SCT Banner YES Implementation Team
Meeting Notes
MEETING LOGISTICS
Item / DescriptionDate / March 10, 2008
Time / 8:30 a.m.
Location
/ MESHEL HALL – Computer Center Conference RoomATTENDEES
Facilitator(s) / Carol ChenNote Taker / Cheryl Beil
Participants / Mary Lou Castner, Troy Cross, Sue Davis, Bob DeFrances (for Beth Yeatts), Jeanne Herman, Tim Kovaleski, Dona Madacsi, Rick Marsico, Elizabeth Nelson, James Stanger, Bob Tupaj and Donna Wainio.
Not Present
/ Rhonda Adams, Catherine Cala, Becky Geltz, Eileen Greaf, Betty Jo Licata and Beth Yeatts.AGENDA ITEMS
RECOGNITIONS / Carol congratulated the Student Implementation Team and all staff involved with successful impl of the Student system Go Live on 3/3/08. She also recognized Rick Marsico for his appointment as Interim Chief Technology Officer upon the retirement of Donna Esterly; he will assume extra responsibilities in connection with the YES implementation project.CORRECTIONS / Notes
Impl Mtg – 2/25/08
/ Email any corrections to Cheryl Beil.REVIEW PRIOR ACTION ITEMS
/ See updates on items #1, 2, 3 and 6a, d, e and g.TEAM UPDATES
1. Studenta. Regis/Records / Since Student GoLive on 3/3/08, ~270 EARLY students have registered in PROD over a 3-day period. Donna W. prepared documentation for students with step-by-step instructions; this facilitated registration process significantly. Pre-reqs required a few adjustments; additional adjustments may be required when current students register for Summer semester. Still need to convert Academic History into PROD. Jeanne commended Doug/Tim on their creativity in developing the advisement screen and the hold process; Advisors were very satisfied and all students were held/released as planned. Staff received a few calls regarding posting the Schedule online as a .PDF file, but it is not yet complete. Discovered that some current students registered prematurely while registration was open for EARLY group, but staff was able to cancel these. Since academic history is not yet loaded, upper classmen are temporarily ranked as Freshmen; this prompted some student inquiries. Met with Communications Team last week to plan the informational mailing for ~16,900 current students; funding for mailing was discussed. Kathy Leeper proposed a theme of “It’s All Inside” using a box to direct them to one specific area in the portal for full service and instructions. Plan is to utilize the box theme throughout campus during Summer and Fall terms. Fall term registration by appointment for current students is scheduled week of 4/7-11, followed by transient student registration; this will provide good stress testing of the system. Time slots are assigned starting at 5:00 AM to reduce system load which usually peaks around 11:00 and later; but registration is not limited to assigned time. Tech staff continues to monitor load and has added new software to portal. Open registration for Fall term starts 4/21. Tim reported that work continues on Academic History in PPRD; requested assistance reviewing data (quarters to semesters) - plan to test this week during Spring Break. Identified 2nd group of ~18,000 students for Academic History conversion covering the period of Spring 2007 back to 2004; Tim ran audits for group – Marie Cullen will begin reviewing transfer audit. Jeanne will determine best time to do conversion to PROD. Beth Y. and James will notify Jeanne if STFA should be cloned for further testing. Doug requested a clone to TEST.
b. Admissions / Carol will follow up on cleaning address data in SOASBGI table; will need to convert to upper and lower case but is not a top priority. Removed duplicate test scores in PPRD; Amy Gordon will verify before moving into PROD. Carol reported that Marie will be working with Sharon Mika to prepare for going live with DARS/Banner; staff will need to be trained.
