The amount of data loaded into various budget tables is massive. New data must be entered every summer in preparation for the new fiscal year. Previously, the Payroll/HR Systems Team (PHRST) and departmental users had to work together to load thousands of budget entries. A third-party application, Mercury’s QuickTest, was used to load the data into EIS. QuickTest is a key stroke emulator designed for entering test data into an enterprise system component. Each entry can take several minutes. The amount of data required by UNT’s budget could easily take several days to load using multiple computers. It is a time consuming process requiring constant monitoring of rejected entries. To complicate matters, the loading can only be done during non-business hours to avoid data conflict with online users during normal work days.

The CRM Functional and Technical teams recently enjoyed lunch together to celebrate their latest accomplishments. In the last few months, the team has created a utility for sending bulk HTML emails, implemented a process to capture profile data from students’ SAT/ACT tests, supported the efforts of the Spring UNT Preview event, implemented fundamental business rules for use by the Graduate School’s CRM processes, and written reports using XML Publisher.

Pictured (left to right) are Walter Bowen, Monika Botha, Janetta Willeford, Maureen Saringer, Ailene Horton, Allison Carpenter, Marci Mason, Sikkandar Sahib, and Troy Price.

The UNT Contributor Relations Systems Development Team (CRSDT) has made it easier to say “Thank-you” to donors. CRSDT developed self-service data extracts for Advancement’s Annual Fund Phonathon to quickly identify people who have fulfilled monetary pledges in support of the University. By loading this information into a program named RuffaloCODY, the Annual Fund can now schedule “Thank-a-thons” to call donors and personally express gratitude for their monetary support.

UNT Student Administration departments have been working over the past several months on a significant collaborative effort to automatically charge repeat tuition when a student takes a course for the third time. The tuition charge had previously been added to a student’s account midway through the semester in which the class was taken. This improvement has made significant progress in delivering good customer service to students. It allows for better financial planning and scheduling options that may be available to some students.

Teamwork to reach this improvement was required between staff in Student Accounting, Student Records, the Registrar’ Office, and the Student Financials Systems Development Team. “All of these groups are to be commended for their cooperation and for going the extra mile to help students to succeed,” says Kayle Godinez, Director of Student Accounting at UNT.

The UNT Health Science Center (HSC) has recently implemented the EIS Gradebook functionality within the Faculty and Student Center portals for the Physician Assistant and Premedical Science Program. UNTHSC Programmer Analyst, Prafulla Srinivasan, reports that this new functionality assists faculty and department chairs in better monitoring a student’s progress during a class instead of waiting until the end of a term. This added functionality also allows students to view their assignments, grades, and instructor comments from within their own EIS Student Center. “This is a very valuable feature that should promote our retention efforts at UNTHSC, “says Thomas Morrman, Ed.D., Vice President for Student Affairs. “This implementation will provide the Center for Academic Performance the ability to offer timely interventions for students experiencing academic challenges.”

Future plans include releasing the module to other schools and departments within the UNTHSC.