Steering Committee for Information Technology
January 16, 2008 Minutes
Members Present: Zoe DuRant, Linda Phillips, Carol Claiborne, Marshall Ferrell, Ninette
Carter, Jennifer Holland, Debbie Goode
1. Minute Review/Change/Acceptance of December 19 Minutes – Minutes corrected
2. Next Meeting – February 20 at 11 a.m.
3. DegreeWorks - Lance and John recently inquired about DegreeWorks. DegreeWorks requires
a tremendous amount of setup, scribing catalogs and testing of rules by the Registrar’s Office,
faculty, students and I.T. The following table outlines associated costs payable to Sungard for
the required setup and services for DegreeWorks:
Description
Scribe undergrad catalog @ one
rate
Scribe undergrad catalog @ one
rate
Scribe grad catalog
Professional Hours
Traveling Hours/Training
Traveling Expenses for 5 trips
Total Costs Identified for
Sungard Services
Hours
177
Hourly
Rate
150
Extended
Amount
26,550
34
180
6,120
60
322
60
180
180
180
10,800
57,960
10,800
8000
120,230
This project will require two additional servers at an estimated cost of $4,000.
A full-time professional employee for the Registrar’s Office will also be
required. This has been discussed at several Steering Committee meetings.
V.P. Pinkston requested Linda Phillips prepare the paperwork for the additional
employee and it was submitted. The scribing quoted above is for two catalogs,
which will cover four years.
Mark Wysoski from SGHE says once they receive our p.o. for services, it will
be approximately 6 months before implementation can begin. Once
implementation starts, it will take approximately 9 months.
The technical team met with EduServe consultants Barbara Vrana and Terry
Bazylewicz on January 11, 2008. They suggest we may want to look at
DegreeWorks for 2010. They agreed it might be possible to move forward with
it now if the resources are in place.
4. Online payment – We are still waiting on word from the state for login information. Ninette
re-sent the application again on January 15, 2008. I.T. is ready to test when account
information for CU is complete.
5. Replacement for Jerald’s position - Kurt Jn Marie began training 1/2/08 with Jerald. We
are running the helpdesk with student workers. The NOV was posted Tuesday, 1/15/08 with
the approval from V.P. McArthur to close as soon as a successful candidate is selected. We
hope this will expedite the hiring process.
6. SunGard Higher Ed (SGHE) Banner Update - EduServe may be hired to perform project
management for the entire Banner implementation. The technical team met with EduServe’s
President, Barbara Vrana and Terry Bazylewicz on January 11, 2008 for almost three hours
to discuss the migration. We are pleased that Barbara and Terry are worker bees and have
provided management for many Banner implementations. Terry formerly worked for Banner.
Barbara has worked at OSRHE, been the I.T. director at ECU and now at TCC. She has vast
experience with Banner implementations. Terry is currently assisting TCC with their Banner
implementation as well as Barbara. Terry lives in New Jersey and Barbara lives in Shawnee.
The WIN implementation services proposed by the Banner team may not meet our needs. We
are fairly certain the proposed data migration will not meet our needs. Devereaux will bring a
team on campus January 24, 2008 to discuss services. Debbie encouraged the Steering
Committee to join the conversation that will take place in CETES 207. The time will be
determined at a later date.
In reviewing a traditional Banner implementation timeline with Barbara and Terry, they are
suggesting:
Immediately – hardware bids on street
4/1/08 – complete all hardware installation
5/1/08 – Launch implementation
5/1/08 – Complete Chart of Accounts
9/1/08 – Launch Luminis (this will require .5 FTE)
1/1/09 – Go live with Human Resources
7/1/09 – Go live with Finance
1/1/10 – Go live with Student
Other points stressed by Barbara and Terry:
ƒ Consider leasing hardware – approximately 20 servers to support software
when we are fully functional – approximately $800,000 in hardware costs
ƒ
EduServe will provide a consultant to look at our network to make any
recommendations that ensure the fastest throughput, which may create some
additional expenses
ƒ
We should consider a pod for our equipment since we have environmental
issues in our server room. Barbara says TCC and OCU and UCO have pods.
She contacted Rick McCharan w/ Agilysys for us on Friday and we had a
conference call that afternoon. He was onsite January 14, 2008 and sketched
out our server room in Admin 201 and the OneNet room. He will contact his
APC rep to look at options for our new equipment. We toured Duncan
Regional Hospital’s pods and they are very impressive – they are selfcontained racks that keep the servers at a constant temperature.
ƒ
We should consider inviting the Oracle rep to campus to visit with us before
finalizing hardware bids
ƒ
We need to setup Cognos training independent of SGHE
ƒ
We need to appoint a data standards team
ƒ
We must have a training room with 15 PCs and it will be ideal to have a
conference room adjacent to the training room. The training room should be
setup and available all through the conversion process. Jennifer suggested
North Shepler, 4th floor in the northwest corner. Linda suggested the large
reception area in the enrollment area might be secured in some manner with
walls. Debbie will follow-up on these locations.
ƒ
The traditional implementation will require I.T.S. to build bridges back to data
in the SBI system
ƒ
Enterprise Data Warehouse will require 1 additional FTE in ITS – TCC is
working on this and UCO has not started yet
ƒ
We must identify length of time for failover that is tolerable
ƒ
We need to invite the Oracle rep to campus to visit with us before finalizing
hardware bids
ƒ
Barbara says our I.T. staff is too small to provide customizations to Banner,
due to the fact Banner releases patches on a daily basis and it will be
impossible to maintain the customizations. She says most universities only
utilize about 20% of the software capabilities. If there appear to be unique
circumstances for C.U. within departments, be sure to ask the trainer, as they
will more than likely be able to advise the best way to handle the need. The
trainers will primarily cover the general use.
ƒ
The customary implementation is for departments to go through training and
then perform their own setup. The departments will need to setup and
maintain their own tables instead of I.T. performing this task.
ƒ
I.T. will have technical trainings to attend.
ƒ
Departments need to be identifying their satellite applications.
ƒ
Banner will require on-going staff and faculty development – we will need to
establish a training program. All new employees will have to go through a
navigation training session. TCC has a lady that handles this for their campus.
We should look at setting up online training segments.
ƒ
We may want to consider bringing Luminis up for the Fall 2008 semester and
use Banner’s e-mail system for our students.
7. Microsoft Office 2007 Deployment – With Kurt’s new assignment of replacing Jerald, we
will need to postpone on the MS Office 2007 migration until we find a replacement for Kurt,
allowing the new technician time to become oriented with their responsibilities before we
suggest a timeline for MS Office 2007 deployment.
8. Scheduling software options – The AdAstra sales rep contacted Debbie right before
Christmas and is more than willing to come and present a demo. At this point the committee
decided this should be tabled.
9. Discussion regarding multiple logins to Insight – In an attempt to free up resources
inefficiently tied up from Insight, I.T. set login limits to one per userid. This created issues
for the cashiers in the business office and transcript specialists in the Registrar’s Office. The
solution for these two areas is to allow multiple sessions by userid. Ninette and Linda
provided lists of employees needing multiple sessions.
10. Any other topics for discussion? – Is there a way to change Library holds from being a hard
hold? This creates major problems in serving our students, particularly when the library is
closed and student services are trying to assist students with enrollment, drop and add
activities, which was the case on January 12, 2008. Debbie will check on this.