IT Council - George Mason University

Tech Council
9 June 2005

1. Report on Banner (Joy Hughes):

Phase II of Admin Systems
Many requested improvements do not directly involve Banner, but are related to the whole Admin System, data that works off the Banner system; the President has asked Dr. Hughes to take a look at both. She described several parts of what they are working on.

A. Reporting group

Need for a great variety of reports

Many old reports no longer work with new system, so need to reconstruct reports

Original thought was the reports would be done in distributed units, but many don't have the expertise to create the reports or only need reports from time to time. Hard to develop expertise.

Joy sought advice from those who both write reports and try to help others write reports.

Try to create consistent reports/templates.

Contract with Bearing Point to help in design and evaluate need.

Some reports very slow to run. Also security in Banner doesn't necessarily carry over to individual data items in data mart.

Oracle consultant to help improve speed and security of reports.




Home Members Projects Meeting Notes Information Technology Unit	Tech Council 9 June 2005 1. Report on Banner (Joy Hughes): Phase II of Admin Systems Many requested improvements do not directly involve Banner, but are related to the whole Admin System, data that works off the Banner system; the President has asked Dr. Hughes to take a look at both. She described several parts of what they are working on. A. Reporting group Need for a great variety of reports Many old reports no longer work with new system, so need to reconstruct reports Original thought was the reports would be done in distributed units, but many don't have the expertise to create the reports or only need reports from time to time. Hard to develop expertise. Joy sought advice from those who both write reports and try to help others write reports. Try to create consistent reports/templates. Contract with Bearing Point to help in design and evaluate need. Some reports very slow to run. Also security in Banner doesn't necessarily carry over to individual data items in data mart. Oracle consultant to help improve speed and security of reports. B. Grant Support Need to provide line-item budgeting for grants. Hired programmer to modify code to allow for this. Software used by OSP is outdated. Want to get new software or use Banner pre-proposal software. C. Data Integrity With distributed data entry, very important for people to use same codes, etc. when entering data. High turnover of data entry people adds to problems Working with auditor to have appropriate controls on data integrity D.Other We recognize need for some critical applications being up, such as the degree audit module II. Report from MESA project (Bob Nakles) Powerpoint Presentation Review of goals: Targets for 05-06 Events MS Consulting for AD and SMS Sine Nomine (AFS) Migration Team checklist survey core roles, work flow procedures establish a naming convention Benefits of desktop management Next Steps AFS Conference interoperability with dept storage space communication plan MESA web site Questions: Remote Access Integration with departmental business processes Diff departments may utilize diff aspects of MESA III. Web Architecture Project Reviewed the background and the charge to the Tech Council briefly. Went over the action we are taking - a pilot project using the Content Management System (CMS) which is part of Luminis. This pilot is a joint project of the ITU and the TechCouncil/CAS with Carrie Gilotte heading the IT side (with Kirsten and Paras) and Dee Holisky for the academic side (with Mel). The pilot project is one involving course information. This past semeste we gathered info about what course information different offices would need/want to display on a web site. The ITU purchased the software and servers to put infrastructure in place; the server admin for this project went to training. Fall 2005 Proof of concept. We will be satisified with the proof of concept when we can see Different web pages with different looks displaying the same info The info draws from multiple sources (data from Banner, catalog data that is not in Banner, data added locally by dept) As part of pilot, we will create two templates in the CMS - one developed from scratch and one that looks like a current web site. The websites will display data from different data sources (Banner, the database being developed by the ITU, unstructured data added locally by the department/program). The local editing will use the CMS which allows the local edit to be reviewed and approved by a local content manager. We are very interested in this feature of theCMS. We are currently identifying the people/roles needed for the CMS, scheduling training for them, and developing the database that is a necessary part of the system. We reviewed a diagram of workflow process for this project and a timeline for completion. We hope to have a working model to demonstrate at the fall Tech Council meeting. If the pilot is successful, we will discuss at that meeting both process for other units to be able to use the course CMS and a process for developing a second module for the pilot. Possible other uses for the course info system would be to track/display information needed for our next SACS Accreditation or other accrediation studies. Fielded some questions, including one about the Portal Project. Joy reported that we are currently planning a pilot with the resident students. Attending: Joy Hughes Anne Agee Dee Ann Holisky Farrokh Alemi Lara Bushallow Kirsten Delashmutt Jim Finkelstein Andrew Flagel Carrie Gillotte Creston Jamison Paras Kaul Deborah Keene Ruth Kifer Bob Nakles Mel Nichols Stan Zolte -top-
Contact: Anne Agee \| Updated June 21, 2005