GradSphere Known Issues and Updates

GradSphere is under very active development, and the team is responding to user-reported issues as quickly as possible in addition to working on new and expanded functionality. Below, you can find out more about some of the highest-priority known issues and their resolution status, as well as get the latest on changes which have been pushed into Live GradSphere. 

Known Issues

The issues posted here are those which have been reported by and/or impact multiple users. Reported issues that affect individual users are generally not included in this list, but are still high priorities for the team to address.

Status: Discovery

The following are items for which the team is exploring strategies for resolution. No ETA for deployment can yet be estimated, but they are priorities to address.

  • Workflows Requesting Major Prof and Committee Chair Approval
  • For forms like the Filing Process, GradSphere currently requests approval from both the Major Professor and Committee Chair. Of course, in almost all cases this is the same faculty member, leading to a bothersome reality where the same individual must approve the same form twice rather than the system noting when the two roles are held by the same person. The inelegance of this status quo has resulted in it being a high priority for a fix – priority diminished only by the fact that it is not broken per se.

    Recommendation for Interim Resolution: For the time being, applicable faculty approvers will need to "Approve" twice, once as each role (Major Professor and Committee Chair). In cases where the Major Professor and Committee Chair are separate individuals, GradSphere should route each stage to its correct respective individual.
  • Support for Alternative Emails
  • When notifying individuals of new tasks via email, GradSphere sends notifications to folks' primary / "Directory" campus address. In cases where individuals have an alternative email set in People and Role Manager, GradSphere cannot utilize those addresses.

    Recommendation for Interim Resolution: Depending on circumstance, it may be preferable to set up an email forwarding rule to the alternative email address, or add a preferred email address through the Directory.

Status: Resolved

The following are items are now resolved and deployed to GradSphere. Any persisting user challenges associated with these issues should be directed to gradsystems@ucdavis.edu for troubleshooting.

  • Email notifications delayed or sent with different subject lines
  • The GradSphere team is working with IET to resolve an issue affecting email notifications. To take action on a GradSphere task, it is always safe to navigate directly to gradsphere.ucdavis.edu and look in the "Pending Tasks" area. 2024-11-06   
  • Recurring "403 - Access Denied" Errors
  • Update applied 10/24/2024 to address this issue. There have been many cases where "403 - Access Denied" errors occur during the authentication process between campus single sign-on and GradSphere. The error generally implies that users' local cache/cookies are out of date, but it seems to be recurring with unusual rapidity. The developer team has partnered with IET and our vendor partner to find a resolution to this issue.

    The latest news on this issue is that IET and the vendor partner have identified a workable solution requiring the addition of an infrastructural step on the UC Davis side. IET is working on implementing on this fix now, and once ostensibly-ready it will be an extremely high priority for testing and deployment.

    Recommendation for Interim Resolution: Clearing cache/cookies will generally address the issue in the short term; if interrupting the active browser session is not possible, using a private/incognito window to access GradSphere can also provide a temporary workaround.

    Instructions for opening a private/incognito window:
    Firefox 
    Chrome
    Safari

    Instructions for clearing per-site cookies:
    Firefox (under "clear cookies for any website")
    Chrome (under "clear cookies for a specific site")
    Safari
     
  • GradSphere Access Blocked for New Fall 2024 Students 
  • Update: This issue appears to be resolved with the overnight load. 2024-10-01
     Most new/incoming students for fall 2024 are not able to access GradSphere. A glitch in the GS PRM application has designated their student roles as "Pending Approval" even though they are fully registered students in good standing. (The same glitch prevents Graduate Program Coordinators from assigning major professors and faculty advisors for these students in SPA.) This is not the welcome we wish to extend to our newest students, so IET is working to address this issue ASAP. Check this page and status.ucdavis.edu for updates. 2024-09-30    
  • Student GPC Access 
  • Individuals who are both graduate students and program coordinators currently have limited access to launch advanced forms on behalf of students in the programs they coordinate.

    Recommendation for Interim Resolution: Students are able to launch their own advanced forms, while your assigned Senior Academic Advisor is also able to launch forms on their behalf if the student is not able.

