SCT Banner YES Implementation Team

Meeting Notes

MEETING LOGISTICS

Item / Description
Date / April 15, 2009
Time / 8:30 a.m.

Location

/ MESHEL HALL – Computer Center Conference Room

ATTENDEES

Facilitator(s) / Eileen Greaf and Rick Marsico
Note Taker / Cheryl Beil
Participants / Pam Balent (for Catherine Cala), Mary Lou Castner, Troy Cross, Brian Godsen, Bob Forchione, Dona Madacsi, Monica Mastran-Czopor (for Sue Davis), Liz Nelson, James Stanger, Bob Tupaj,
Donna Wainio and Beth Yeatts

Not Present

/ Catherine Cala, Sue Davis, Becky Geltz, Jeanne Herman and Betty Jo Licata

AGENDA ITEMS

CORRECTIONS / Notes
Impl Mtg –3/18/09
/ List of attendees not present was corrected to delete Cindy Miller, since Donna Wainio is the person currently reporting for Human Resources/Payroll and was present. Revised Action Item #4 update to read as follows: Goal is to not duplicate messages by using both mass email and portal Announcements.’ Email any other corrections to Cheryl Beil.
REVIEW PRIOR
ACTION ITEMS
/ See updates on items #2, 9, 10 and 11.

TEAM UPDATES

1.  Student
a. Regis/Records
/ Donna W. reported that Fall ‘09 registration is underway. Resolved one issue with Promise-to-Pay screen by removing a link from the Registration area. Staff continues to clean up ~996 records remaining for conversion. Resolving some issues with registration to verify pre-reqs. Questions regarding authorization to do overrides should be referred to the document outlining the University policy limiting who is authorized to do overrides (was distributed to all deans, department heads, program chairs, and advisors).
b. Admissions / Monica C. reported that work continues on the EMAS bridge. Tim K. completed the residency discrepancy report; will verify with Sue whether this applies going forward or to cleaning up old issues.
c. Student Accts / Beth Y. reported on a webinar with TouchNet regarding a solution for the Java payment screen issue; must be completed by October 1 due to de-support by Banner. Will be delivered as an upgrade to Bill Payment Suite at a one time cost of $5,000; each additional module is $1,500 – we should consider transcripts in addition to Advancement/Admissions. Areas of Advancement, Admissions and Transcripts need to submit GMRs to install Payment Application Pages – still must be purchased. CMS (Commerce Management System) must be upgraded to 5.0 to be PCI compliant by FYE 2010. After the 5.0 upgrade, Marketplace needs to be implemented as well; may offer some solutions to PCI issues. Can also install new software Dashboard with 5.0 for an additional cost of $9500; will waive licensing fee this year only. TN recommends that we get in the queue now for earliest implementation in ~ 90 days, but the solution may not be ready until ~June 1. Rick will contact Beth regarding the recommended timeline and cost involved. Will require limited tech support.
2.  Financial Aid / James S. reported that the 2009-2010 processing is ready to go; sent ~6,000 award letters. Self-service is working well. Wrote several ad hoc reports to catch errors. The Summer financial aid application is available on website. Have had conference calls with Great Lakes regarding hold release processing; beginning Summer semester, GL won’t release funds to YSU unless students are registered. Liz has written Ohio scripts for 2009-10 and is developing a profile work form for staff use when counseling students. April upgrade to federal loan programs needs installed.
3.  General Person / Bob F. reported that the GP team met on 4/2 to discuss a policy for notifying the group when an issue arises. Will test a new automated feature for entering social security numbers in Banner. Discussed making the entry for Race mandatory for Graduate students as it currently is for Undergraduates. Next meeting is set for 4/20 to discuss address issues.
4.  HR/Payroll / Donna W. reported that 2010 (rather than 2009) will be the year for the 27th pay for bi-weekly. An issue with double accruing of semi-monthly leave time occurred when the job was run simultaneously with a FinAid packaging run. Since the HR job did not come back promptly it was rerun, causing a duplication in updating employee records; error was corrected and affected employees were notified. Submitted GMRs to automate a few processes which will hopefully eliminate a reoccurrence. Continue to work on summer faculty pays to resolve some tax issues; have contacted other Ohio schools to seek a resolution. Have experienced problems with INB self-service single sign-on from the portal and with J-initiator when staff are installing Firefox rather than Internet Explorer as their browser; infrequent users of INB are installing IE Java updates that block the function of J-initiator – or users are not designated administrators and are unable to download and install J-initiator updates themselves. INB and portal passwords must be in synch. Banner 8 upgrade has a Java solution that eliminates J-initiator.
