Version 2.2
Introduction
Othot is pleased to announce release 2.2 of the Othot platform. The release adds a variety of new features and enhancements, as well as significant improvements to overall performance and predictive capabilities.
If you have any questions regarding the contents of this document or require additional information on any updates contained in this release, please reference other Othot Help Center articles or contact Othot Support at support@othot.com.
Dashboard Filtering
Dashboards now have filtering. All applicable charts added to a Dashboard will have the filter settings applied to them. This adds another level of customization to create Dashboards that are focused on different groups of students by key attributes, such as location, student type, academics, and others.
New Dashboard Widgets
Several new widgets have been created and are available to add to the Dashboard.
Expected Enrollment Widgets
Column charts show the Forecasted and Current Expected Enrollment totals for key variables in order to quickly visualize the expected shape of your incoming class.
Stacked Bar Chart Widget Type
Beyond the standard bar and column charts, a stacked bar chart has been added to more clearly show scaled compositions of different groupings.
Derived Variables for What-if, Sensitivity, & Matrix
Some variables are dependent upon others; take for example, total institutional aid being dependent on the combination of merit and need-based awards. These complex dependencies are now incorporated into the What-If functionality. When a What-If analysis is conducted on a variable like merit aid, not only will the merit aid value be updated but also the total institutional aid award amount. This allows for more flexible and comprehensive analysis when devising and testing aid strategies.
Additionally, a new derived variable, Incremental Aid, is now available that enables users to test the expected outcome for offering more in financial aid on top of the amount that has already been offered in total. For example, this may be applicable during the appeals process when deciding which students to make additional offers to and how much it will take to make a meaningful difference in their likelihood to enroll.
Similar to the What-If functionality, Sensitivity Analysis has been enhanced to include derived variables. This allows for analyzing the Sensitivity of independent variables, such as merit aid awards, and also on dependent variables, like total institutional aid awards.
Matrix functionality has also been improved to include derived variables. The complexity of aid awards can also be included in optimizations to better devise award strategies that match specific aid award constraints in your financial aid policy.
Matrix Feature Enhancements
Minimize Objective
Matrix optimizations can now accommodate minimization objectives. This allows for a host of new questions to be answered when trying to allocate limited resources. One simple example is “what is the least amount of additional aid I need to award to meet my enrollment target?”
Count Constraints
Another upgrade to the Matrix functionality is the ability to add constraints on counts of specific values of different variables. This provides the ability to create constraints that set minimum or maximum limits on the shape of the class. For example, a constraint can be created that sets limits on the number of out-of-state students required.
Optimization Warning Cell Notifications
Depending on the complexity of the groupings defined or filters applied to a Matrix configuration, there can be cells that are made up of a small count of students. The variance of the results could be high; therefore, we have added a warning cell coloring to notify users to proceed with caution when making decisions using these extremely small subpopulations.
Improved Admin User Permission Display
The ordering and positioning of user permission settings has been updated to be more intuitive when understanding what each selector controls. Selectable features are now nested underneath the pages of the platform where they reside.
Additional Security Options on Session Management
An enhanced security option has been added to further manage active user sessions. Previously, an inactivity time duration was used to determine when a session should be ended; now, if needed, a security option can be added to terminate sessions when a user’s browser is closed.
Other Enhancements
As with every release, many existing features have been improved or expanded. A few of the more notable items are:
- General Scale and Performance Improvements
- Enhanced Grid Performance and Issue Resolutions
- Additional SSO Features Including SSO ID Maintenance
- Upgraded Packages to Improve Security
- Improved Model Acceptance Flow
- Delta Predict Service
- Extended Configuration Versioning
- Display HIQ Short Name
- Increased Error Checking in Integration Services
- Data File Issue Logging and Notifications
- Task Queue/Failed Task Restart Functionality
- Extended properties on Data Management Files
- Purge Schedule Jobs
Next Release
The Othot development team has already begun working on the next release, 3.0. This release is scheduled to go into production in Q3 2019. For more details about the features planned for the 3.0 release, contact Othot Customer Success or Othot Sales.