Update History

The following is a record of items which have been pushed to live GradSphere and affect the user experience. Only updates to GradSphere itself are displayed here, and not updates to related tools (e.g. GradHub or PRM).

  • October 24, 2024 Update to address "403 Error - Access Denied" issue
  • The GradSphere team deployed an update to the authentication system to address the "403 Error - Access Denied" issue.  Users should not encounter an Access Denied message, unless access is appropriately denied due to incorrect permissions.  Users will no longer need to use incognito browser window or clear browser cookies to use Gradsphere.  
  • 1.14.0 - October 2, 2024 - Update to "Save and Close" function for Legacy Forms
  • - Users no longer need to upload required supplemental docs in order to select "Save & Close" as the form action.
  • 1.13.0 - October 1, 2024 - Tasks Can Be Reassigned to Backup GPC
  • - Graduate Program Coordinators (GPCs) and Program Chairs can now reassign tasks to another GPC who is designated as a backup for the program(s). Previously, reassignment was only allowed if the individual was listed as a Primary GPC for a program.
  • 1.12.4 - September 3, 2024 - Filing and QE Updates, Monitoring Additions
  • - The Filing process no longer asks whether students in degrees requiring completion of a thesis or dissertation have uploaded their culminating work to ProQuest. It now notes that this is a separate stage entirely, and students must simply acknowledge the instruction. Thus, ProQuest deposition status no longer blocks degree filing. 
    - Language in the QE Pass email students receive has been revised to clarify the candidacy payment instructions. 
    - The subprocess which uploads complete PDFs from GradSphere to eDocs has been amended to include better alerting of errors, so that the Graduate Studies team is informed immediately in case of any issues. 
  • 1.12.2a - August 15, 2024 - Legacy Form Routing Updates
  • - An update was made to the Legacy Form subprocesses to route submissions more directly to the Graduate Studies experts responsible for handling specific forms. This was a configuration change, and did not require any code changes in GradSphere.
  • 1.12.2 - July 25, 2024 - Filing, Master's Report, QE, and Reviewer Instructions Updates
  • - For students in PhD Plan A/C programs, the Filing form wasn't properly requiring certain documents to be uploaded – and the lack of those documents was causing a review error. This has been corrected. 
    - Instructions to faculty in the MFA/Master's Plan II Report have been updated to clarify that the student need not have passed their culminating work for the Report to be necessary.
    - The Reviewer Instructions interface has been revised to present more explicit "Approve/Return/Deny" instructions to users. It features links to students' GradHub and OASIS profiles, as well as a link to the student's GS-hosted program website.
    - More specific routing has been added to the QE Report email notifications, so as to better guide students with QE outcomes other than Pass. 
  • 1.10.0 - July 10, 2024 - ATC and Plan II/MFA Form Updates
  • - For clarity and simplicity's sake, the Advancement to Candidacy Application no longer presents doctoral students with an optional coursework grid.
    - The leftover use of MS in "MFA and MS Plan II Report", which was understandably confusing for students in programs awarding MA Plan II degrees, has been corrected. The form is now consistently referred to as the "MFA and Master's Plan II Report". 
    - Routing changes were put in place for certain QE Report outcomes to more rapidly get them to the staff within GS who can act on them.
  • 1.9.7 - July 5, 2024 - Filing Notification and QE Report Updates
  • - The email subject lines for Filing Process notifications were adjusted to remove reference to "Thesis/Dissertation Release" for students who do not do theses or dissertations. 
    - The approval email students receive upon a Filing Process being approved was updated to remove reference to campus email-for-life, as that feature is sadly going away. 
    - The QE Report Emergency Note field had a character limited added, to avoid a circumstance where very long entries could interrupt the underlying process model. 
  • 1.9.5 - June 25, 2024 - Process Model Changes, Email Template Updates
  • - To aid in diagnostics, the process model underpinning review of Candidacy Applications has been changed to retain records for 14 days, instead of 3. 
    - Hanging Legacy Form process models have been addressed. 
    - The email sent to students once the Director of Policy and Program Initiatives has reviewed requests for unusually-long thesis/dissertation embargoes has been updated to better clarify the decision made and next steps. 
