BUSIPlus Bloggy Blog

Ever since BU made the push to Banner, we’ve found ourselves not really adding new features to BUSIPlus, but rather fixing all the features that broke.  One of these was the old Copy Schedule from BUSI feature, where you could log into BUSI, copy your schedule there, paste it into BUSIPlus, and have one of our schedules made for you instantly.  (For the curious, this was actually the very first tool built for BUSIPlus, all the way back in April 2005.)

We’ve finally fixed the backend of this to be compatible with the new BU Brain output.  We have tested this on a variety of inputs, and you can paste a bunch of things into the importer:

• Just type in the CRNs, separating them with either spaces or line returns
• Copy the Student Detail Schedule (either normal view or printer-friendly view)
• Copy the Week at a Glance text

Let us know what you think.  Oh, and don’t worry – we know we still have a bunch of places where CRNs need to be integrated (the schedule viewer being the most notable).  We’re working on getting this in place in the near future, so sit tight!  If you have other ideas for CRN integration, make sure to let us know.

For anyone looking for them, Winter 2009 schedules are now available, along with an updated version of the Spring 2009 schedules.  Now that a couple of quirks with the updater have been handled, we should be able to run it more often.

We’ve added some minor enhancements to the BUSIPlus schedule builder.  First off is the new course descriptions we’re linking to, which now include actual summaries.  Now, we are also linking each CRN to its own description, as the BU system shows different descriptions for each section.  Also in the section view, if you hover over the room number, a tooltip will help you decode the abbreviation.  There are a few minor tweaks that have been made to the way things are displayed, most notably that the grid is now turned on by default for schedules.

Please keep providing us with suggestions, and we will continue to make incremental updates as quickly as we can.

Hey everyone!  We’ve updated the BUSIPlus database to include classes for the upcoming semester.  We have also added in the newest departments, so you should have access to all classes available on campus this semester!

You may also notice that CRNs are now showing up when you browse for courses on BUSIPlus.  We realize that they are extremely handy for registration.  We will try to get CRNs showing up on your schedules as well in the coming days.  It’ll just take a bit of effort to come up with a backwards-compatible solution.

See any schedule errors on BUSIPlus?  Give us a shout, and we’ll take care of it ASAP!  We think everything’s good this time, but with over 11,000 entries, it’s hard to guarantee it.