Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of questions commonly asked by UT Web for Students users, with
answers and explanations. If you don't see your question here, there is a form
at the bottom for you to submit your question. We will review your questions
and post answers to them here.
General
Why is the system not available 24 hours a day?
UT Web for Faculty and Advisers is a direct link to the University's enterprise
server-based Student Information System (SIS). Each weeknight at about 11:55 PM
all real-time links to SIS are taken down for nightly batch processing. Batch
processing includes the daily system backups, printing of official transcripts,
posting of financial aid to student accounts, posting of grades, and other tasks.
The batch programs require exclusive control of the SIS files, and so no real-time
access is allowed.
If you're curious as to how the system works and what all the different components
are, please see our
system information page.
Why is the system so slow whenever I use it?
Simply put, that's because everyone else is using it too.
Historically the busiest times for the online systems (including UT Web for Students,
Web for Faculty and Advisers, and InTouch) are during early registration, the first
week of classes, and the week grades are posted. On January 14, 2002 (the first day
of classes for spring 2002), there were over 103,000 host transaction to SIS from the web.
A single transaction represents one add/drop request, address change, credit card payment,
or other similar inquiry/update function. There were over 636,000 web server requests on
that particular day, and 3.4 gigabytes of data were transferred from the web server.
A graph
of host traffic is available, showing the day-to-day traffic through Web for Students
since it went live in November, 1998.
What if I forget my PIN?
If you forget your PIN you, you must go to the
user agreement page and reassign your PIN. You will be prompted to login when you view
these pages. Use your UTAD account to login. If you have any questions, visit the
login/logout information page.
Why does the system time me out so quickly?
The login time for UT Web for Faculty and Advisers is thirty minutes per page.
If you're on a page and you select a link within that thirty minute period, you get another
thirty minutes to review the next page, and so on. The time may appear to be much less than
that if you're looking through the schedule of classes, so be sure to have all the information
you need handy before you begin.
If we were to set the available time per page any more than this, we risk the chance that a user
who walk away from the computer in a public area could have their personal information available
to anyone who happens to walk by. It's often a tradeoff between security and convenience, and
thirty minutes seems to be a happy medium between the two.
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