Campus Management Status Report ~ 12-12-2001
Overview
The last two weeks have been marked by much activity.
Highlights are noted here. See individual team reports
(Academic Structure,
Student Administration,
Student Accounting,
Reporting,
Web / Interfaces,
Organizational Readiness,
Technology Infrastructure)
for additional detail.
Burkhard worked with SAP representatives
to document the results of the meetings held between
SAP, Sigma, UM and CMU the week of 11/26.
The outcome is a table that lists each issue,
gives descriptive information and specifies
action items and assignments. In some cases
SAP and/or Sigma will further enhance
the existing interfaces, and in others
universities will create software customizations
or will implement process changes
to achieve the desired result.
See the Student Accouting Report below for
related activities.
On Tuesday, 12/11, Burkhard, Fant, Ferguson, Gates, Garner,
Hale, Miller, Stocks, Stribling, and Thurlow participated
in a video-conference call with Karin Busch and
Joachim Plumbaum to discuss the CM development plan.
Generally, we are pleased with the progress that CM
developers are making on meeting their objectives.
The progress made over the last six months is particularly impressive.
We still have some concerns about whether we have the
necessary functionality to "go live" on our campus.
Of particular concern is the ability to
migrate student academic history data from the
legacy system to CM. Busch recognized this need
as well and intends to follow up after the
CM develop team conducts its next strategy meeting
in late January or early February.
Burkhard, Stribling, and Thurlow have prepared notes
documenting the call and the subsequent responses from
Plumbaum. We appreciate the responsiveness
by Busch and Plumbaum to our concerns and questions.
Thurlow and Burkhard are also to be commended for their
careful and thorough review of the development
plan documents.
One of the first applications to be rolled out is the academic
structure, including the web presentation.
Success in this area relies on deciding on an appropriate academic
structure, inputting course catalog data and creating the web interfaces.
We are identifying resources to help with data entry
from 1/22/2003-2/1/2003. Stocks, Stribling and Thurlow are
finalizing the academic structure prototype. Ferguson
is developing XSLT programs to tranform XML-formatted academic
structure data to HTML and JSP. He is using the remote
function calls that are provided with Campus Management
to pull the data.
Harrington is chairing a committee to hire an additional IT FTE
to work on Campus Management. Current SIS technical
staff are making good progress in becoming familiar with functional
aspects of Campus Management. A successful project
requires that we approach the task of developing general technical
skills, e.g., ABAP, XML, Java, with diligence and assertiveness.
As expected, maintaining the legacy system while
implementing CM is proving to
be a challenge and requires resourcefulness
on the part of both managers and technical staff.
Several weeks ago, Stribling developed a document titled,
"CAMPUS MANAGEMENT Transport Standards" (see
http://www.olemiss.edu/projects/first/cm/docs/transport.pdf).
This has been approved.
Gates is in the process of placing the 70+ items that have been
identified in the issues spreadsheet in the
issues database developed
by Ferguson so that progress can be tracked and resolutions can
be documented.
Representatives from Information
Builders, Inc. were here this week
to install the latest version of Focus/WebFocus.
Focus/WebFocus is used now to provide end-users with views on
SIS data and may play a role in meeting CM reporting needs.
Academic Structure
- Accomplishments/Activities
- Held second meeting of Academic Structure Core
Team and Resource Group on 12/05/01.
- Reviewed summaries of Core Curriculum differences
and commonalities.
- Asked each academic unit to develop the components of
an academic program prototype by 12/16/01.
- Project Plan Status
- Tasks Behind Schedule
Will be difficult to resolve between-unit
differences in core curriculum before Christmas break.
- New Issues
Must develop plan to enter master course listing
into CM.
- Action Items
None
- Major Activities Planned for Next Two Weeks
- Attempt to resolve differences in core.
- Agree on prototype of academic program.
- Identify individuals to be trained to enter
master course listing into CM.
Student Administration
- Accomplishments/Activities
- Jill, Charlotte, Frank, Joe, and Ross met to review some student data in Campus Management. Jill conducted the demonstration.
- The Student Administration team met on December 4. Charlotte and Jill conducted the meeting which gave an overview of the scope of the project, goals of the team, review of student data in Campus Management, and next steps for the project.
- Joe, Jason, Jill, Ross, and Charlotte met on December 6 to discuss data mapping. Joe mapped all elements of the current application to fields in CM. The team members addressed outstanding issues such as developing a solution for capturing necessary data when a field was undefined in CM.
- Project Plan Status
On status with the development of the web application.
- Tasks Behind Schedule
None.
- New Issues
- The admissions subgroup must address whether we should require an email address before a web application is accepted.