  • 1.9.2 - June 17, 2024 - Conferral Letter Generation, "My Students" Updates
  • - A UI bug affecting Filing reviews for students in Designated Emphases was squished. 
    - Access to the My Students tab was expanded to include the Director of Policy and Program Initiatives.
    - The Filing process can now automatically generate conferral letters.
  • 1.8.4 - June 7, 2024 - Filing Updates, Addressing Minor Bugs
  • - The Filing process was updated with a small Spring grace period, to allow students to submit past the deadline.
    - Language in the QE Application Review process was updated slightly to eliminate grammatical oddities.
    - A bug was squished in the Task Reassignment email process.
  • 1.8.0 - May 31, 2024 - My Students/My Application Grid Updates, GPC Notifications
  • - The My Students and My Applications grids have been updated to harmonize their UIs, and now feature the ability to search and filter for program codes!
    - GPCs are now copied on the emails students receive when QE Report Passes are recorded.
  • 1.6.2 - May 21, 2024 - PDF Template Updates
  • - The templates which fuel GradSphere's export functionality have been updated to better-reflect current GS Advising Team organization.
  • 1.6.1 - May 17, 2024 - Reviewer Instructions, Routing Changes, and QE Report Improvements
  • - Customized reviewer instructions are now being presented in all advanced forms. 
    - Graduate Studies internal approval routing has been streamlined to better-fit Advising Team needs. 
    - The QE Report now more clearly captures actual exam date, in cases where date applied-for and date completed vary.
    - Graduate Studies review of external QE members has been adjusted to better fit revised Graduate Council policy.
  • 1.4.4 - May 8, 2024 - Task Reassignment and PDF Fixes
  • - The PDF exports sent from GradSphere to GradHub when a Filing Process form is approved in GradSphere were not including DE Completion Reports. This has been fixed!
    - Fixed an issue where certain special characters could break PDF generation.
    - An issue which was preventing certain Graduate Studies staff from being able to reassign tasks has been addressed. 
  • 1.4.2 - May 6, 2024 - Email Notification Fixes
  • - The QE Application was not sending emails to program folks in its approval pathway. This has been fixed, so that GPCs and Faculty Advisors will receive notifications for new QE Applications arriving with them. 
    - Wording was updated in the email notification to Committee Chairs when a student initiated a Filing to Graduate, to more explicitly guide Chairs to their next action step.
  • 1.4.1 - May 3, 2024 - Advancement to Candidacy Additions
  • - Coursework entries will now allow fractional unit counts, to better support campus's .5-unit courses.
    - Candidacy applications for Plan II Masters' degrees will no longer create null committee rows. This bug was affecting later submissions of Plan II Culminating Work Reports. 
    - Coursework grids, too, are now no longer creating null rows.
  • 1.3.0 - April 26, 2024 - Eligibility Fixes
  • - Faculty listed as Chairs on students' Candidacy forms must no longer be affiliated with the students' graduate program/group.
    - Individuals with PRM Departmental accounts no longer experience eligibility bugs. 
    - Task visibility for GPCs in Task Reassignment has been improved to better filter for GPCs' own program/group.
    - A bug affecting the ability of GPCs in more than one program/group to launch forms for students in more than one of the GPC's programs/groups has been fixed.
    - QE eligibility bugs affecting two Emeriti title codes (1132 and 3249) have been fixed.
  • 1.2.0 - April 12, 2024 - Candidacy Coursework, Eligibility, and Group Assignments
  • - Advancement to Candidacy coursework grid now features simplified language for indicating older coursework.
    - Means of checking eligibility for committee service have been updated so as to return results which are not case-sensitive, simplifying committee entry on mobile platforms. 
    - Updated automatic group assignments to ensure that access control for Associate Deans and Directors of Advising within Graduate Studies is more reliable.
  • 1.1.0 - April 5, 2024 - Advancement to Candidacy Fixes
  • - Important fixes have been deployed to the Advancement to Candidacy form to address routing issues discovered in certain cases. Affected users have been contacted. 
    - A legacy form for Candidacies in the Joint Degree Program in Ecology has been added.
  • 1.0 - April 1, 2024 - Launch!
  • GradSphere is live, with five advanced and nineteen legacy forms!

