Livin' on Island Time

I recently returned from vacation in the Bahamas. My family stayed at Elbow Cay, one of the out islands in the island chain. By definition, “out islands” are the smaller less developed islands which is what was attractive to my family – a slower pace, limited connectivity to the outside world, friendly people, lots of family time, and peaceful, beautiful beaches. Living on “island time” requires a different expectation for utility services. During our recent stay due to a major storm and other situations, we persevered (OK — perspired) through three extended power outages. When you called the power provider, Bahamas Electric, if anyone answered the phone (sorry or thankfully, no automated response system) you were told “dem guys are workin’ on it”.

This is quaint but can be a little frustrating for those that have a very high level of expectation for the services we consume in our less relaxed society. Although you can debate the real importance of the level of services and products that we consume to our quality of life, there is no doubt the level of service provided by our infrastructure in our homes is far superior to the past and to other parts of the world.

As I considered this in my “heat addled” mind while on Elbow Cay, I thought about the infrastructure that underlies EIS and other UNT applications. There are several teams that work tirelessly behind the scenes to manage a complex infrastructure that is unique to UNTS. Although there are many other institutions that have some of the applications, systems software, and hardware that UNTS has, there are none that have the same combination of applications running on an identical or even similar infrastructure plan. Due to the number and variety of components, the infrastructure that supports EIS is much more complex and unique than our old mainframe infrastructure. Not only is the environment more complex, it is growing explosively as more applications are added. For example, some of the growth we have experienced since 2006 is:

Despite all this growth and complexity, the infrastructure groups that support the applications that employees and students use are very responsive and continue to meet our high availability goals. The CITC teams that provide these behind the scenes services include:

• Applications Infrastructure Management (Administrative Information Systems)
  administers the PeopleSoft products and other ancillary products.

• Oracle Database Administration (Administrative Information Systems)
  provides support for the Oracle databases which store the data for EIS and other administrative, academic and departmental applications.

• Security Administration (Administrative Information Systems)
  supports security for the distributed security model not only for EIS but also for Oracle and business intelligence.

• Infrastructure and Technology Services (Enterprise Systems Technical Services)
  supports the many servers and the operating systems on those servers; provides support for the storage area network supporting EIS and many other CITC initiatives; provides support for the critical backups of EIS data.

• EIS Tools Support (Administrative Information Systems)
  supports the portal, develops utilities, and stretches the capabilities of the delivered software to improve integration making the application and it’s interaction with other components appear seamless.

• Directory Services (Enterprise Systems Technical Services)
  provides authentication and authorization services.

In addition to the outstanding services these teams provide within their own areas of expertise, one of the strengths within CITC is the collaborative relationship between the teams and divisions. Although each have their own unique responsibilities, all staff work well together to develop solutions and troubleshoot problems.

These folks often toil behind the scenes to make the IT infrastructure responsive and available. Their efforts make the infrastructure nearly as taken for granted as the plumbing and more reliable than the electricity on Elbow Cay! Please remember their contributions and take the time to give them some well deserved recognition when you have the opportunity. EIS Technical Contacts »

Thank-a-Thons Complement University’s Annual Fund Phonathon

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.

RuffaloCODY is software with a truly unique name that has been serving an equally unique purpose for the University. It is a phonathon automation program. The UNT Advancement Office has a dedicated room of work stations from which student workers make calls to prospective donors using information presented to them in application screens. The program presents prospects in sequence to the callers’ workstations, auto-dialing and providing information allowing a relationship-building conversation rather than a “cold call.” For example, the caller knows if the prospect is an alumnus, what college they graduated from and when, if their spouse is also alumni, and a snapshot of the prospect’s “giving” history. During the call, notes can be captured and used for future contacts and records correction such as job and address changes.

Historically campaigns have included large amounts of paper-based informational resources, such as letters, flyers, brochures, and forms. Callers would hastily write down notes during calls and later transfer the information into electronic formats. RuffaloCODY is a more eco-friendly initiative and supports UNTS’ ideology of being truly green.

In preparation for phonathons, RuffaloCODY assists in segmenting prospects, allowing calling efforts to be focused on groups most likely to yield successful pledges. After the phonathon is completed, management reports can be produced for analysis. Typical data in the reports pertain to participation, average pledge, income per contact, and other related information that helps measure the success of the phonathon.

CRM Celebrates Team Efforts

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.

Direct Loan Program

UNT Financial Aid and Scholarships implemented the Federal Direct Stafford Loan program for the 2009-2010 award year. The University currently participates in the lender-based FFEL (Federal Family Education Loan) program, in which students and parents borrow from private banks and lenders. All Summer 2009 loan awards will continue to be processed through the lender-based FFEL program.

Volatility in the credit markets and reductions in lender subsidies have caused many lenders to cease offering borrower benefits and other services. UNT is therefore transitioning from the lender-based FFEL program to the Federal Direct Loan program. The Direct Loan program is not impacted by changes in the economy and offers students and parents a more stable, streamlined and predictable borrowing experience.

There are several benefits to the Direct Loan Program, including:

• A guaranteed source of funding for student loans.

• The option of an income-contingent repayment plan or an income-based repayment plan when a student enters repayment. This means a borrower has the option of ensuring that the loan repayment amount is always affordable based on what an income allows.

• Students in the Federal Direct Loan Program who enter into public service jobs can have any remaining balance on loans forgiven after 10 years of repayment while in public service work. (While this option does not exist in the FFEL Program, students who borrowed in that program can consolidate their loans to the Direct Loan Program in order to take advantage of this forgiveness).

• The Federal Direct PLUS loan origination fee is lower, with an interest rate for Parent and gradPLUS loans of 7.9% compared to 8.5% in the lender-based FFEL Program.

Improvements Result from Student Records Developer Efforts

The International Admissions Office uses an application named FSAatlas for case management tracking of international students and scholars. It streamlines administrative processes, improves communication with internationals, and frees up staff from clerical work so they can focus more on providing better service. The Student Records System Development Team (SRSDT) built a modification that exports Admission data from EIS to the FSAatlas System on students who are currently enrolled but have been admitted into another program at UNT. This change allows International Advising to upload the most current information on their students. Also in support of International Admissions, SRSDT created a process and report to apply Student Groups to a designated population of students who have applied to UNT through International Admissions. This replaced a tedious and time-consuming manual process that is saving time for the Office of International Admissions.

The College of Education (COE) is benefiting from a download procedure created by SRSDT that creates an external advising module used by COE advisors. This allows the advisors to keep track of information that is not tracked in EIS and replaces a previous database that had become obsolete and un-usable.

The Department of Math gained improvement in their Math Placement Process recently through SRSDT efforts. The enhancement replaces the manual task the department used to look at individual student qualifications to determine what level math course the student is allowed and prepared to take. The improvement ensures new students are more quickly assessed and registered for the appropriate math class.

Freshman orientations this summer have available for the first time .pdf files of open 1000/2000 level classes. These were needed since UNT no longer prints a full, hard-copy “Schedule of Classes.” Incoming freshmen can determine their possible class schedules based on the most current version of open classes when the .pdf files are updated.

The process to create the CBM003 Course Inventory Report has always been done manually by the UNT Registrar Office. SRSDT created a program to upload the course inventory file from the Coordinating Board into EIS. Additionally, the file is compared to the current course catalog for changes. Any changes are downloaded into the CBM003 file. All steps are completely automated and save hours of time for the Registrar staff.

CITC Reorganizations

The Computing and Information Technology Center announced in May 2009 some reorganizational efforts which impacted the division of Administrative Information Systems (AIS). AIS is the primary technical support for EIS and associated EIS users.

Budget Data Loading Streamlined

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.

This summer, according to Ron Wang of the PHRST, end users can be “happy campers” when it comes time for budget loading. The PHRST has developed a budget loading process using Component Interface. Component Interface is a PeopleSoft delivered utility that allows a customized Application Engine (PeopleSoft’s batch processing program) to pick up and load budget input data into various budget tables. The slow key-stroke emulator is now replaced with an efficient batch process. As a result, EIS users no longer have to be involved in the budget’s data loading. The PHRST simply runs the customized Component Interface and the budget data loads usually in just minutes. Now that’s progress!

Automated Tuition Charge Leads to Improved Student Service

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.

EIS Gradebook Supports UNTHSC Student Success

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.

DARwin Interactive Audit Live for New Students

On Monday, June 15, 2009, a new interactive degree audit was implemented that is available to UNT students via the myUNT Student Center.  It allows students more flexibility in planning their classes. Also, students can see where they are in their degree plan and what courses they still need to complete.  This feature is initially being offered to new freshmen and will be rolled out to the entire student population over the coming months.

