Following a transition to CRM (Constituent Relationship Management) last fall, the Office of Admissions officially retired its APPX undergraduate prospect system on Friday, January 23, 2009.

At an event hosted by Steve Vocelka and Lawanna Robinson, a small group of APPX users and CITC support partners gathered in GAB 560 that Friday to say “good bye” to APPX and witness the final shutdown of its ntsf880v1 SUN host.

Attending from Admissions were Janetta Willeford, Ailene Horton, Allison Carpenter and APPX administrator, Walter Bowen. Nancy Fisher and Brian Richman represented EISTS, and were joined by Don Butler from CITC.

Also on hand that day from the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine and the School of Health Professions was Joel Daboub, Assistant Dean of Admissions and Outreach. Back in 2002, Joel was a member of the team that ported the prospect system to APPX.

The undergraduate prospect system was a cornerstone for student recruitment follow-up operations for more than two decades. The system was originally built in 1987 with SPEED II, a 4GL development utility on the Wang VS5 platform.

The upgrade to the Oracle PeopleSoft Financials software from version 8.4 to 9.0 is almost upon us. The conversion process is scheduled to begin at noon on Friday, March 13th, and be completed Monday afternoon, March 16th. The EIS Financials system will be available once again to users at all campuses on the following Tuesday, March 17, 2009.

Every effort has been made to minimize the impact of the upgrade on the users of the Financials system. The unavailability of EIS Financials is not very problematic since the upgrade schedule is taking advantage of UNT’s holiday for Spring Break on Monday, March 16th. Since the campus is closed for the holiday, the only time that the system will be unavailable to UNT users during regular business hours will be in the afternoon of Friday, March 13th. Though the UNT Health Science Center (HSC) is open on March 16th, the EIS Financials environment will not be accessible to HSC users that day.

The EIS Tools, Applications, Reporting, and Portal (EISTARP) team is currently working to upgrade the EIS Portal System (my.unt.edu) to Oracle PeopleSoft Portal, version 9.0. The upgrade provides new and exciting functionality, such as community calendars, improved content management, collaborative workspaces and discussion forums.

With this upgrade, the EISTARP team is making major improvements to the look and feel of the portal. The upgrade goal is to make myUNT a student-centered portal that makes doing business with UNT an intuitive experience. The improved myUNT includes a softer look with simple navigation and Web 2.0 style graphics. The new design also allows the Portal to be more accessible on hand-held mobile devices.

This quarter we take a look at the technical side of Spring 2008 registration.

EIS Servers Supporting Registration:

• 14 web servers
• 8 application servers
• 2 database servers
• 3 batch servers

The peak days for number of users logged into myUNT were Monday, January 5th and Monday, January 12th.

January 5th, 2009 - peak time was 2:00 p.m. with 1,127 users
(compared to Monday, January 7th 2008 at 6 p.m. with 3,401 users)

January 12th, 2009 - peak time was 6:00 p.m. with 2,494 users
(compared to Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 10 p.m. with  10:00 a.m. with 3,789 users)

UNT will install an upgrade to its EIS Financials system in March. The new software, version 9.0, is scheduled to be in use March 17.

The upgrade provides enhanced workflow to the e-Pro system. To facilitate the upgrade and keep requisitions on track, Purchasing and Payment Services must have all current requisitions processed through to purchase orders in EIS before the transition to the new system begins. Here is a timeline: