and other areas of the system. It is best to do this with the advice of the software vendors, iIt is worth some consultancy because if you get it wrong then it will be very hard to get it right again, and the later it is left the harder it will be to correct.  

Using an existing field or a UDF

Here is where the real analysis starts. With a combination of a subject matter expert, a software vendor consultant and a business/technical analyst it will be possible to make a sound recommendation, I know some institutions cannot afford having so many people to do this but it possible try this, Although you might get away with just the SME and the software vendor consultant. It is also worth putting your thoughts out in the open. There are plenty of forums, user groups and focused groups. There is plenty of knowledge out there and you can get hold of it though these channels. Once you get a feel for what other people are doing you can use this information as part of your analysis.

Sometimes there are fields that you just might not know they are there and sometimes they are hidden within drill down screens or reference tables, now this might sound like something that would potentially be not too user friendly, but if the fields are available it is best to use them even if they require some navigation.

When all else fails, it is the time to look for user defined fields. SITS for example (I am sure Banner has the same) contains plenty of user defined fields and they have different lengths for different purposes. SITS in particular has some field definition, masking and validation which makes the fields quire effective although not perfect.

Agresso has a very interesting concept of custom fields; they call them flexi-fields. They are basically completely designed by the user and they also can be mapped to the native data model provided by UNIT4. In effect you can have any number of custom fields for any number of tables. This concept allows plenty of flexibility in terms of information modelling.

Now, when you are not using Agresso, you are sometimes presented with another problem: foreign key relationships. SITS can allow for some mapping using the ERL model (entity relationship) but has some limitations that sometimes you might have to live with and when it comes to relationships between user defined fields and other entities, this will not work for you. I have been in a place where I had to design a business universe with this and life does not get any easier.   Having said that, if you put the effort, you will get there eventually.

The conclusion:

Custom fields are always a necessity, no matter what institution you are in and they will probably be available to use, they will have some advantages but they will also give you a few headaches. You will be best off analysing this with a team but is you cannot afford this you might be able to get away with the vendor and a subject matter expert. Be aware that sometimes reporting on these fields might present challenges in the future