Last Update: November 17, 2021
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Supplemental questions are written in XML and validated with XSD. You can create one or more sets of supplemental questions to be added to either your college's CCCApply Standard Application and/or the Noncredit Application. Only one supplemental question set can be active/display at a time. The Configuring Application Supplemental Questions section of the CCCApply Administrator User Guide provides details on importing, updating, and downloading your Supplemental Question XML files.
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Note: The Noncredit application is a workflow and subset of the CCCApply Standard applications questions that skips the residency check and military status for students who are only taking noncredit courses. See the Noncredit Application section of the CCCApply Standard & Noncredit Application Data Dictionary for more details.
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Multiple supplemental question sets require some management. For example, if your supplemental question sets have different effective dates, the set with the most recent Effective Date (that is not in the future) takes precedence over any others. If you have multiple supplemental question sets with the same effective date, then the set with the lowest Page ID number will take precedence.
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Consider the following example that shows questions that have been imported into the Supplemental Questions module in the CCCApply Administrator application.
If today were March 8, 2016, the questions with Page ID 9 would show up on your college's CCCApply Standard student application. Page ID 10 would not show up, because although it is marked Active and has the latest effective date, that date would be in the future (assuming March 8, 2016 as an example). When the date became April 25, 2016 Page ID 10 would take precedence and the questions on Page ID 9 would no longer display on the application.
If Page ID 9 and Page ID 10 had the exact same Effective Date, then Page ID 9 would take precedence as the set with the lowest Page ID number is used in this scenario.
Note: If you have used supplemental questions in the past, you may notice that the <SupplementalQuestions> element contains an EffectiveDate attribute.
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This attribute has no effect on your supplemental questions. The system simply ignores it.
Note: When you upload a set of questions, there is a potential 25-minute delay before they appear on the student application. In the live environment, you won't notice this delay, as you will have uploaded your questions well in advance. But it will be noticeable during your testing phase in your Pilot environment. After you upload your test questions, wait 25 minutes before attempting to see them on your student application.
Working with XML
Although working with computer languages can be daunting, you don't need to be an expert to create supplemental questions for your college's student application, and you don't need any sophisticated tools. A simple text editor and a rudimentary understanding of XML hierarchy will be helpful.
If you are comfortable writing computer software, you can of course use the tools that best suit you. Otherwise, create your XML files using your operating system's built-in text editor. On Windows, the text editor is called Notepad, and on OSX, it is called TextEdit.
Note: These applications can work with file formats other than plain text. Be sure to save your files in plain text format.
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Important: Unless you have experience working with text editors and XML, do not use XMLNotepad to edit your files. It adds extra characters to the beginning of the file that will prevent your XML from uploading. If you do have experience in this area, use XMLNotepad to edit your XML (to take advantage of the schema), then use a plain text editor or some other suitable tool to remove the extra characters (the BOM) before uploading. |
Most of the contents of your XML file will depend on the questions you want to ask and the responses you expect to receive. For details on creating questions and guiding the student through the application process see Supplemental Questions: Layout And User Experience and Supplemental Questions: Response Elements.
Setting up Your XML File
Copy and paste the example starter XML file structure below into your XML editor before you begin creating questions. This text will serve as your XML base and you can use it over and over again for each new supplemental question XML file set.
?xml version ="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SupplementalQuestions xmlns:xsi="http://xmlns.cccnext.org/apply" CollegeId="nnn" CollegeName="My College" ApplicationType="Either Credit or Noncredit">
</SupplementalQuestions>
2. Set CollegeId to your college's three-digit MIS code. If you are creating questions for multiple colleges in a district, then indicate the MIS codes of all of the applicable colleges, separated by commas.
3. Set CollegeName to the name of your college.
You will define your questions by inserting XML code in the blank space in the above example.
For example:
<?xml version ="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SupplementalQuestions xmlns:xsi="http://xmlns.cccnext.org/apply" CollegeId="611" CollegeName="Allan Hancock College"
ApplicationType="Noncredit">
<Header>Tell us more about yourself!</Header>
<Section>
<YesNo id="1">
<Label>While attending classes, do you intend to work more than 40 hours per week?</Label>
</YesNo>
</Section>
</SupplementalQuestions>
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Important: The example above is a complete and legal definition of a supplemental questions page. However, you will need to:
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Important: It is very important that your uploaded XML file be error-free. If there are errors in your supplemental questions XML file, you will likely see an error message in the Administrator when you attempt to upload it. |
It is strongly recommended that before uploading, you validate your XML with a free, online validator tool such as http://www.xmlvalidation.com/. This site allows you to copy and paste your XML for syntax checking.
After you paste your XML and click validate, the site will ask you to copy and paste a second file. In industry jargon, the file it is requesting is called a schema. You can copy the schema from here and paste it into the validator. The validator then tells you if there are problems with your XML. Although the error messages may still be somewhat intimidating, this particular validator will at least show you in a friendly way where the error is in your XML.
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Layout Elements: Header, Indent, and Section; and
Prompt Elements: Label, HoverHelp, and Translations.
Additionally, there are several attributes available for response elements that relate to guiding the student through the application process. These are the default, required, and title attributes. The following descriptions and examples show how to use these items.