Dozens of staff members across campus, particularly many academic advisors and Registrar staff made the go-live possible. The primary technical lead on the initiative was Gini Kennedy on the Student Records Systems Development Team.

Change to EagleAlert Feature in myUNT

The EIS Portal System named myUNT (http://my.unt.edu) was upgraded to version 9.0 the weekend of April 25, 2009. The upgrade was completed on time and was a success.

Feedback from the University community had indicated that the EagleAlert notification on a person’s home page all of the time was distracting. After the upgrade, the notification pagelet is set to appear once a year for employees and once every four months for students. The pagelet disappears after a person clicks the link to view his/her phone numbers. It will appear again when it is time to check the phone numbers again (annually for employees, every four months for students).

The feature is designed to keep the pagelet “fresh” and remind everyone to keep their information up-to-date. It has been a challenge with EagleAlert when a cell phone number entered for a person no longer belongs to that person. The EagleAlert system does not know the difference and ends up waking someone that has no association with UNT at all!

The EagleAlert pagelet is not under an individual user’s control and is, therefore, not seen on the “Add Content” page in the portal. If a user needs to change a phone number and the EagleAlert pagelet is not available, an employee can access the “Phone Numbers” link in the HR pagelet on the Employee tab. Students update their phone numbers via the Portal’s Student Center. There is also a link under “Discover myUNT” that is labeled “Update Eagle Alert”.

EIS Technical Contacts

• AIS Team Organization — Includes team names and acronyms, team leads, and team email names found in the Outlook global contact list.
• CITC Staff Directory
• AIS Organizational Charts
• Administrative Information Systems
• Administrative Information Systems Tools & User Services
• HSC Web and Programming Services

AIS Launches Staff Development Training Program

By John Smith, Title, Team, CITC

Staff development training tailored specifically for information technology staff is usually not provided by human resource departments. A new training program recently began for Administrative Information Systems (AIS) staff employed by the UNT Computing & Information Technology Center (CITC). The EIS Training, Communications, and Administration (EISTCA) team is responsible for the development and delivery of the classes.

The idea for the program originated with John Hooper, Executive Director for the AIS division. Goals for selecting topics to be taught were enhancement of systems analysis skills, communication within teams and with functional users, and IT management as a career path. Another possible topic in the future could be business analyst skills.

The classes are scheduled into sections that meet for a total of nine hours. In consideration of projects and staff responsibilities, each section is divided into 3-hour meeting times on three different days for one week. Attendance for all nine hours is required for completion of the course. This type of schedule allows the staff to maintain focus on their work responsibilities and not feel stressed about being absent from their team for long periods of time. The rooms being used for the training are regular classrooms at Discovery Park. Cathy Gonzalez, EISTCA Manager, said “I wanted to find a place to hold the training which was convenient for our staff but not in direct proximity to their offices. The rooms chosen only have a computer for the instructor which eliminates the temptation students might have to work or answer emails during class.” Content is a mixture of lecture and learning activities, supplemented by documentation for each student. “Learning should be enjoyable,” said Cathy Gonzalez, “with an equal exchange between instructor and student.” Group activities support the goal of developing and building team synergy.

The AIS management team in cooperation with John Hooper decided which learning topics were appropriate for their team members. Staff is required to attend the topics selected as appropriate. Programmers and programmer analysts are taking the Systems Analysis class. The communications topic is open to all AIS staff.

Feedback from the attendees is sought to ensure staff needs are being adequately met. Lip Sim, programmer analyst, related his thoughts on the Systems Analysis Skills class. “This class was a good refresher because it reminded me of what the dynamics of a successful team are and all about the important checkpoints that occur during a system development. I like the Meeting Checklist on page 6. The topics on Communication and Customer Service Skill were informative and inspiring. The ‘Entropy in IT System’ presentation on Day 2 was interesting. Our class had discussions looking at it from a much a larger scale using the 8.9 extended-support and the 9.0/9.1 upgrades as an example; down to something much smaller such as supporting the legacy ID Card System. Lastly, I liked how the class stresses the importance of getting the ‘right’ user requirements and different ways to go about getting it.”

The instructors for the program are Cathy Gonzalez and Martin Richards, Ph.D..

EIS Training Links

EIS Training: http://eis.unt.edu/training