c. Student Accts
(Bob DeFrances
for B.Yeatts) / Using the ~300 EARLY students registered in PROD to check for mock fee assessments; appears to work correctly, including orientation fee. Since we activated the online assessment rather than batch assessment for both weeks of EARLY registration, need to mail Promise to Pay agreement to these students. (When designing Promise to Pay, Doug assumed that the batch assessment link would be activated.) Discovered that if students register for Summer and Fall terms, TouchNet will combine both fee assessments for a single account balance when accounts are rolled over, rather than differentiate the two fees; this will cause confusion for students. Bob will meet with Jeanne to further test the flow-through to TN. Bob questioned a prior email from Chris Howard that if Banner is down when TN batch processing generates the late fee job run, TN will decline after a few attempts to write back to Banner and then feed will fail; Troy will research further. Carol reported that unit testing is scheduled on 3/20 with Housing, A/R and General Accounting.
2. Financial Aid / Presently running simultaneous aid years in M-204 and Banner. Three areas are currently live in Banner - ISIR loads, verification process, and SAP; Banner process involves much less work. Appworx is running smoothly. Deadline posted for priority consideration for FASFA was 2/15; actually used 3/1 in all rules and have ~6,000 ISIRs that will be used in initial packaging run. By end of March, will be able to package and run through awarding process and generate award letters. The new FinAid self-service release today breaks out FinAid from Student self-service. Consultant indicated that the final INS software package (handles the need calculation in Banner) would be bundled into the new release, but discovered that the patch released in Feb. includes this version. James notified Jason that the patch is a higher priority than the new SS release. After the official PFC version of patch is installed, will be able to award Pell grants. Continue to work on documentation on how to use the portal to be included with March award letters; also creating a Flash tutorial to play on the FA website. Testing of Academic History data in CONV is going well; data for transfer students is still needed to test further.
3. General Person / No report given.
4. HR/Payroll / No report given.
5. MyYSU / Bob met with website/portal advisory committee on 2/27; discussed decision document re: mass mailing vs. posting an announcement in the portal. Committee will review criteria required for appropriate mass emailing and make recommendations as follows: 1) students/faculty/staff are expected to log on to their MyYSU email account at least 1X per day to check announcements; 2) encourage faculty to require students to ONLY use their MyYSU email account as the primary means of communicating class info; 3) disable forwarding rules for MyYSU email and provide instructions for adding MyYSU email to their 3rd party email service; and 4) increase email server capacity to eliminate the bottleneck effect for mass emails. Bob sent the revised policy statement for the Classified Ads channel back to Holly Jacobs for review; Comm recommends reducing the number of simultaneous ad postings per user from 10 to 5 to conserve space. Will need to enlist help from Tech Desk or other area to monitor ad postings for obvious violations of the policy. Committee also proposed that we consider using a complaint-driven approach, similar to other RAD services, where consumers can post any complaints. Bob will change over the Schedule of Classes. He has received some phone calls about availability of Schedule; preliminary schedule is available through PROD in self-service – Bob will direct users to this site from the Schedule of Classes page. Jeanne will post a .PDF file in the Channel as soon as it is complete with names of instructors and pre-reqs are finalized. Carol reported that current student email quote is 50mb; we will update quota as needed. Recommend that we modify quota for student.ysu.edu.
6. Finance / Currently testing student refund check feed from Student A/R into Finance. Staff from General Acctg, A/P, Student A/R and computer services to verify procedure and role of each area. Decided not to automate some jobs now done manually (i.e.-FURFEED) since only a few refunds are currently coming through the test process.
7. Advancement / No report given.
8. Communication / No report given.
9. ODS/EDW / Carol will meet today with Jim Hanek/Elaine Jacob to discuss ODS document controls reporting rules and other issues.
10. Training / A new training schedule is posted which includes advisement, overrides for student overviews and academic overview process; several faculty plan to attend during Spring Break. Will use both training rooms again for next week of EARLY registration; Jason Rakers added 10 phone lines to handle calls for assistance. Training is scheduled up until April GoLive for current students. Donna is meeting with Academic Advisors on 3/11 and questioned status of test scores job; Carol reported that Amy Gordon is reviewing test scores in TEST and will sign off this week.
