SUNAPSIS @ EMORY UNIVERSITY
STEPHANIE ROBERTS
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL STUDENT AND SCHOLAR SERVICES
July 12, 2013
About Emory
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
Population for 2012 reporting year: 3,675
international students and scholars
 2,303
students
 1,372 scholars

ISSS Office works in teams
 Scholar
team: Associate director, two advisors, one
support staff
 Student team: Associate director, three advisors, one
support staff
 Operations/Technology: Director, Assistant Director, one
support staff
Students
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

Majority of student advising is through main campus
ISSS office
International admissions and initial I-20s housed in
admissions offices


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
Undergrad Admissions – all undergrad initial I-20s, including Oxford
Laney Graduate School Admissions – all graduate and professional
initial I-20s
Initial DS-2019s issued through the ISSS office
Oxford College – separate instructional site but
considered same campus for SEVIS purposes
Scholars
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Scholar population fairly even between Js and H1Bs, depending on year
EV program housed in ISSS office
H-1Bs managed and filed by ISSS office
 PWDs,
LCAs, and posting notices done through Human
Resources
 Deemed Export Control procedures established with
Office of Research Compliance

ISSS office also manages TNs, O-1s, and files
employment-based permanent residency cases
Previous Solution - Peoplesoft
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

Used Peoplesoft to manage international student
and scholar information
Information housed and reported from two
separate systems:
 OPUS
– student data
 Peoplesoft HR – scholar and employee data

Department made scholar requests through
internally developed “bolt on” module in
Peoplesoft HR
Previous Solution - Peoplesoft
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
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Oracle stopped supporting SEVIS updates for HR
installs in 2011. This was the key reason for making
the move at the time we chose.
Poor (or no) case management functionality increased
time necessary and margin of error for regulatory
compliance, resulting in significantly increased
workload
Considered both fsaAtlas and Sunapsis as
replacements; ultimately chose Sunapsis
Emory’s Implementation
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

Due to time constraints on the Peoplesoft student team,
we implemented Sunapsis in two phases
Phase One: Summer and Fall 2012
Set up initial system architecture
 Established data feed and functionality for scholar population
 Went live in December 2012.


Phase Two: Spring 2013
Upgraded from 2.7.4 to 3.0
 Established data feed and functionality for student population
 Went live June 2013

Implementation Challenges
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
Single sign-on configuration
 Emory
uses Shibboleth for campus single sign-on
 First time Emory had installed Shibboleth on a
Windows-based system
 Two month delay

Security
 Emory’s
security team expressed concern over the
standard Sunapsis single application server
configuration
 Ultimately implemented a configuration with a client
server and separate admin server
Implementation Challenges
10

Vendor response time
 Frequently
took time to resolve issues with Sunapsis
 Seen significant improvements since support team was
added early 2013

No internal ColdFusion expert at Emory
 Contracted
with external developer for as-needed
customizations

Lack of documentation
 Particularly
for 3.0 changes and new features
Current Status
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

Live with both students and scholars
E-forms in place for department scholar requests
 Departments
required to complete online training and
pass a quiz before gaining access to ISSS Link (userfacing title for Sunapsis)
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Limited e-forms available for students and scholars
Some new 3.0 features in use (encryption, etc.)
No plans at present to convert existing files en
masse, but all files from this point will be electronic
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Questions?