Page 1 of 13

Viewing Current Term Supervision Reports

As a Subject Administrator you can review the status and content of the current term supervision

reports for Students associated with the DGSs in the Programme(s) to which you have been

assigned. Reports are grouped by DGS and are accessed by clicking the link next to the

Programme of Study name. The DGS Home view will open.

The DGS Home view displays current term reports for Students that have been associated with the

DGS and that have content submitted. For example, a Student will not be displayed on the DGS

view if they have not submitted a self assessment report and the Supervisor has not submitted a

supervision report. Reports are grouped into Unreviewed with concerns, Unreviewed without

concerns and Reviewed reports with hyperlinks to each group at the top of the tab for easy

navigation.

Reports that have a concern raised by the Student or Supervisor will have an icon to the left of

their name. Once a report is reviewed by the DGS it is moved into the Reviewed reports section

at the bottom of the page. If a Supervisor subsequently submits a report after the DGS has

reviewed it, the report will be moved back into the Unreviewed section.

When the current term reporting period closes, those reports are only accessible from the

Report Search function.

Page 2 of 13

To view a report, click on the hyperlink from the DGS view, which will open the supervision

report on your Home tab.

The Supervision report header contains the Key Submission dates for each of the Student,

Supervisor and DGS. This indicates the last date a report or comments were submitted for this

Student. The Student’s self-assessment (if submitted) is displayed after the key submissions

dates, with the Supervisor’s report and DGS comments (if submitted) at the end.

To print a report, click the button at the bottom of the page, which will open the report as a

PDF file which can be saved to file or use Print function, File > Print, or the icon to print the

page. Printing batches of reports is available in the Report Search function.

To return to your list of DGS names click the Home tab.

Page 3 of 13

GSS information about the Student including their College, Department, Programme attempt status

and Thesis title can be viewed from the DGS dashboard. You will also see a list of users

associated with this Student, which can be used as an email contact list.

To view GSS information for a Student, navigate to the DGS dashboard and click the Student link,

which will open the GSS information view.

To send a message to a person on the Student’s contact list, click the link next to the name

of the person you wish to contact. An email form in your default email programme, for example

Outlook or Lotus Notes, will open with the person’s email address auto populated, ready for you to

write the message.

To return to your list of DGS name click the Home tab.

Page 4 of 13

Report Administration

As a Subject Administrator, you have the ability to, upon request, delete submitted report data for

students, supervisors and released DGS comments. This facility is designed to be used in

exceptional circumstances, for example if a report is submitted in error. Report data may only be

deleted during the current reporting period, just as reports and comments may only the re-

submitted during the current reporting period.

To delete reports or comments:

1. Navigate to the Report

Administration tab.

2. Using the search options, select at

least one from the student,

supervisor or DGS drop downs to

search.

Tip: searching on the Student name

is advisable, as fewer numbers of

results will be shown.

3. Click .

4. From the search results, click the link next to the report you wish to delete. The

report will open allowing you to delete the self-assessment, supervision report or DGS

comments as required. Click the button in the section you wish to remove, or the

to remove the entire report.

Warning: reports deleted from Report Administration cannot be reinstated. Once the

delete process is complete reports are deleted forever and cannot be retrieved. Reports

can however be resubmitted by the author subject to the reporting period still being open.

Page 5 of 13

5. Once you’ve click the Delete or Delete All button, a warning message will give you the

opportunity to cancel the action or continue to complete the process. If you choose to

continue, the delete is implemented immediately, the report submissions date will be

changed to Content Deleted, and the author of the deleted content is sent a system

generated email informing them of the action taken.

6. A confirmation message will be displayed on the screen, allowing you to find another report

or return to the report you selected.

Page 6 of 13

At various set times during the reporting cycle, automatic reminders are emailed from the system

to Students, Supervisors and DGS informing them of when the reporting window is about to open

or about to close. As a Subject Administrator, you also have the ability to send reminders at any

time to people in these groups that have outstanding supervision reports.

