University policy requires that we keep track of instances when an academic personnel action occurs in a year other than the one in which it’s scheduled. If it happens sooner, you need to record the number of years it was “accelerated” or if it happens later, the number of years “deferred.”
This article tells you how to record accelerations and deferrals in Opus. The instructions assume you’re already logged into Opus and your permissions allow you to access the relevant features. For info about interface elements or a particular Opus page, check out the other articles on this support site — some of these articles are linked near the bottom of this page.
1. Track Years Accelerated or Deferred Outside Opus
We put this step first because we want to make sure you know that Opus won’t tell you how many years accelerated or deferred an action “must” be — it’s up to you to keep track of this information and enter it with the relevant case info. To clarify, Opus does not calculate acceleration/deferral, even though it does calculate eligibility, which itself is key to knowing whether an action has been accelerated or deferred.
Opus doesn’t calculate acceleration/deferral because, while it has a certain relationship to eligibility, the two are quite distinct. Eligibility is predicted in Opus, based on information about an academic appointee’s current appointments, and as time passes or as actions occur, the eligibility information updates. But Opus doesn’t keep track of past eligibility information, and so it has no way of translating this eligibility data into information about acceleration/deferral (for more info see the articles on eligibility, linked near the bottom of this page). For now at least, you must keep track of acceleration/deferral outside of Opus.
2. Navigate to an Appropriate Screen
There are two places in Opus where you can record years deferred or accelerated: in the Start a Case modal windows, and on the Case Summary page. This article doesn't show you how to work with cases — you can find instructions for that in the articles linked near the bottom of this page.
Taking the Start a Case modal window as an example, when you start a case for certain actions, you can record years accelerated and years deferred in the Data Input screen — it will look something like the screenshot below. You’ll notice that the case we show here uses a Merit action — Years Accelerated and Years Deferred fields also appear when starting a case for a Promotion action, and possibly others:
One version of the Data Input screen of the Start a Case modal window. Click this image to view a larger version.
Taking the Case Summary page as an example, when you click the edit (pencil) icon in the header of the Proposed Action table, a modal window will open. You can enter the number of years accelerated or deferred in that modal.
The Case Summary page with the Proposed Action table. Click this image to view a larger version.
The Case Summary page with the Proposed Action modal window. Click this image to view a larger version.
2. Enter the Years Accelerated or Deferred
Doing this is simply a matter of entering the data in these fields and clicking a button to progress to the next step. Once you do that, you've recorded acceleration/deferral.