Binding Overlapping Sections in LYNX

LYNX allows you to identify overlapping sections in your SIS, a term which can flexibly encompass different degrees of similarity such as sections that have identical meeting patterns or ones that have a few days of the week in common.

The result of this is that LYNX adds event bindings to the classes in 25Live, designated with "OG" in the event name. These bound events behave identically to classes which are cross-listed or combined in your SIS, with the following effects:

  • All occurrences in bound meeting patterns have the same location assignment
  • Bound meeting patterns do not generate location conflicts with each other
  • Unassigning a location from one event will also unassign it from everywhere it is bound

Binding Criteria

LYNX helps you determine which sections with the same instructor should be considered "overlapping" based on three factors. You can enable or disable any of these criteria.

  1. Instructor: Sections only qualify as overlapping if they have the same instructor in the SIS. (You may exclude certain instructors from consideration.) Note: even if this criterion is disabled, in order to qualify for binding sections must have an instructor mapped to 25Live's built-in "Instructor" role via translation rules.
  2. Meeting Pattern: Sections must meet on identical days of the week, without exception.
  3. Start/End Times: Sections must have the exact same start and end time, not merely overlapping
  4. Assigned Location: Sections must have the same location preassigned in the SIS. (You may exclude certain locations from consideration.)
Note: Primary Reservations

The first member of each back-to-back group is the primary reservation in 25Live, which is used to determine organization preferences for the Schedule25 Optimizer. This cannot be changed in LYNX but can be changed in the manage event bindings menu option in 25Live.

Creating Overlapping Section Bindings

Follow the instructions on the Managing Data Binding article to navigate to the data binding page for back-to-back sections.

The first time you go to this page, the list will be blank because nothing has been identified as overlapping yet. Click Bind Overlapping Sections to begin with the following screen:

Screenshot of the Bind Overlapping Sections window with options for identifying what counts as an overlapImage: Binding Overlapping Sections. 

On this screen you must choose an import extract set that you've already defined. LYNX will only look for overlapping pairs where both sections are part of this extract set.

You also have the opportunity to change the three binding criteria described above. Click Reconfigure to set them to Yes or No.

When you click Run, LYNX finds all the overlapping sections in your extract set and creates a bound group for them. (Note that a group can contain more than two sections if many adjacent sections meet the criteria.) If any section was already part of a back-to-back group, the old group is deleted.

Old Bindings May Be Removed

Be careful when running the binding process on a term where overlapping bindings already exist, because it could wipe them out in the process of creating new groups!

After you add these new groups, nothing will change in 25Live until a new import is triggered. This could happen automatically when those sections are updated in the SIS or manually by importing an extract set.

You can also immediately trigger an update for the sections in a single group by clicking the "import" link next to its name.

Tip: Use The LYNX Overlapping Section Binding in Place of CRMG (Common Room Groups)

When switching from an older TCS interface to LYNX, we recommend you use the Overlapping Section Binding option in place of CRMG (Common Room Groups).