Xavier Technology Committee
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
3:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Smith Hall Room 247
Minutes
Attending:
Committee Members: Mike Flick, Steve Herbert, Tom Kessinger, Annette Marksberry, Judy Molnar,
Alison Morgan
Advisory Members: Susan Abel, Mark Brockman, Jeff Briggs, Ravi Chinta, Eddie Hooker, Jim Miller,
Connie Perme, Debbie Tesch
Guests: Megan Bosco, Kevin Lavelle
Approval of Minutes from the January 16th, 2014 meeting: The minutes from the January 16, 2014
meeting were approved as submitted. Alison Morgan made the motion to approve the minutes and was
seconded by Ravi Chinta.
Updates
Office 365 – Judy Molnar provided an update on the Office 365 migration. Since the first of the year
approximately sixty users have been migrated without any major problems. There is a new URL for OWA
(Outlook Web Access) that users are redirected to after they are migrated. It was mentioned that OWA
has a very different look in Office 365. IT has sent a survey to everyone who has been migrated so far to
inquire about the experience and the feedback to date has been positive. The biggest challenge in the
migration has been the devices such as iPhones, iPads, and tablets. The current plan is to migrate the
entire campus on March 15th and 16th. IT will have workers posted in several buildings on campus to
assist faculty and staff who may need assistance with their personal devices after the migration.
Pending Proposals
FUNDRIVER – Megan Bosco, assistant treasurer, went over the proposal for FUNDRIVER endowment
software. Megan is in charge of endowment accounting and shared that the information for all
endowment funds is currently entered manually on a spreadsheet. Megan looked at FUNDRIVER, the
Banner endowment module as well as Endowment Manager. After all comparisons were made
FUNDRIVER was chosen. FUNDRIVER is web based, allows unlimited users and does not require any
additional resources.
Of the 780 endowment funds 350 are endowed scholarships and FUNDRIVER will provide the ability to
let donors to let them how their money is being spent and will ease the current process of providing
information to donors. Annette informed the group that FUNDRIVER does not require XTC approval.
Megan brought the proposal to the committee just to provide transparency. Mark Brockman thanked
Megan for looking at all other options and stated she did a nice job determining that, in this case,
Banner is not the best choice for the University. Megan feels the reporting of the stewardship aspect will
be good leverage for donors. The yearly expenses for FUNDRIVER will be charged to the endowment
fund. The data resides within FUNDRIVER and can be captured should we change our mind. Jim Miller
did do a safety check with the company and determined they were a solid company. Annette thanked
Megan for coming to the meeting.
Other Business
Upcoming Changes to the Portal – Kevin Lavelle, from University Communications, shared that the
current Xavier portal that has been in use for ten years is being eliminated. Conversations began last
summer about available options going forward. There are over 700 links in the portal many of which
went to public content and do not need to be authenticated. The current portal is not flexible so
University Communications worked with ITS and Application Services as they explored options. To
continue to use the current portal would require an upgrade to luminous 5 and we no longer have a
person dedicated to working on the luminous environment. The web and its users have changed quite a
bit over the last 10 years and it was determined Ellucian is not a good tool to use moving forward.
Twenty percent of traffic is occurring on a mobile device and the current portal is not very friendly for
the mobile environment. The plan is to provide an employee hub and a separate hub for students. Kevin
shared the new site with the group. The student side is not active yet. Announcements are already being
carried over from the current portal and the process for submitting announcements will not be
changing. There is a link to MYXU on the new hubs and towards the end of May the MYXU will be
sunsetted. Per Mark Brockman there will be a new authentication method in the page as we move to
Banner 9. Analytics on all of the tiles and links will also be available to get a sense of what is being used
and how the page might be changed if necessary. The only thing going away are the portal groups which
do not seem to be used anyway. Currently only a few links will require users to authenticate including
self-service, email, canvas, and nexus. Steve Herbert recommends that a small working group be formed
to determine what should be authenticated. The hub can be accessed on a tablet and smart phone.
There will be no additional cost associated with the change. University Communications is gathering
feedback from various committees and users and anticipates having both sites live side by side for three
months and then at the end of May the MYXU portal will be eliminated.
There was no other business and the meeting was adjourned.
.