NeSIS eNews - November 2024
[cid:17702483-ac04-4eea-92b9-76c934bc2cdc]
[cid:9b406470-906a-4428-8e54-869ab9d79e3b]
Director's Report
Welcome to November! First, thank you all for joining us at UNK for the HEUC conference. As many of you have said, it was GREAT to see everyone and connect in person again. The planning team met this week, reviewed the survey results, and are very happy that most people enjoyed the conference and many of the sessions.
I was fortunate enough to attend EDUCAUSE a couple weeks ago and had several takeaways to think about. At one session the University of Wisconsin system shared about its Workday HR and Financial system implementation for 13 campuses into a single instance. They have had many issues and struggles in the project as you would expect, including extending their go-live date by 2 years (!) from July 2023 to July 2025. They shared that a key element to helping things move forward smoothly is building relationships. Early in the project the relationships weren’t there, and things were rocky. They recognized this as an issue and spent time investing in building relationships for the purpose of collaboration improvement and have seen dividends in that effort. This is something we can work on today – with that in mind, please fill out a short survey<https://forms.office.com/r/CCWQNihbdM> about your preference and we’ll report the results in the next eNews.
Another session underscored the importance of the work we do on the impact of student success. One way to put the idea is that everything outside of the classroom should be easy. Using technology to streamline and automate is our bread and butter - so we get that, and I know that is preaching to the choir. A faculty member in the session said, “Every minute IT saves me from stumbling over technology is another minute I can spend with students to make them successful.” It’s a powerful reminder that improving the faculty experience impacts the student experience.
And because you can’t go to a conference without talking about AI – Gartner shared some AI ideas by success category which I consider food for thought:
* likely wins are personal productivity, tutoring, assessment, grading, feedback
* calculated risks include career coaching and learner authenticity analysis
* marginal gains include recruitment and enrollment, student health monitoring
The final word on the AI topic from Gartner was a Peter Drucker quote: “The best way to predict the future is to create it."
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
[cid:51b0bef2-8916-4614-9906-acd5758519d4]
Andrea Childress
AVP IT & CIO
September 2024 NeSIS Award Winner
The NeSIS Employee Shining Impactful Superstar award winner for September 2024 is Susan lee
[cid:00d05367-5d51-4f23-9493-d8a8263b9e11]
From Andrea Childress: "Susan is the Enterprise Tools Functional Coordinator at NeSIS and has worked tirelessly in assisting customers to build Eforms to automate processes in addition to the annual shared admissions app work and now the grad app Liaison project. Susan has an innate ability to shine a positive light in situations without sugar coating- she can tell it like it is - professionally! It is not uncommon to hear someone sharing how Susan has stepped up to assist with her can-do attitude.
I recently learned she has a pet snake in her household which I think takes bravery and courage too!"
Congrats Susan and thanks for all that you do!
Two New Quick Clips Available
[Table Wizards And Conditional Regions]<https://uofnebraska.sharepoint.com/sites/EnterpriseServices/nesis/nesishome…>
Table Wizards And Conditional Regions<https://uofnebraska.sharepoint.com/sites/EnterpriseServices/nesis/nesishome…>
uofnebraska.sharepoint.com
There are times when setting up the template to be used in a Communication Generation (Com Gen) that you need to sort data in a table but only need to display a few of the items in the query and not all of them. The best way to do that is to combine Table Wizard and Conditional Regions found on the BI Publisher tab in Word. This video will show you how to set those up to make it do what you need
[Query For Data Source]<https://uofnebraska.sharepoint.com/sites/EnterpriseServices/nesis/nesishome…>
Query For Data Source<https://uofnebraska.sharepoint.com/sites/EnterpriseServices/nesis/nesishome…>
uofnebraska.sharepoint.com
Have you written a Query to be used in a Communication Generation (Com Gen) and you cannot find it when you search in the Communication Data Source? That is usually because you do not have the Query formatted correctly. This video walks you through how to set up your query to be used in the Communication Data Source.
