So you have a newly approved program! What happens next?

Expectations/timelines for new pages to be built

How quickly a Guide page gets built is fully dependent on where we are in the editing cycle. You can find all of the hard dates and deadlines in the Lumen/Guide: Deadlines (2024-2025 academic year) KB.

In general, once a new program proposal gets to the Registrar step, the Guide admin assigns workflow steps in this general order: SIS work (degree, program, plan, subplans built) > Guide pages built > degree audit encoding > publication ready step. SIS work will always be done first. The second two steps are interchangeable and the Guide editor often does the work in Guide while the proposal is sitting in the DARS step; this allows our DARS team more time to work on the proposal.

In the initial build, the Guide editor will add all of the eligible tabs (see Procedures: Guide Tab Structure), and all of the integration points from the program proposal and the initial headers for each tab. If the proposal is for a program that will use borrowed content (i.e. a BA/BS page), the Guide editor will set that up as well. In the page body of the overview section, the Guide editor will add basic directions for adding overview content and photos.

Editing access and timing

November 1 - early April

When a new Guide page is built, the Guide editor will email a link to the page to the Guide Coordinator for that school or college, letting them know that editing is open and their editors have access. Anyone who has access to the department page that owns the new program will have editing access.

If a new editor needs access they should fill out this Qualtrics survey. Upon survey submission, an email will be sent to the school/college coordinator for approval. That approval response will trigger an email to guideeditor@office365.wisc.edu. At that point, the guide editor will add the new user to the manifest so that the Guide tile appears in the Lumen widget in MyUW. The guide editor will also add the new user to the appropriate Guide roles for editing access. During the open editing season (November 1 - mid-April) the Guide editor will do this within two business days. During the non-editing season, it may take up to two weeks for users to be added to their roles.

All editors can take advantage of a Canvas course designed to help troubleshoot/guide editors through the basic editing process.

Mid-April - November 1

When a new Guide page is built, the Guide editor will reach out to the school/college coordinator and the department editor, letting them know that the Guide page is built. At this point, the contact for the department should send the non-governed content to the Guide editor and they will enter all of the information on the page. It is helpful for the department to have this content ready to go before the Guide page is built. This allows for a quick turnaround and more time to tweak the content on the Guide page. Once the information is entered, the Guide editor will send a link to the page to the department and school/college coordinator asking for feedback. 

Photos

Each new Guide page at the plan level can have a banner image. Departments can supply their own image or they can use one from the UW-Madison photo library.

This image should be landscape, colorful, high resolution, and uncropped. Each school/college has a slightly different process for approving images, so departments should coordinate with their school/college coordinator. Once an image is chosen, it should be emailed to guideeditor@office365.wisc.edu. 

The Guide editor will process the image and render it for web use, then attach it to the Guide page. If the department is unhappy with how the image renders, they can work with the Guide editor to make changes.

Filters

Each undergraduate and graduate plan page is eligible to be assigned filters on these pages:

• Explore UW-Madison's Undergraduate Opportunities
• Explore Graduate Opportunities

Page owners can choose their own filters and should do so by filling out the appropriate survey:

• choose undergraduate filters
• choose graduate filters

These filters will be applied as results come in and departments can expect to see them applied in next-guide within a week of submission.

All undergraduate filters are subject to approval from the Office of Undergraduate Advising.

When does content "go live?"

During the open editing cycle (November through April), editors can make updates to their pages. These updates will go live at guide.wisc.edu on June 1, which is the fall Guide publication. Any changes made to content will not appear before June 1. If a contact box needs to be updated, editors should reach out to guideeditor@office365.wisc.edu to ask that live Guide reflect next-guide.

Contact boxes can be updated year-round by emailing guideeditor@office365.wisc.edu. It's important to let the guide editor know which pages need to be addressed (i.e. Psychology MS, PhD, and graduate minor). Please be as specific as possible when requesting updates and let the guide editor know if it's an add, delete, or change request.

Changes to the Overview and picture are only permitted during the June 1 publication.

Content updates for the other non-governed tabs can go live during the October and January mid-cycle publications at the request of the department or school/college coordinator.

QA process

It is incredibly important that these pages are accurate. Each Guide page is reviewed via the Lumen program proposal process and any changes to governed content are triggered via program proposal. This means that we cannot update any information to governed content without a program proposal. 

Each Guide page is reviewed twice by the Registrar's Office. The first review is basic copy editing; the second review is to make sure that all integration points are still on the page and that there is no governed content on non-governed tabs.

Some examples of things we might change or adjust without reaching out to the page owners:

• removal of periods from degrees
• appropriate header cascading
• removal of bold/italics text
• spelling errors

If any content is changed at the Guide Editor or Guide Admin steps, we will email the page owner and school/college coordinator. This is exceedingly rare and is only done if the content on the page should not be there, i.e. a program has listed requirements on the Overview tab.

We ask that departments review ALL of their pages during Preview Days before the June 1 publication of Guide so they can catch any errors and make adjustments before going live. This is vital because some tabs can only be updated once a year; others can be updated during mid-cycle updates. Only the contact box and advising pages can be updated all year. See Procedures: Guide Updating Principles by Tab Procedures for further guidance.