Version 3.1
Introduction
Othot is pleased to announce release 3.1 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.
Analyze
As the most heavily used area within the Othot platform, current enhancements and usability improvements are made to this area in each release. Below is a list of the latest improvements.
Dashboard Anything
Being able to visualize complex data is important for understanding, especially when building new strategies and tactics. The Analyze page now has the ability to view any data in the Grid as a Dashboard. Results from a What-if or Scenario can be viewed on the same Dashboard being used to monitor your cohort’s progress.
Redesigned Analyze Menu Layout
The usability of the page has been improved by adopting more material design standards. The same menus exist, but have been slightly moved and icons have changed to better reflect the purpose of the selector. Also, button colors are controllable per partner to comply with accessibility requirements.
Enhanced Correction Factor
Cross-phase aggregate calculations have been made more robust for atypical lifecycle phase configurations and drastic year over year data population changes resulting from shifts in strategy.
Filter By List
There are cases where filtering on the Grid by a large predefined list is necessary (e.g. when a recruiter has a list of student identifications). The ability to apply a list of values to filter by has been added to the Grid menu. Select which variables the list should be applied to then just copy and paste that list into the text box and the Grid will return only results meeting the configured criteria.
What-If
Running a prescriptive What-If analysis is a key feature to all users. Further enhancements have been made to enhance its usability in this release.
Phase Change
Students will be able to be moved ahead to a future lifecycle phase using the what-if functionality. This is particularly useful for phases where the institution has complete control of who advances. One key case is allowing the simulation of the admission decision to evaluate the predicted outcome before making the final decision.
Enhanced Calculated Variable
Some variables included in the models are dependent upon on multiple variables. When a single what-if variable is changed, multiple variables can be affected. The ability to create complex formulas to derive the values of these variables has been added to handle these situations. This allows for modeling and usability improvements for variables such as net tuition revenue, discount rate, and unmet need.
Matrix
Othot’s feature for creating optimized financial aid strategies has received minor updates to improve the user experience and build on existing functionality based on user feedback.
Calculated Fields
Including calculated variables in Matrix configurations allows for better alignment with institutional goals, especially around financial aid. Variables such as net tuition revenue or unmet need can be used as a constraint and/or aggregate calculation while still allowing decisions to be made at the individual aid award level, like merit and need based aid, independently.
Dashboard
The Dashboard page continues to receive enhancements and new additions to the widget library. The growing chart options and filterability allow you and your team to visualize data and analyze prediction trends for easier and quicker decision making.
Forecasted Enrollment
Two new widgets using forecasted descriptive, predictive, and new records are available in the Dashboard page. They provide an expectation of what will happen in each lifecycle phase and overall based upon future trends continuing as they have done in the past. This can be helpful when the entire cohort population is not yet known or impactful activities like visits and aid awarding have not yet happened.
Reference
The right side of the Reference page now provides more detail around the occurrence, values, and predictive impacts of variables in partner data. These data science insights provide a better understanding of what is driving predictions in a similar manner to the current model importances.
Census Data Update
Improvements in address formatting is incorporated to increase capabilities and match rates of census data.
Other Enhancements
As with every release, many existing features have been improved or expanded. A few of the more notable items are:
- Feature level security
- Platform architectural improvements for scale and reliability
- Expanded operational management functionality
- Upgraded technology components for new capabilities and improved security
- Automated integration enhancements
- Enhanced continuous integration and deployment coverage
Next Release
The Othot development team has already begun working on the next release, 3.2. This release is scheduled to go into production in Q3 2020. For more details about the features planned for the 3.2 release, contact Othot Partner Success or Othot Sales.