11. Technical / Troy is working with Dona M. to coordinate area requests for DBA services and system admin support staff; reminded areas that the assigned staff will be the initial point of contact for any assistance. Tech Desk staff needs training in order to direct questions to the proper person/area. Carol asked Troy to check with Jason re: his plan for the Oracle 10G database upgrade in June or July; will involve testing by all areas that are live in system and must give notice to staff. Carol will work with Dona to review current synch process between Banner and M-204 and decide when to turn off the synch from M-204 to Banner. Need to resolve issue with addresses before performing the final synch. SOLAR and SID are required for change of classes for Summer term; students still have the option to make address changes in both M-204 and Banner. Dona recommended that a workgroup be organized to address all aspects of the current functionality of both systems before a decision is made. Doug submitted a 3rd suggestion re: enrollment verification which should be considered in light of the 2 UDC recommendations in the draft decision document; Jeanne/Donna W. will research further to see if we can avoid having students receive a false message. Carol and Dona are reviewing the outstanding tech task log since Stud has now gone live.
NEW BUSINESS
None
ACTION ITEMS
New Action Items / Issues /Owner
/Due Date
/Status
None / / /Prior Items / Issues
/Owner
/Due Date
/Current Status
1. Review of portal usage policies /Bob Tupaj
/ ASAP /Website/portal committee discussed decision doc re: mass mailing vs. portal announcement; will review criteria required for mass emailing and make recommendation.
2. OBUG – April 28, 2008 /Team Leaders
/ April 2008 /Carol reported that upcoming OBUG is April 28th. Begin contacting staff in areas to determine interest.
3. Articles for January February March2008 newsletter /
Team Leaders
/ ASAP /Publication date moved to March. Ron Cole received Student article; is awaiting articles from HR from Bob Tupaj re: portal.
4. Formulate a rollout plan for Studentsystem /
Student, Training & Commun. Teams
/ ASAP / Collaborative effort is required to assess all outstanding tasks and develop a timeline and communications plan to notify all students, faculty and staff.5. Decision document re: MyYSU email
addresses for alumni and current
graduates /
Catherine Cala
/ ASAP / Catherine, Bob, Donna and Carol met to discuss status of SS impl for Alumni Friends plus possibility of using a permanent email addr for alumni. Will meet w/ Deans to discuss email options for grads incldg recom to award permanent emails only to Alumni Assoc members. Will draft decision doc & consider feasibility of conducting a survey of alumni/current grads to determine interest.6. Banner & Third Party software –
a. Parking fees – Bosscars
b. Classroom/Events Management
Scheduling – Ad Astra
c. Faculty Evaluation
d. XML Transcript
e. HEI Reporting
f. International Students/Employees
g. Remark software /
Carol Chen
/In process
On HoldIn progress
In progress
In progress
In progress
In progress /
● Donna W. worked w/ Jason and Bosscars to resolve final issues. TouchNet online payment was not turned on, since we could not limit payments to parking permit charges only.
● On hold until after Student GoLive. Target is to be ready for Spring 2009 schedule.
● Plan is to continue using the current manual process (based on M-204) for the 1st year of GoLive until the tech resources are available. The new process in Banner will not be needed until Fall 2008.● Marie, Carol & the team need to plan the implementation timetable for XML project.
● Carol scheduled a meeting on 3/17 re: Student HEI reporting, data mapping, data analysis, etc. Troy reminded Team Leads to again assess reporting needs for their areas (especially requests for annual reports) and notify IT in order coordinate planning & avoid last minute requests.
● Will need Student and HR collaboration due to recent significant changes. Carol to follow up with Jef Davis; Rhonda and Cindy (HR) will be invited to next meeting.
● Waiting for Amy Gordon to be available to work on processing.
7. Evaluate if WYSU should use Banner
Advancement for pledges /
Advancement Team