How to download your class roster and turn it into a spreadsheet

(Last page update: August 16, 2000)

Background
Up-to-date information about course rosters is available on a system called HCMIS (also referred to as SIMS) which can be accessed via CUNYVM in pretty much the same way as CUNYPLUS. Unlike CUNYPLUS, HCMIS requires a user name and a password to access the information in this data base. Faculty can obtain a user name and password via the Registrar's office; the application needs approval by the department chair. Many faculty have already obtained user accounts on HCMIS. Extent of access to HCMIS varies and is determined by demonstrated need to have access to particular types of information; at minimum it includes access to course rosters.

Presently, course rosters can only be viewed on screen. There is no option to quickly download a complete roster in HCMIS/SIMS. However, recently an additional web interface to SIMS/HCMIS -- called SALI -- has become available. And SALI does provide a convenient way of "exporting" a complete section roster in a variety of formats including an MS Excel  spreadsheet. To use SALI, you must download and install specific software on your home or office station (details at the Hunter SALI mirror site) and a HCMIS/SIMS is required as well.

However, the information in SALI is updated only once a day. So during the first days around the start of classes, information in SALI is likely not to be fully accurate -- as students drop and add courses. So, the following workaround to get to your class roster directly from HCMIS/SIMS is still useful fro those faculty who like an accurate class roster right from the start. The method works for courses of any size, but it gets a bit cumbersome for jumbo classes of say 200 or 300 students.
 

Prerequisites

  1. An account on HCMIS; contact the Registrar's office if you don't have one yet
  2. A computer connected to the Internet and with a tn3270 (a telnet variant for connections to IBM mainframes) program installed; CUNY has a site license for Hummingbird's Host Explorer (which includes a user friendly tn3270 program) and you can get for free from the Hunter software coordinator at OICIT

Step-by-step: "Downloading"

  1. Connect to the Internet (in your office at Hunter, you may be automatically connected -- via the backbone)
  2. Start your  tn3270 program and connect to cunymvs.cuny.edu. If you have a properly configured version of Netscape, you can simply type the following URL in the 'Location' box: tn3270://cunymvs.cuny.edu
  3. In return you should get the usual menu (sometime you have to request the menu by typing "m"). Select: HCMIS
  4. Login to HCMIS using your user ID and PW (this will be different from your shiva/hejira account)
  5. Go to the course roster, by selecting CIQ first, then CSR, then the course ID (code) number
  6. The next step depends on the kind of tn3270 program are using:

    7. A. Some programs have an option to "capture the screen", i.e. everything that appears on the screen is also written to a local file on your computer. So while you are looking at the different screens for your class roster (typically, 14 students per screen), this information is also written to a file on your computer (being "downloaded" sort of). However, the download is not "clean" as each full screen, not just the student listing part is captured. So, you need to edit the capture afterwards.
    B. The -- probably better -- alternative is to highlight the part with the actual student names on the screen and copy this to the Windows clipboard (Edit/Copy from the program's menu or CTRL-C from the keyboard). After each copy switch to a text edit application on your computer (e.g. Notepad) and paste the content of the clipboard to this application (CTRL-V from the keyboard). Do this for all screens for your course.
  7. Exit HCMIS, exit CUNYVM, close the tn3270 program.

Step-by-step: Convert downloaded file into spreadsheet

  1. If you used method A, you need to do some additional editing on the downloaded file to strip any access information. You want to end up with a file that has exactly one line for each student. You can do this editing in many different ways including by using your favorite word processor. In this cae, make sure to use a "fixed" font (that looks like the text was produced by an old typewriter; "Courier" is typically a fixed font as is 'Letter Gothic').
  2. If you uses method B, you have done this editing already and nothing further is needed now.
  3. It does not really matter, but this downloaded (and edited) file should be called something like "soc341-02.txt" -- obviously you use your own course and section number.
  4. Other spreadsheet programs probably can be used in a similar manner, but I found MS Excel (97) particularly easy to use for this purpose:
    1. Start Excel (97)
    2. Click on the "open" icon
    3. Change to the subdirectory where your 'downloaded' file is and double click it
    4. The "wizard" will walk you through the remaining steps (for the most part you can simply accept the suggestions)


What you get from HCMIS is a "fixed format" file, i.e. fields (last name, first name, SSN, ..) start in particular "(character) positions" -- if you use a fixed font and Excel is able to recognize this and put the information in different spreadsheet columns. Very easy.

Maybe Excel 95 does this, too; but I simply have not checked this. While Hunter does not have a site license for MS Office (which includes Excel), many new computers come with MS Office pre-installed (often with the "small business edition of MS Office"). Microsoft also offers special education discounts for instructors via so-called AERs (authorized education resellers); one such AER is CampusTech which also carries other products at educational discounts.
 

Manfred Kuechler
Hunter College