To send reminders:

1. Navigate to the Send Reminders tab.

2. Using the Send reminder to: drop down, select the user type to send the reminder to, i.e.

Student, Supervisor or DGS.

3. Select the Programme(s) from which you want to select people to email the reminder to:

4. Click to continue. The system will look for all of the people within the selected

Programmes with unsubmitted/unreviewed reports.

5. From the list of people, select those that should receive the reminder. Note: if you have

selected more than one Programme of study, people may be listed more than once if they

have outstanding supervision reports for those Programmes of study.

6. Click to continue.

7. In the space provided, enter a subject and the text of the email. The programme(s) and

report details are not included in the reminder so it may be helpful to include instructions on

how to check which reports are outstanding.

Page 7 of 13

8. Click to continue. A preview of the email will be displayed.

9. The preview window provides you a chance to go back and change either the text of the

email or the list of people to be included. Use the button to go back to the email

text or to edit the list of people to be emailed.

10. Click to finish the process.

11. The email(s) will be sent to each person with your email address as the sender. A list of

the email addresses this message was sent to will be sent to your email account as a text

file.

Page 8 of 13

Report Search is used to find, view and print individual or multiple supervision reports that have

been entered into GSS for the current or previous terms. This feature is available for the

Supervisor, DGS, Subject Administrator, College Advisor, College Administrator, Scholarship and

Funding Administrator and Superuser roles. Access to supervision reports is governed by the

same rules as throughout GSS. Reports are only displayed for students directly assigned to your

Programme of Study, Department, Division, or College depending on your level of access.

For information about reports, including Payments to be Made, Usage Statistics or

User Maintenance, please use the facilities available from the Management Information tab.

Printing reports produces a PDF file with all of the reports included in the search, or an individual

report. In order to open the PDF file you will require the use of a PDF reader such Adobe Reader,

which is installed by default on University computers. If you require this application to be installed

on a private PC, it is available free from http://get.adobe.com/reader/.

Report searches are run from the Search for a Report tab where there are two options available;

Standard or Advanced search. Using the Standard search allows a simple filter of the Year and/or

Term. The Advanced search allows you to search for reports submitted:

in a term

in a year

for an entire division, department or programme of study, college or funding group

with/without concerns noted by the student, supervisor or DGS, or resolved

with a status of no content, content submitted, reviewed/unreviewed by DGS or College

Advisor

with criteria including training required and payment option

combination of any of the above options

Note: the option to search for a specific College is not available to College Administrators

who will only be able to search for reports within their own college.

Page 9 of 13

To run a Standard report search:

1. Logon to GSS and click on the

Search for a report tab.

2. With the drop down boxes

provided, select the year and/or

terms to search.

3. Click to begin the search or to start again. The results will be displayed on

screen. If there are no matching records, the message “No reports were found matching

your selection” will be displayed.

4. Warning: clicking the button without choosing any criteria may return a large

number of results and take a considerable amount of time for the results to be displayed.

To run an Advanced search:

1. Logon to GSS and click on the Search for a report tab.

2. Click the link.

3. On the form, choose the criteria from the drop down boxes as required. For example, on the

illustration below we are searching for reports during 2008 – 2009 11 Michaelmas and Hilary

terms 22 that have not been reviewed 33 by the DGS, Sam Waterford 44 .

11 22

33

44

Page 10 of 13

5. Click to begin or to start again. The results will be displayed on screen. If

there are no matching records, the message “No reports were found matching your

selection” will be displayed.

Using the Search Results

The search results for both Standard and Advanced searches are displayed on screen as a

summary with several default columns including: Inc. in batch, the Student, Supervisor and DGS

names.

The summary view can be customised to display more information by clicking in the box next to the

field you wish to display and click the button. The following variables are

available:

Include in batch Division Student name Supervisor name

View report Department Student concerns DGS concerns

Year Programme of Study Supervisor concerns DGS name

Term Last printed date College Advisor

Warning: clicking the Search button without choosing any criteria may return a large

number of results and take a considerable amount of time for the results to be displayed.

Results viewed as a batch will be limited to 1000 reports. Printing more than 500 is not

supported. If your search returns larger numbers, use the search criteria to restrict the

number of results returned.

