Learning About the Event Type Hierarchy

The structure of organization and routing events in 25Live is referred to as the "event type hierarchy." The hierarchy consists of:

• Cabinets
• Folders
• Event Types

The Event Type Hierarchy serves some important organizational and scheduling purposes:

• To streamline scheduling activities by allowing you to specify reports and data properties of events by event type
• To allow 25Live to properly route new imported SIS classes and events created in 25Live into the Series25 database and associated calendars
• To reflect your scheduling environment and business processes

An example of a typical event type hierarchy might look like this:

What Are Cabinets, Folders, and Event Types?

Cabinets

Cabinets are the highest-level organizational element in the hierarchy. The top-level cabinet is referred to as the cabinet type. With a top-level, other sub-cabinets can be created within. They are the containers in which folders and event types are stored. Cabinet data can include: 

• Cabinet Type
• Cabinet Name
• Date Range
• Constraints
  • Note: Constraints were defined and used in older interfaces. If your institution has used Series25 tools for a long time, you may be familiar with constraints, however, they are not applicable if you use the Series25 LYNX Interface. LYNX includes its own, more sophisticated functions for defining date exceptions
  • While they are deprecated, if you use constraints, the constraints inherited by an event from its folder or cabinet and/or defined for the event itself work together with the dates/times defined for the event to determine the event’s actual dates/times 

Folders

Image: Example event type hierarchy.

Folders are the mid-level organizational elements that hold event types. You can have one or more folders. While at least one cabinet and event type are required, more than one folder is optional. The top-level folder is a folder type. Folder data can include:

• Folder Name
• Folder Type
• Description
• Date Range
• Categories
• Constraints
  • Note: Constraints were defined and used in older interfaces. If your institution has used Series25 tools for a long time, you may be familiar with constraints, however, they are not applicable if you use the Series25 LYNX Interface. LYNX includes its own, more sophisticated functions for defining date exceptions
  • While they are deprecated, if you use constraints, the constraints inherited by an event from its folder or cabinet and/or defined for the event itself work together with the dates/times defined for the event to determine the event’s actual dates/times
• Primary and Additional Organizations

Event Types

The event type identifies the kind of event (i.e. course section, meeting, performance). Event types are a key data element in Series25 to determine some of the ways in which custom attributes, reports, and other data can be associated with events. Every 25Live event must have an event type.

How Does Data Inherit?

Some data entered for particular cabinets and folders in your event structure is inherited by folders and events within the cabinet or folder.

Data Inheritance Examples

• Dates for the Thanksgiving holiday set for a cabinet are inherited by all the cabinet’s folders and by each folder’s events
• A folder that contains imported class sections has an event category that identifies the term. All events within the folder inherit that term category

Event Routing

Default Routing Rules

Series25 uses some default routing rules as a base for determining which folder a new course or event should be placed in:

• Event Type
  • The folder must be an appropriate folder type for the course or event, based on the event type of the course or event
• Date Range
  • The date range of the course or event must be the same or within the date range of its “parent” folder
• Organization
  • If more than one folder meets both the above conditions, 25Live looks for a folder with the same associated organization as the course or event
• Event Category
  • If more than one folder meets all the above conditions, 25Live looks for a folder in the same event category as the course or event

Imported Events/Courses

The system uses the default routing rules to determine where to place new SIS courses imported into 25Live and new events created in 25Live in your event structure. You should build your cabinet/folder event structure to make maximum use of the default routing rule (see Best Practices: Cabinets, Folders, and Event Types for guidelines).

Events Created in 25Live

While default routing can also apply, if a new event can't be placed using the default rules, the user trying to save the event is presented with event heading (folder) options to choose from. 

In addition, the user saving the event must have permission to see the folder as well as save events to it.  

Academic Cabinet/Folder Example

In this example, we’ve created three top-level cabinets. We created two folders in the Academic cabinet: "Class Sections" and "Class Sections Law." The folders in each cabinet automatically inherit the date range of their cabinet.

Image: Example of typical cabinet and folder hierarchy.

The "Class Sections" and "Class Sections Law" folders will contain all class sections imported from the SIS that fall within the date range of those folders (both folders have the same date range inherited from the Classes cabinet). Both folders have a “Section Group” folder type. What distinguishes Law sections from all other sections is the subject code organization we’ve associated with the "...Law" folder. Based on the system's default routing rule, imported law school sections (those with LAW as their associated organization) will be routed into the Class Sections Law folder because that folder has the LAW organization associated with it.

All other sections will be routed into the "Class Sections" folder because we’ve associated all subject code organizations other than Law with that folder.

See Adding and Editing Cabinets and Adding and Editing Folders for more on adding date ranges, categories, etc.