CDD Tips
Sending report to a file or printer
When running a CDD report by clicking on the blue running man 
on the Tool Bar in Insight, you can direct CDD where to send your report. By default, your report will show on your screen, but the other options you have are Printer and File. You will see the options in the lower right-hand window of the pop-up screen when you click on the blue running man. If you select Printer, the CDD report will be sent directly to the printer you select when it completes running. If you select File, you will be asked the type of export to create (tab, comma, or html), the export file name, and what parts of the report you want sent to a file that will be created on your PC. It is a good idea to select all parts of a report, until you get familiar with the different report regions. Sending a report to File will allow you to use the data from the report in other ways, such as resorting the data using Excel.
Did you know that if you are in Explorer mode in Insight, you can hit CTRL+R (hold down the CTRL key and press the R key at the same time), and your CDD folder will open and you will be positioned on the title of the last CDD report you ran?
When you run a CDD report to your screen, there is a limit to the number
of pages that your PC will be able to display back to you. By default, that limit is set to 20 pages. To increase that
limit, go to the Insight menu bar and select Edit, then Options. Click on the ‘Report’ tab, and change the ‘Pages in
Memory’ value to 100. Then click ‘OK’ to update the value. If your report will be greater than 100 pages, send it directly
to a printer when you launch it rather than to your PC.
Didn’t get the information you expected when you ran a CDD report? There
are two things you can check yourself before placing a call for help.
- First, review the items you are entering as report prompt criteria. Have you answered all the report prompts with the
correct information to give you the report you need? If a prompt has a data look-up available (signified by 3-dots after
the prompt), try selecting an item from that list, rather than typing the item in. Verify that you have entered items
in upper-case. If you are entering in more than one item for any one prompt, separate the items with a comma. If you are
unsure about what value(s) to use in a prompt, try using an asterisk (*) to gather all values.
- Second, are you getting only a one-page report but expecting more than one page? Remember, CDD only generates the first page of a report, and then waits for you to tell it to generate the rest of the report by clicking on the ‘Next Page’ icon (to generate the report page-by-page) or ‘Last Page’ icon (to generate the full report).
You can enter more than a single value in a CDD Prompt box by separating the values with
a comma. For instance, if you want to run a report on several students, and are being prompted for the student id, you would type in one student id, then a
comma, then the next student id, then a comma, etc., ending with the last student id you want.
Have you ever wanted to email a CDD report to someone? You can easily do this by saving
your CDD report in Microsoft Document Image format, then attaching that saved document to an email message.
Here are the steps: run your CDD report as usual, then click on the print icon (
) to bring up the Print options window. Select “Microsoft Office
Document Image Writer” from the list of printer names. Click ‘OK’ on the Print options window, and another window will be displayed asking for a file
name and a location to save your CDD report to. This file will be created wherever you specify, and it will have a .mdi extension once you click ‘SAVE’.
Compose your email and attach the .mdi file to it. The person receiving the email can double-click to open the attachment, and view the CDD report on his/her
PC screen, or print it locally themselves.
You can even use the ‘pen’ and ‘highlighter’ feature of Microsoft Office document Imaging to annotate directly onto a CDD report, save that annotated
copy, and then send that copy to another individual with the annotations.
Remember: Never email any information which contains sensitive data, such as social security numbers, birthdates, or bank account numbers.
Term Codes
Have you ever wondered how those 4-digit numbers that correspond to Blinn terms are assigned? There is actually a logical scheme used to create those numbers.
Let’s take the term code 2073 as an example. The first digit designates the century and the second and third digit designates the calendar year. So in our example, ‘207’ translates to 2007. If our example were 1983, that would translate to 1998.
The fourth digit designates a specific semester or quarter during the academic year, with academic years running September through August.
Blinn semesters are numbered as:
1=Spring
3=Summer I
5=Summer II
6=Fall
Blinn quarters (used by Workforce Education and the TEACH program) are numbered as:
2=Quarter 3 (March-May)
4=Quarter 4 (June-August)
7=Quarter 1 (September-November)
8=Quarter 2 (December-February)
So in our example, term code of 2073 translates to Summer I 2007 of the academic year 2006-2007. The term code of 2077 translates to Quarter
1 2007 of the academic year 2007-2008.
Session Codes
With the recent innovations in course scheduling at Blinn, namely the minimesters offered in December 2006 and May 2007, and 8-week classes to be offered in certain Math, Philosophy, and English courses on the Bryan campus this coming Fall term, we have assigned additional notation to courses to distinguish the multiple schedules within the usual 4-digit Blinn term code.
The additional notation is called a Session, and there can be multiple Sessions within a single term. Each Session has its own start date, end date, census date (day of record), and registration dates.
When courses for a term are created in Insight, they now must have a 2-character Session code assigned to them.
The Session codes in use currently include:
- 01 – Regular (traditional) session
- 02 – May minimester
- 03 – Summer 10-week session
- 04 – December minimester
- 10 – August 8-week session
- 20 – October 8-week session
When viewing Class Openings in BORIS, students will find the classes available for these multiple schedules by selecting on the session options from the drop-down Session selection box, or by choosing “All Sessions” for a selected term.
When running CDD reports that require a Session code, use ‘*’ to select all Sessions for a selected term, or select a specific Session by using the 2-character code for that Session.
May minimesters and Summer 10-week sessions are both Sessions in the Summer I term and December minimesters are Sessions in the Spring term.
The August and October 8-week sessions are part of the Fall term, although the enrollment reporting for the October 8-week session will be part of the spring report to the Coordinating Board.
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