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Thursday, April 24, 2014

Service outage Wednesday, May 7

Core PeopleSoft applications (HR, Student, and Finance) may experience intermittent disruption for approximately two hours on Wednesday, May 7 between 5-7 p.m. During this time, database administrators will prepare the databases for a copy of the data from the PeopleSoft applications to use during the upcoming testing phases for the Enterprise Systems Upgrade Program (ESUP). The timing of this snapshot is critical, as ESUP must use payroll information from a particular stage in the payroll process to ensure accuracy during testing.

ESUP has worked closely with IT's service owners to minimize disruption across the University. More information will be available on the University's system status page.

Milestone Changes

Recently, you may have noticed changes to several milestones. Three milestones have had a name change, three are new, and two have been retired. They are:

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If you have any questions, please contact gssp@umn.edu.

Friday, April 18, 2014

Graduate degree clearance and reporting changes

In anticipation of the PeopleSoft 9.0 upgrade, new business processes are being established for Graduate Student Services & Progress (GSSP). These changes will impact reporting and GSSP business process, but will have no impact to students.

Degree Clearance
Effective Thursday, May 1, Graduate Student Services & Progress (GSSP) will discontinue degree clearance in the PeopleSoft (PS) Graduate School custom tables. The following data will be affected:

- Degree program GPA (GSSP enters cumulative GPA unless below 2.80 for master's)
- Application month/year
- Completion month/year
- Major credits
- Minor credits
- Thesis type
- Doct. time start (term)
- Doct. time end (term)

Moving forward, a student's GPA and major/minor credits will no longer be captured in PeopleSoft.

The following reports will be impacted:

- Degree Applicants GRD version (190)
- Degree Applicants report (195)
- Degree Award (279)
- Graduate Education Student Profile (98)
- Graduate Student Report for Majors/Minors (Go32) (525)

Staff now have access to a student's application month/year and degree completion month/year in PeopleSoft. This information can be found Records and Enrollment>Career and Program Information>Student Program/Plan click on student attributes tab.

If you have a questions about reporting, please contact Ingrid Nuttall at ingridn@umn.edu.

Time to Degree
Doctoral start/end time will be captured in PeopleSoft milestones (0800, "Time to Degree"). In addition, master's/PBac/Specialist Certificate time to degree will also be captured. This information can be found Records and Enrollment>Enroll Students>Student Milestones.

Plan Type
Master's plan type A, B, or C has been converted into a "Sub-Plan." This information can be found by going to Records & Enrollment>Career & Program Information>Student Sub-Plan>(information towards bottom of page).

This graph outlines where you can find the following information (a larger image can be found here):
GSSP graph (1).jpg

Thank you for your cooperation with this effort. Please contact us at gssp@umn.edu with any questions.

Graduate non-degree registration changes

The current graduate non-degree registration form has been updated to a commentable PDF, and a cover sheet and checklist has been added. Designated signers are encouraged to read through the form carefully. All required information must be filled out or the form will be returned to the student/signer for completion. The list of designated signers has been updated online to about 350 people. It will continue to be updated about three times per year before open registration occurs.


Billing due date changes for fall 2014

Beginning fall 2014, billing due dates for tuition and fees will change. Students will be billed approximately two weeks earlier than in previous years. Billing dates for fall 2014 are currently available on the One Stop website. Spring dates will be determined soon. Students will be notified of the change prior to the end of the spring 2014 semester.

This change will bring the University in line with current industry standards and allow billing to be more consistent across all system campuses.

Students will be notified of this change before the end of spring semester.

Scheduling Update live on April 30

A live, in-person Scheduling Update for all University schedulers will occur on Wednesday, April 30, 2-3:15 p.m. The session will provide:

- An overview of what the Enterprise Systems Upgrade Program (ESUP) is
- A sneak peek at what is changing for schedulers (including specific examples of changes to the schedule of classes)
- What the new production cycle will look like
- An overview of the training timeline for schedulers
- An opportunity to ask questions

The session will be offered concurrently in Rapson Hall 56 (East Bank), Carlson School 2-215 (West Bank), and Peters Hall 155 (Saint Paul).

FERPA Q&A: Showing student photos at commencement

Question: Your college wants to show a slide show of student photos prior to commencement. An email was sent to students who indicated they were participating in the ceremony, requesting they provide a photo for the slide show. The college is requesting to use University ID photos for students who don't provide a photo. Is this acceptable?

Answer: Yes and no. At the University of Minnesota, photos are not directory information, so students must grant permission for them to be publicly displayed (or shared). If students opt to provide a photo, those can be used for the slide show, but the college can't simply insert a University ID picture for students who didn't provide one.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

'Preferred name'--big win for University

Oracle had exciting news at their PeopleSoft Higher Education User conference in March. They announced that they will deliver an update to PeopleSoft so the preferred name of students appears on class and grade rosters. This means that when the University goes live with PeopleSoft Campus Solutions 9.0 in February 2015, faculty will have class rosters and grade rosters that accurately reflect how their students want to be addressed. It's a huge win for our entire institution.

The University of Minnesota played a big part in this effort. The ESUP Student Records team built a national coalition around this issue thanks to the help of Product Advisory Group members Max Herman (ASR-IT) and Carla Boyd (Duluth). This included writing the "white paper" Oracle is using for their development.