- The admissions subgroup must address whether we should change the labels on the attributes to be displayed on the web or use the labels supplied by CM. (ie. Region or State)
- Action Items
- Define the subgoups and decide upon the membership of each subgroup.
- Decide upon the method of communicating the user id and password to applicants.
- Major Activities Planned for Next Two Weeks
Jill, Jason, Joe, Frank, Ross, and Charlotte will meet on Thursday, November 13 to develop the prototype for the web application for undergraduate admissions.
Student Accounting
Student Accounting Status Report
For the Period: 11/12/2001 - 12/09/2001
- Accomplishments/Activities
- The team was involved in discussions with representatives from SAP AG from 11/27/2001 through 11/29/2001. The topics covered were primarily financial aid issues concerning the interface between Campus Management and Sigma. Some Student Accounting issues were put on the table. For example, Cash at Desk functionality and its inability to handle routine departmental deposits.
- The team met on 12/04/2001. 12/05/2001, 12/06/2001, and 12/07/2001. The focus of the meetings was to obtain a better understanding of the role of main and sub transactions in FI-CA. As a result of those meetings the team made progress in solving the problem of UM specific descriptions for postings to student accounts. The concept of establishing a "merchant number" approach to miscellaneous departmental postings to students was formulated.
- The team will continue to review course material provided by SAP to determine relationships to SAP terms with University terms. The outcome of this exercise is to help the team members understand how SAP terminology maps to UM terminology.
- Project Plan Status
- Review of Turner Center plan 10% complete
- Analysis of descriptions codes 90% complete
- Review FI-CA documentation 20% complete
- Tasks Behind Schedule
N/A
- New Issues
N/A
- Action Items
Rick will investigate Huron-Sigma interface.
- Major Activities Planned for Next Two Weeks
Obtain a better understanding of the fee calculation process.
Reporting
- Accomplishments/Activities
Brenda has looked at production runs for one
of the two years that need to be reviewed.
IR has identified majority of programs that
are processed by IR.
- Project Plan Status
Enter information from program identification
into spreadsheet.
- Tasks Behind Schedule
- New Issues
- Action Items
- Major Activities Planned for Next Two Weeks
Continue to identify programs processed by IT and
IR.
Web / Interfaces
- Accomplishments/Activities
Tomcat was installed on Sparky2 and Java upgraded for WebFocus, and these will also be used for the look up of financial aid information. A web authentication scheme was developed for looking up financial aid information and any future web services from Campus Management offered to faculty, staff, and students. Data mapping has been done for the admissions application. Some customer defined data elements will have to be created, at least for the time that processing takes place in the legacy system. Preliminary testing has been done on creating a web interface to Huron, much like the interface to SIS.
- Project Plan Status
So far, we are on schedule with only one task behind.
- Tasks Behind Schedule
We are still waiting on Sigma to deliver the daemon that will send/accept XML requests between the mainframe and the financial aid system. This is needed for us to begin testing this interface.
- New Issues
- We will be capturing previous educational institutions attended on the web admissions application. Can we have values in a drop down for the applicant to select? Will these values be in R/3 or somewhere else?
- Action Items
- Decide the order and grouping of fields on the web admissions application.
- Meet to discuss further development of the Huron web interface
- Major Activities Planned for Next Two Weeks
- Develop a prototype of the display of the academic structure on the web
- Develop a prototype of the web admissions application
- Check for delivery of RFCs to handle fees for the admissions application.
- Install Tomcat on Cedar for possible use with the web display of academic structure
Organizational Readiness
- Accomplishments/Activities
Test CM Authorization accounts have been set up for the Core Team Members and for the Workshops.
- Project Plan Status
Rick, Jill, Jack and Marlies will help test these accounts before we leave for the holidays.
- Tasks Behind Schedule
N/A
- New Issues
- Action Items
N/A
- Major Activities Planned for Next Two Weeks
Testing.
Technology Infrastructure
- Accomplishments/Activities
- Letters delivered to all involved departments with desktop survey information. Each department received a summary of what they submitted and the estimated cost to complete the approved upgrades.
- Payment gateway platform for TouchNet configured and ordered.
- Oracle upgrade for the CM sandbox completed
- Application of latest patches including CRT 8 completed on the CM sandbox.
- Project Plan Status
On Schedule
- Tasks Behind Schedule
N/A
- New Issues
- Action Items
- Response to departmental letters due back by Dec. 14. Information will have to be organized and followup will occur to complete any necessary adjustments before the final order for the desktop equipment is placed.
- Prepare for the OS upgrade on the CM Sandbox
- Major Activities Planned for Next Two Weeks