5.  MyYSU / Bob T. reported that Summit promoted Luminis 5 this year and shared the new features. He attended a session on Course Studio and reported that we have to make a decision to provide faculty with either CS or WebCT – we could possibly provide a link from within CS to WebCT. Plymouth State University designed ~40 custom roles and demo’d a few of them. Montgomery Community College provided some information on Tabs, a feature we currently do not utilize. A member of the portal workgroup developed a survey for faculty/staff and one for students to gather feedback on portal usage and preferences for receiving Campus Announcements and email forwarding. Began a decision document on using either the native Luminis email (built-in) or another application available from Sun One Communication.
6.  Finance / Mary Lou C. reported that the 6/1/09 date for shutdown of CICS/Advantage is acceptable to Grants Accounting, and A/P staff is OK as long as there is a process to extract data if needed. (SciQuest Update – see item #12 below.)
7.  Advancement / Pam B. reported that they are working with IT staff on the APPCUPD delivered report. Have encountered a problem with a temporary table directive for payroll deductions; donation pledges are randomly becoming inactive rather than dropping off when paid. Dennis/Maureen developed a script to run nightly that should resolve the issue; needs to be tested in Appworx.
8.  Communication / No report given.
9.  Reporting / No report given.
10.  Training / RickM.reportedthatthe training task force will research a decentralizedapproach to training needs. Will contact the team lead from each area to determine if there is a staff member who can handle training needs specific to their area. Beyond Banner, their goal is to identify potential resources across campus to address other technical training requests (i.e.- MS Office Suite, etc.). Rick is working to define a new technology position for a Business Support Specialist and is seeking Cabinet support to fill it in FY2010. Responsibilities would include serving as the coordinator for decentralized training, and filling the gaps to conduct sessions when cancelled by trainers; would also serve as liaison between the technical and functional areas and assume some of Carol Chen’s responsibilities. Donna W. agreed to handle critical training needs in the interim for both Banner and MS Office. Notify Rick of any immediate training needs.
11.  Technical / Jason T. reviewed a draft timeline for the next year to prepare for the Banner 8 upgrade. Currently is in the process of converting the database and completing all Banner 8 and 8.1 upgrades by mid-July to provide a full testing environment for areas to test for 6-7 months. He noted that FTP files/interfaces may encounter problems since schools attending MABUG reported that some vendors do not accept the UTF international 8-character set. We do not currently use this and must test thoroughly; will use a list of 3rd-party transfer files/vendors prepared by Dona M.’s group as a checklist. There is a built-in buffer Jan./Feb. 2010 for cleanup. Functional areas need to agree to a feasible downtime for INB and SSB systems (~ 4 days spanning a Friday thru Monday) to install Ban 8 and 8.1 upgrades (target is mid-February); team leads should discuss with staff and come prepared to discuss suitable dates at next Impl Team meeting. Jason will email request to Jeanne Herman and agreed to post a summary of systems availability. Troy proposed an option to adjust office hours to accommodate the downtime and operational needs.
12.  SciQuest / Mary Lou C. reported that they are working with SciQuest to set up a test site and provide data loads of vendor information, etc. SQ was on-site early April to provide a hands-on demo to staff from various departments – they use a Shopping Cart approach and staff could practice entering requisitions which was well received. Schedule is to train the main campus body during May and June and go live 7/1/09 for the new fiscal year.
13.  PeopleAdmin / No report given.
NEW BUSINESS
NONE