What's in a name?
The University of Minnesota's enterprise system (PeopleSoft) uses the legal name of students, faculty, and staff throughout the system. Sometimes this is a requirement for law or regulation, but in many cases it is not. The University has long-been a part of the national conversation around the desire to use a preferred name (as identified by the individual) for instances not covered by law or regulation, as doing so promotes an inclusive and welcoming environment for a diverse population.

Making it happen
ESUP was an opportunity for the University to take the lead in this national conversation. As a result, a coalition of higher-ed institutions formed to urge Oracle to address this issue and develop a solution that could be provided to all institutions.

Oracle's announcement at their conference is exciting news, but since the delivery timeframe of this fix is unknown, the ESUP team is moving forward with developing modifications to the system to ensure that when we go live next spring, faculty will see the names their students prefer on their class and grade rosters.

Friday, April 11, 2014

'Preferred name'--big win for University

Oracle had exciting news at their PeopleSoft Higher Education User conference in March. They announced that they will deliver an update to PeopleSoft so that the preferred name of students appears on class and grade rosters. This means that when the University goes live with PeopleSoft Campus Solutions 9.0 in February 2015, faculty will have class rosters and grade rosters that accurately reflect how their students want to be addressed.

The University of Minnesota played a big part in this effort. The Enterprise Systems Upgrade Program (ESUP) Student Records team built a national coalition around this issue thanks to the help of Product Advisory Group members Max Herman (ASR-IT) and Carla Boyd (Duluth). This included writing the "white paper" that Oracle is using for their development!

What's in a name?
The University of Minnesota's enterprise system (PeopleSoft) uses the legal name of students, faculty, and staff throughout the system. Sometimes this is a requirement for law or regulation, but in many cases it is not. The University has long-been a part of the national conversation around the desire to use a preferred name (as identified by the individual) for instances not covered by law or regulation, as doing so promotes an inclusive and welcoming environment for a diverse population.

Making it happen
ESUP was an opportunity for the University to take the lead in this national conversation. As a result, a coalition of higher-ed institutions formed to urge Oracle to address this issue and develop a solution that could be provided to all institutions.

Oracle's announcement at their conference is exciting news, but since the delivery timeframe of this fix is unknown, the ESUP team is moving forward with developing modifications to the system to ensure that when we go live next spring, faculty will see the names their students prefer on their class and grade rosters. This is a huge win for our entire institution!

Application for degree processing

Processing of the application for degree has been moved from the St. Paul location to 160 Williamson. Please have your students submit them directly to GSSP in-person or via email at gssp@umn.edu.

Applied month and degree completion information

Did you know that a student's application month/year and completion month/year is now being captured in the student program/plan in PeopleSoft? This information can be found by going to Records and Enrollment>Career and Program Information>Student Program/Plan under "Student Attributes" tab in PeopleSoft.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Q & A What is "Academic Advisement"?

Since ESUP announced the new Academic Advisement module in June 2013, that team has been hard at work reviewing and developing processes to support this new-to-the-University functionality for graduate programs. We asked them a few questions to learn what it’s all about and what it means for students, staff, and faculty. 

The Academic Advisement (AA) module in PeopleSoft is completely new to the University and the name seems a little confusing because it's not about advising students...can you explain a bit about what AA is?

 
Academic Advisement is just the name Oracle gave a set of functionality in PeopleSoft. It can do a lot of things, but right now the University is focused on using it to track the progress of graduate students completing their degree requirements.

Right now, that work is done mostly on paper, so this will be a big and positive change for graduate programs and students in them.

How will things change for students? Staff? Faculty?

 
As we mentioned, the current process for tracking degree requirements for graduate students is mostly paper-based. Until now, that’s actually been the most efficient way to track the complicated set of requirements for each student (e.g., majors, minors, tracks, policies, exceptions). There is already a system that handles this for undergraduate students (APAS), but it isn’t flexible enough to handle the sometimes very individual requirements graduate students have.


Moving to a more digital (and more automated) process will be a big change from the way students, staff, and faculty have done this in the past. The data will be more transparent to everyone involved, so students will have a better understanding of where they are in terms of their degree progress and what requirements they still need to fulfill. This should lead to better degree progress and more meaningful conversations between advisers and students seeking graduate degrees.


What have been the challenges up to this point?

 
Because graduate degree requirements are more varied than undergraduate degree requirements, the challenge has been in making sure we maximize the efficiencies technology can bring us while still being flexible enough to accommodate the wide variety of programs the University offers.

What has been a big win?

 
This has been a great opportunity to work really closely with representatives from colleges. The College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) has been a terrific partner in this process and has even agreed to be the pilot college for the Academic Advisement implementation. This is a big win because CEHD is one of the larger colleges with a wide variety of curriculum requirements across their graduate programs. The Academic Advisement team is therefore able to test many different student scenarios to ensure it works as planned.

What’s next for Academic Advisement?

 
We’re working on configuring the system to handle curriculum requirements and getting ready for the testing phase of ESUP. We’re also developing a post go-live schedule for bringing in the remaining colleges with graduate programs.