View the full list of Quick Clips available in the NeSIS SharePoint site<https://uofnebraska.sharepoint.com/sites/EnterpriseServices/nesis/nesishome…>
Maintenace Testing Reports
As everyone acquainted with NeSIS is well aware, it seems like we are constantly applying maintenance, which means we are constantly testing that maintenance. Why do we do this to ourselves? Our vendor Oracle provides three Product Updates (PUM) and one PeopleTools upgrade a year. NeSIS applies these upgrades to keep our system up to date and secure, and testing of the system must occur before it is applied to our Production environment to ensure that it is not causing any issues with our existing processes.
The NeSIS AMP Team is responsible for keeping the system running smoothly, apply maintenance and modifications and are the first team called when something doesn't go correctly when that maintenance is applied to Production. Therefore, the AMP team wants to reduce, if not eliminate, any problems found before they get to Production. Their hope is that maintenance testing will find any issues that can be addressed and fixed before it is applied to Production. While most maintenance cycles went smoothly, there were still things that were being missed and causing issues in Production.
So as a further check, the Functional Coordinators worked with their campus groups to identify the pages that must be tested and processes that need to work in Production. The AMP team then developed a set of reports that show which of these pages and processes have been run and which ones still need to be tested as we go through the maintenance cycle. These reports are run in our Test (TST) and Quality (QA) environments. The Functional Coordinators receive these reports daily and review them to see which pages and processes have been run and which ones still need to be tested. These reports, along with the dilligent testing by our campus partners, have helped find issues earlier in the testing process and reduce issues discovered in PRD.
[cid:2425aa57-bc7f-4fec-9669-4b9ca23f8d98]
Shareen Thewke
Functional Coordinator, Financial Aid
Upcoming Events
[cid:50624c84-f44c-4438-b2a2-1e02f228e80b]
10/28 - 11/13
QANU/SC Open for Fall 2024 Testing
Monday 11/4
3pm - Campus Community Team Meeting
Tuesday 11/5
9am - Financial Aid Team Meeting
10am - Financial Aid Team Fall 2024 Testing - QA
10:30am - Student Records Team Fall 2024 Testing - QA
Wednesday 11/6
9am - Student Financials Team Fall 2024 Testing - QA
10:30am - Student Financials Team Meeting
Monday, 11/11
1pm - NU Change of Campus Testing - QA
1pm - 920NU/SC Refresh
Tuesday, 11/12
9am - SC Financial Aid Team Meeting
10:30am - Student Records Team Meeting
1:30pm - Integration Team Meeting
Wednesday, 11/13
NOON - Signoff for Fall 2024 → PRD
Thursday, 11/14
9am - Enterprise Tools/Dashboard Team Meeting
Sunday, 11/17 8pm - Monday, 11/18 6am
PRDNU/SC - Apply Fall 2024 Maintenance
Tuesday, 11/19
9am - Financial Aid Team Meeting
Wednesday, 11/20
9am - Admissions Team meeting
Thursday, 11/28 - Friday, 11/29
Thanksgiving Holiday - NeSIS Office Closed
Monday, 12/2
3pm - Campus Community Team Meeting
Tuesday, 12/3
9am - Financial Aid Team Meeting
Wednesday, 12/4
10:30am - Student Financials Team Meeting
[cid:3c94579e-cccf-4d03-8dff-8bde2a4bc2dd]
NeSIS SharePoint Site<https://sharepointnesis.nebraska.edu>
View in SharePoint<https://uofnebraska.sharepoint.com/sites/EnterpriseServices/nesis/nesishome…>
________________________________
[cid:688690ff-7831-40aa-acb9-376c64327519]
Privacy Statement<https://nebraska.edu>
This email is generated through University of Nebraska's use of Microsoft 365 and may contain content that is controlled by University of Nebraska.