ACTION ITEMS

New Action Items / Issues /

Owner

/

Due Date

/

Status

1.  SETA Conference – Oct. 4-6, 2009
Orlando, FL /

Rick Marsico

/

ASAP

/

Pam Balent and Dona Madacsi expressed interest in attending. Donna W./ Jeanne H. may be presenting the module they developed in SSB for advisors. Travel expense will be paid from Banner budget this fiscal year; will then transition to dept budgets next year.

2.  Solution for undeliverable email when
forwarded to a 3rd party provider
/

Rick Marsico

Bob Tupaj /

ASAP

/

Proposed creating a workgroup to discuss an interim solutions and a permanent plan for emails that bounce back when forwarding is set up; must consider impact on eBilling and FinAid notification. Will contact other Banner schools that allow forwarding plus research another MS solution prior to disabling the forward capability.

Prior Items / Issues

/

Owner

/

Due Date

/

Current Status

1.  ePrint /

Troy Cross

/ ASAP /

Housed on separate server as a repository for reports; accessibility is determined by Banner security. Troy to define each report in ePrint; team leaders should forward a list of reports for their area. Troy will demo to Impl Team.

2.  Review of portal usage policies /

Bob Tupaj

/ ASAP / Proposed policies are still in Exec Committee. Clarified that our goal is to not duplicate campus announcements by using both portal Announcements and mass emailing. By NOT processing MyYSU mass emails 9AM-3PM, portal performance is improved. Classified Channel may not be implemented. Marketing of the portal is still on the table. Continue to discuss forwarding of YSU email to a 3rd party provider or disabling forward entirely. E-bills are bouncing back from 3rd party addresses, and student does not receive notice at all; will also impact FinAid notices next year. G-mail can provide greater storage while maintaining the ysu.edu address – Kent State currently offers this for student accounts. SunGard is working on channels for Google mail and calendar feature.
3.  Decision document re: MyYSU email
addresses for alumni and current
graduates /

Catherine Cala

/ ASAP / Need to develop a process to deactivate alumni Banner email addresses after 1 year free membership. When student record loads are completed, will activate the disabling function; must develop a method to notify when deactivated. Email addresses are currently assigned when student applications are accepted and a notification letter is sent. Return students and staff are not notified of prior email address. Jeanne updates email addresses for current students; will need to formalize a procedure for Registration staff to correct personal info. John Dalbec currently batch processes changes, but significantly slows processing of ID cards, etc.
4.  Classroom/Events Management
Scheduling – Ad Astra /

Jeanne Herman

/ In process / Jason T. loaded Astra into STFA test instance. ASTRA team will meet to best determine what needs completed & provide realistic timeline when ASTRA will be functional. Team still needs to manually build room preferences, which is labor intensive and time consuming.
5.  XML Transcript /

Sue Davis

/ In process / Continue to make good progress but need to resolve some technical issues. Capability for one school to create a transcript and transmit to the State site; another school can then download as an XML file. Testing to see if output matches info on the State site. DARS piece is being developed but is currently in litigation regarding ownership rights.
6.  Evaluate if WYSU should use Banner
Advancement for pledges /

Advancement Team

/

In process

/

Catherine C. to meet with Kami Greene in Gen Acctg; will add finance component to decision document and resend to Impl team.

7.  SCT Quality Assurance Council /

Project Managers

/

ASAP

/

Recommend YSU gets involved in Council to assure issues are shared/addressed.

8.  Policy/procedure to create/maint.
off-system mini-databases /

Project Managers

/

Deferred

/

Will determine policy for departmental databases after Banner is fully implemented.

9.  Processing requests for reporting /

Rick Marsico

/ Complete /

Enterprise reporting workgroup meets on an ongoing basis to discuss reporting strategy.