Union College
Administrative Computing Update
April, 2002

Current Projects          News          Recommendations & Priorities

Current Projects:
  1. Colleague 17 Upgrade: - must perform major upgrade or financial aid stops again
  2. Academic Advising - WebAdvisor Implementation: - upgrade demands have consumed resources - hoping for a flawless May 15 run to get to regular operational state - plan to implement 4 other WebAdvisor applications
  3. Capital Campaign: - working to get User Interface product operational in College Relations - working to get email reports operational - possibly get Datatel onsite for training
  4. Non-WebAdvisor Infrastructure: - need to perform major upgrade to Alice operating system - need to perform major upgrade to HP operating system
  5. Import Admissions Applicant Data: - high priority to implement system to get data from web apps in to Colleague - objective is to import data directly without re-keying - big time savings for Admissions staff and recruiting efforts
  6. New WebWizard Product and New DataReady Product - these 2 new products enable us to do custom web systems with Datatel data - we need time to install and train and implement these technologies - the WebWizard training and installation occurs on April 23,24,25 of this month
  7. Personal Computer Installations - very significant amount of time has gone in to installing PC's and Laptops - installed over 120 PC's and Laptops in last 12 months
  8. E-portfolio - webcentric system, students use web tools directly - like courseware development, except student's life is the course - students need support using webtools to develop their website - admin comp support is in background - maybe database downloads from Colleague and couple web links.

News:

    1.   WebAdvising System usage is impressive -

January 2002  February  March  1st Week April
# Audits Accessed: 340 583 570 341
# Faculty Using: 47 59 66 35
  1. WebWizard training/installation occurs in late April.  
    Reference schools were pleased with it. 
    Provides a web development capabilty that seems to work well with Datatel systems.
  2. Another new product, DataReady, is an advanced report builder.  
    Development tool for users that we plan to implement in the near future also.
  3. Testing a new technology to replace PC's - much less expensive to purchase/install.  ($499 versus $1,299;  30 minutes install versus 3 hours.)
  4. We have built an Administrative Computing website (if you are on the Admin system, type "ACWeb" in your browser).
    Automates requesting a user account and has a HelpDesk system for users. The HelpDesk will allow us to manage the inflow of work better. It also allows us to track request trends in a database.

Recommendations For Next 9 Months
Strategic Objectives:

  1. WebAdvisor System into regular operating mode, based on May 15-25 test. 
  2. Apply more resources to and complete Colleague 17 upgrade. 
  3. Complete the operating system upgrades. 
  4. Complete NT infrastructure upgrades. 
  5. Bring resources to Capital Campaign, implement User Interface, email reports. 
  6. Implement new technologies; "slim clients", WebWizard, DataReady.

Administrative Computing project priorities need to be:

  1. WebAdvisor System test, then implementing 4 additional applications for Fall.
  2. Completing the Colleague 17 Upgrade.
  3. Implement User Interface and Email Reports for Capital Campaign.
  4. Upgrade DEC and HP Operating systems.
  5. Upgrade NT infrastructure.
  6. Implement WebWizard and DataReady and Neo's
  7. Implement Admissions Web Applications Data Import.
  8. Implement Telecommunications Web System.

Information provided by Administrative Services, ITS, April 12, 2002.
Posted by J. D. Klein, Associate Dean for Information Technology, last updated 04/16/02 .