Envision/Transact - External Meal Plans

While most meal plans come from StarRes and/or Banner, we have occasion to set up meal plans outside of these systems.  This results in a problem, that if someone with an "External" meal plan, has their record updated by Simon (perhaps due to a status change or lost card, etc), Simon will push a record to Transact with "No Plan", which will wipe out the external plan in Transact.  The existing Building Blocks manager only understands ONE meal plan at a time.  Our initial "fix" was to add an "External Meal Plan" switch to the users record, which would prevent Simon from sending updates to Transact.  This can be a problem in the case of lost cards, as we really need to push a new record with the new ISO.  This can generate more confusion and problems with the BBM.

To address this issue, we have added "External Meal Plan" support to the Simon-Envision tool.  This breaks down into two parts, managing the plans and managing people enrolled in the plans.

Managing External Meal Plans

Under the "Board Plan Reports" tab, there is a new sub tab "External Meal Plans"This lists the External Meal plan groups.  To create a new one, press the "Create" button and fill in the fields. The "Plan Name" field is critical - it must match the plan name in Transact.  You can select the matching plan- this sets the plan_id.  You can also set a start and end date for the plan.  This will create a Simon Group that you can also manage via the Simon Group Tool.  The group name will be "External_Meal_Plan" followed by the plan name (as you can see in the example above).

Managing Plan Members

There are two ways to manage the people assigned to a plan.  The first is to use the Simon Group tool, which  allows you to add and delete people, including bulk load options.  The second way is to look at the person in the Transact/Envision tool

You will note a new stanza "External Plans", located near the bottom.  As you can see here, we have added an external plan "50 Block", and this is also reflected in the "Envision Board Plans" report above.  To add a plan select the new plan with the pull down "New External Plan" item and press "Add External Plan".  Although it is possible to add several different plans - only one will be sent to Transact.  In the notes on some of the existing entries - it mentions people having several instances of a plan.  Since the the Simon/BBM/Transact interface only allows ONE meal plan, it is not clear to me what will happen to those folks if their record gets refreshed.  

When you add an external plan, (or click the plan name to edit the entry), you can set the comments and the expiration date.  When the expiration date is reached, the record will automatically be removed from the group.  You can also delete entries from the edit prompt.