Downtime Log

In the interest of providing full transparency to the campus community, this section records outages GradSphere has experienced and provides as much insight into the root cause of each outage as Graduate Studies has available.

  • GradSphere Downtime - Thursday, October 24, 7am - 8am
  • Maintenance window to deploy solution to the "403 - Access Denied" issue.
  • GradSphere Downtime - Friday, October 4
  • Users unable to login to GradSphere due to an expired PRM token. Resolved on 9:14am on October 4.
  • Incoming Fall Students Blocked - Monday, September 23rd to Monday, September 30
  • An issue with our People and Role Manager (PRM) application was blocking access to GradSphere (and other GS applications like SPA) for new and incoming students. Student status was indicated as "Pending Approval" even though students were registered and in active status.  
  •  eDocs Upload Outage - Wednesday, August 28th - 8 AM to 3:30 PM
  • The subprocess which handles uploading of complete PDFs from GradSphere to eDocs experienced consistent failure throughout the day. This issue was traced to a failed restart of the ClamAV antimalware scanning service on the eDocs side – eDocs won't accept files it can't scan. 

    IET diagnosed and resolved the issue, and the GradSphere team has added alerts to the offending subprocess so as to more quickly identify a recurrence of this failure state. All failed uploads were logged and their process instances re-run so as to ensure that all student records made their way successfully to eDocs. 
  • Upgrade-Related Downtime - July 16, 2024 - 6 AM to 8 AM
  • GradSphere underwent two hours of planned downtime on the morning of Tuesday, July 16th, as our vendor partner upgraded GradSphere's foundation to the latest version of their software. 
  • Maintenance-Related Downtime - July 5, 2024 - 5 AM to 7 AM
  • At the request of Appian Support, GradSphere was taken offline for two hours to implement changes Appian believes may offer a potential solution to the ongoing "403" issue. The downtime was communicated ahead of time via email and the GradSphere website. Service was restored by 7 AM as planned. 
  • Complete Outage - May 30, 2024 - 10:45 AM to 1:30 PM

  • The production, test, and development environments of GradSphere experienced total inaccessibility from late morning to early afternoon. The outage was connected with a worldwide degradation of Appian service relating to management of networking infrastructure.

    Website Updates:
    2:15 PM: The vendor has confirmed that full availability has been restored to GradSphere's instance. We've added a Downtime Log to the Known Issues and Updates page, and will provide any further information we receive from the vendor on this outage in that log. 

    1:30 PM: The vendor appears to have restored service to the region and server instance where GradSphere lives, and we are told that "significant restoration" will continue through the next hour. GradSphere is now accessible, but the team will be keeping a sharp eye out for difficulties. We'll be receiving further updates from the vendor, and expect to receive a Root Cause Analysis on the outage in the near future.

    12:30 PM: The vendor has shared that they are starting to see "signs of recovery", but expect that "at least one hour" more will be required before normal service is restored. We expect to receive another update by 1:00.

    12:05 PM: Our platform vendor has devised a solution to the outage affecting GradSphere, and is undertaking the manual effort necessary to ensure the solution reaches Davis promptly. We have been advised that we'll be seeing improvements within the hour, although they have not yet provided a firm ETA on a complete resolution. We expect further updates by 12:30.

    11:30 AM: GradSphere is currently experiencing an outage! The platform vendor is investigating the issue, and we expect an update by Noon.

    Email to gradcoordinators List:
    As you may have seen, GradSphere is down! The platform's vendor, Appian, is investigating the outage, and keeping our lead developer in the loop as they work toward a resolution. The current status is that we’ve not received a firm ETA on a fix, but have been told to expect a resolution no earlier than 1:30 PM PDT today. 

    Should this great lunchtime frustration linger much further (particularly as we approach a critical time of year for student form submission), Graduate Studies will have an alternative means of recording student milestones ready for you and your students as quickly as possible. For the time being, we will take the vendor at their word and expect resolution promptly, with normal service in GradSphere restored early this afternoon. 

    As the matter develops, the GS team will continue to post rolling updates on the GradSphere page, so you can keep an eye there for the very latest updates. Please feel welcome to share the status page with affected students and faculty Advisors, too; in the meantime, we are grateful for both your patience and theirs.