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A page header
Two sections of check boxes, each section with its own header
Two check boxes indented to the right from those above and below
One check box with hover help in both English and Spanish
<Header>Tell us more about yourself!</Header>
<Section>
<Header>Are you interested in any of the following extracurricular activities? Check all that apply.</Header>
<Checkbox id="1"><Label>Chess club</Label></Checkbox>
<Checkbox id="2"><Label>Athletic sports</Label></Checkbox>
<Indent>
<Checkbox id="3"><Label>As a participant</Label></Checkbox>
<Checkbox id="4">
<Label>As an observer</Label>
<HoverHelp lang="en">Check this box if you enjoy watching sporting events</HoverHelp>
<HoverHelp lang="es">Marque si te gusta ver los eventos deportivos</HoverHelp>
</Checkbox>
</Indent>
<Checkbox id="5"><Label>Online gaming</Label></Checkbox>
<Checkbox id="6"><Label>Martial arts</Label></Checkbox>
</Section>
<Section>
<Header>Check all that apply to your employment status:</Header>
<Checkbox id="7"><Label>Overworked</Label></Checkbox>
<Checkbox id="8"><Label>Underpaid</Label></Checkbox>
</Section>
The application will use the <HoverHelp> tag that applies to the currently-selected language. Only English (lang"=e"n) and Spanish (lang"=e"s, for Español) are supported. The hover help appear when the applicant hovers the mouse over the check box.
This hover help from the example above will appear when the page is in English mode:
<HoverHelp lang="en">Check this box if you enjoy watching sporting events</HoverHelp>
This hover help from the example above will appear when the page is in Spanish mode:
<HoverHelp lang="es">Marque si te gusta ver los eventos deportivos</HoverHelp>
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Warning: You must specify a language (using the lang attribute as in the examples above) for your hover help, or your Supplemental Questions tab will fail, and the applicant will see an error message rather than your supplemental questions. |
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If your college does not care to internationalize the supplemental questions no action is needed.
If your college has already provided both an English and a Spanish version of supplemental questions manually in the XML, you can continue to leave your XML code as is and both language versions of the question(s) will continue to display.
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Add the optional <Translations> element.
Within the <Translations> element, add at least two <Locale> elements, one without any "lang" attribute and one with a lang attribute of "es".
Add <Message> element blocks for each code into both of the <Locale> elements.
Each <Message> element must have a <code> and <message> attribute with values.
The <code> attribute value must match the question's <Label> value.
For example, for the two <Label> elements and three <label> attributes below:
<Header>main.header</Header>
<Section>
<Header>section.1.header</Header>
<Text maxLength="50" default="" id="1">
<Label>question.name</Label>
<HoverHelp lang="en">Enter your full name</HoverHelp>
<HoverHelp lang="es">Ingrese su nombre completo</HoverHelp>
</Text>
<Menu id="1">
<Label>question.color</Label>
<MenuItem value="1" label="question.color.1"/>
<MenuItem value="2" label="question.color.2"/>
<MenuItem value="3" label="question.color.3"/>
</Menu>
</Section>
...each has a corresponding <Message code="" message=""/> in the <Translations> element's <Locale> element; the first in English and the second in Spanish:
<Translations>
<Locale>
<Message code="main.header" message="Here are some questions"/>
<Message code="section.1.header" message="Knowledge (en and es)"/>
<Message code="여행지 추천 설문지 | where to go " message="What is your name?"/>
<Message code="question.color" message="What is your favorite color?"/>
<Message code="question.color.1" message="Red"/>
<Message code="question.color.2" message="Blue"/>
<Message code="question.color.3" message="Yellow"/>
</Locale>
<Locale lang="es">
<Message code="main.header" message="Aquí hay algunas preguntas." />
<Message code="section.1.header" message="Conocimiento"/>
<Message code="여행지 추천 설문지 | where to go " message="¿Cuál es su nombre?"/>
<Message code="question.color" message="¿Cuál es su color favorito?" />
<Message code="question.color.1" message="Rojo" />
<Message code="question.color.2" message="Azul" />
<Message code="question.color.3" message="Amarillo" />
</Locale>
</Translations>
Response Element: The Default Attribute
Depending on your specific circumstances, you can allow the applicant to ignore a given question, or you can require the applicant to provide a response. If you allow a question to be ignored, the system will store a system-default value for the question. The legal default values depend on the response element you specified. When you add a default attribute to a response element, the system auto-answers the question with the default value you specify. When the page appears, the question displays as already answered:
<Section>
<Header>Examples with the "default" attribute:</Header>
<Checkbox id="29" default="checked"><Label>I would like to be contacted concerning financial aid.</Label></Checkbox>
<Text id="20" default="Mozart"><Label>Name a few of your favorite composers:</Label></Text>
</Section>
The following table shows the legal defaults for each response element.
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Response elements can contain both <Label> and <HoverHelp> child elements to help guide the user through the application process. Certain attributes such as default and required can also be assigned to response elements for guiding the user. See Supplemental Questions: Layout And User Experience for details.
Each type of response element is associated with a group of fields in the database. Responses to <Checkbox> elements, for example, are stored in a group of fields whose names follow the pattern of supp_check_ followed by a two-digit number. There are 50 supp_check fields in the database, from supp_check_01 to supp_check_50. The id attribute you assign to each response element will determine which particular field the response is stored in.
For example, the response to <Checkbox id="42"> will be stored in the field called supp_check_42. When you are ready to download student data to your college's Student Information System, you will use these field names to tell the Download Client which data you want.
The following table shows the association between a response element and the supplemental questions database.
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</Section>
In the database (and Download Client results, if downloaded), the example answers in the image above would result in a "0" being stored in supp_check_01 and supp_check_04, while a "1" would be stored in supp_check_02 and supp_check_03.
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