Page 11 of 13

The column selection screen may be hidden for easy viewing of the summary results, click

to close the selector. Click to display the column list.

To customise the columns and reports displayed in on the summary screen:

1. Choose the columns to be included from the Display the following columns section.

2. Click the button. The additional columns will be displayed without

loosing the current search results.

3. The list of reports will be updated with the additional columns. It may be necessary to scroll

the window left or right to view all of the results.

To select reports to view and/or print in a batch:

1. From the report summary, use the Select all or Deselect all options to select the reports to

view. Click the button to apply the change.

2. To re-select the reports select Reset and click button to apply the

change. The report selection will return to the original settings when the search was

originally run.

3. To select individual reports click the check box in the Inc. in batch column.

4. A report will not have the Inc. in Batch column selected if it has been previously printed; the

system will assume that you do not want to print the same report twice. This will allow you to

run the search at a later date and only new reports that have not previously been printed will

be included in the batch.

To view the last time and date the report was printed, turn on the Last printed date column.

Use the Select All option to include previously printed reports in the batch, choose Select all

and click Update selections. Alternatively, click the checkbox in the Inc in Batch column

next to the individual report to be included.

Page 12 of 13

To view and print the reports as a batch:

1. Click in the Batch options section.

2. The selected reports are displayed, one to a page.

3. Use the navigation buttons to scroll through

the reports.

4. Click the Print or Print All button to create a PDF file, which will open a new window or tab,

depending on your browsers settings. The PDF file can be saved to file or printed using the

File > Print or icon (if using Adobe Reader). Note that each report will be formatted

with the name of the student and term in the header and the page number and total number

of pages in that report in the footer.

5. On the GSS report page, click to go to the search results.

To view and print an individual report:

1. Click the link next to the Student name.

2. The report is displayed in the current window.

3. Click the button to create a PDF file. which will open a new window or tab, depending

on your browsers settings. The PDF file can be saved to file or printed using the File > Print

or icon (if using Adobe Reader).

4. On the GSS report page, click to go to the search results.

Printing more than 500 in a batch is not supported. If your search returns larger numbers,

use the search criteria to restrict the number of results returned.

Page 13 of 13

Data Protection Act

Guidelines for Graduate Supervision System (GSS)

Most of the data held in GSS is covered by the Data Protection Act. More detailed information is

available at the following web addresses:

University Policy on Data Protection:

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/councilsec/dp/policy.shtml

Regulations on the use of Information Technology Facilities:

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/statutes/regulations/196-052.shtml

Further to that, here are some simple guidelines to help you to keep within the bounds of the Act.

1. Familiarise yourself with the University’s policy on Data Protection by reading the information available at the web addresses above.

2. Ensure that you are familiar, and comply with the university’s duties relating to the use of IT facilities (see link at the top of the page).

3. Adopt secure passwords, keep them secure and change them regularly.

4. Do not reveal your password to another person.

5. Do not reveal any personal data to unauthorised third parties.

6. Keep hard copies of personal data in locked drawers/filing cabinets and dispose of them securely by shredding or putting them in a confidential waste bin.

7. Keep electronic copies of personal data (reports/spreadsheets etc) in a secure directory or password protect them if held elsewhere.

8. Do not download from GSS onto a home computer or laptop unless as specifically authorised by your Information Custodian.

9. Log out of GSS or lock your workstation if leaving your desk, or have a password protected screensaver set to activate within ten minutes or less.

10. Never leave screens showing personal data as the top screen when you leave your desk at all, even if it’s just for the minute it takes you to get a printout off the printer.

11. Do not leave printouts of personal data on the printer.

12. Destroy both electronic and hard copies of personal data when they are no longer needed.

It is recommended that you audit your files at least twice a year and dispose of any material that is

no longer needed.

If you have any questions about the Data Protection Act and how it affects your work,

further information can be obtained from the University’s Data Protection Officer:

Website: http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/councilsec/dp

Email: data.protection@admin.ox.ac.uk