Author Archives: Doreen Bray

Known Issues… (Updated 1/05/2010 @ 9:00AM)

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Last Update1/05/2010 -9:00am

We will post updated information here regarding major known iSiS 9.0 issues and their status.

OPEN ISSUES – Confirmed issues that are being investigated by the technical team

  • Login — Lowell has reported to UITS that some users are having troubles logging into ISIS. The user believes they are typing the username and password correctly, but the system makes the user change their password. Please post a comment if this is an issue you too have experienced as it is difficult for us to troubleshoot.
  • Update on Login Issues: UITS has been able to replicate the issue and is investigating long term solutions. In the meantime, if you experience this issue you may do either of the following: Hit your browser back button until theerror message no longer displays or close theentire windows session andstart the log in process again at http://isis.uml.edu
  • Performance — UITS continues to evaluate system performance issues. Many users have reported increased performance, but there are still some experiencing slowness. If you do experience iSiS being slow, please contact the HELP desk at help@uml.edu or at 978.934.4357 and give as much detail as possible (what process you were trying to complete, the page you were on and the time of day). These details will allow us to better troubleshoot the issues.

RECENTLY CLOSED ISSUES– Confirmed issues that have recently been updated and fixed.

  • Student Online Financial Account — The display of student financial data was significantly different and causing some confusion for students. This has been modified to make it more user friendly.
  • Performance — UITS has improved the Advisor page to more rapidly load all advisees. The performance was 91 seconds and is now 11 seconds for one advisor with over 1000 advisees.
  • Faculty Class Roster Update — faculty now have the option to view students on the waiting list via their class roster.

  • Student Request for Official Transcript —the link to request official transcripts wasn’t appearing in the drop down, but is now available.

  • Permission Number Creations –a processing error prevented the Registrar’s Office from generating additional permission numbers. This has been fixed.
  • Help links to UPK are now available via the ‘Help’ button within faculty and student self-service. More improvements are coming, but this is at least now functioning.
  • International Access — Links toself-service have been changed to fixa couplelogin issues. The change willnow allow userswithinternationalcomputer operating systems to accessiSiS. Additionally facultyself-service users willenter iSiS directly in the’faculty center’.

Updates on the Upgrade (Last Update 12/2 @ 6:00 PM)

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Wednesday, December2 at 6:00 PM

TheiSiSsystem is live. We are in the process of having the login buttons updated. For immediate access you can login here:

Faculty Self Service

Student Self Service

Wednesday, December2 at 4:00 PM

TheiSiSsystem is going live today. We have many business offices entering transactions and all is going well. There are a couple self-service functions that are still being evaluated, but nothing that will keep us from going live today. One enhancement that we had promoted was to have a useful ‘Help’ link — our expectations were that it would be embedded within each self-service page, but it now appears this will not happen on day 1. The UPK’s are still available via theiSiS web page. More information coming within the next couple hours.

Wednesday, December2 at 11:30 AM

There continues to be much progress and we have a number of campus administrative staffconfirming functionality. Thereare still a few issues that are being addressed by the technical staff at the President’s Office. Until those issues are resolved we are delaying go-live of self-service access. We will post more information as it becomes available.

Tuesday, December1 at 8:15 PM

During campus testing a couple issues were discovered thatrequired sometechnical fixes. This included some campus updates to spam filters and someend-user security adjustments. There is a database issue that has just been fixed, but requires a new round of testing to validate system functionality. Campus testing will resume tomorrow morning. Once testing is successfully completed we will open the system up for self-service access. Thanks for your patience.

Tuesday, December1 at 9:00 AM

The technical upgrade from ISIS 8.0 to iSiS 9.0 has been completed.A few campus offices and self-service userswill be validating data and conducting final testing today. Assuming this final step all goes well then the system will be made available for all users by 7am tomorrow.

Faculty, staff, and students are encouraged to review the training tools available on the new iSiS web page. There are quick videos (less than 5 minutes)available which demonstrate key functionality relative to this time of the academic cycle. In particular:

  • how students can register for classes and:
  • how faculty can record grades

Go tohttp://www.uml.edu/enrollment/isis/Training.htmlfor more information.

11/19 Why Upgrade in the Middle of the Semester?

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It is a fair question and one we’ve heard a fewtimes now. I assure you the project team took into consideration all options to find a period of time that would cause the ‘least disruption’ to the campus. Unfortunately in our assessment we find that there is no such thing as a good time to do this, only less bad times.

Here are some of the key aspects we needed to consider when we identify dates to do an upgrade..’

  • We need to take the system down for at least 1 week. This is a fairly big upgrade from a technical standpoint and requires full shutdown of the production ISIS application.
  • We have multiple offices all using this same integrated ISIS application, so all have to agree to our downtime window. This includes Academic Departments, Admissions, Registrar, Financial Aid, Orientation, Accounts Payable, and Alumni/Development.
  • Each office has critical processing periods when they find it essential to have the system available. These key activities include admissions applications, student orientation, advising, registration, add/drop, faculty grading, billing, financial aid packaging.
  • We then have to consider all 3 academic careers of undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education and their unique business requirements
  • Then we lay this across 4 semesters per year (fall, winter, spring, summer)

When we package this all up we only come out with a few weeks per year that are reasonable. The options always are in the middle of our large semesters (fall & spring), so regardless we will have a mid-semester change. Summer has too many enrollment activities going on with graduation, then new student orientation and rolling registration for fall. During winter break the Continuing Education session along with Spring Semester application and registration cycle doesn’t allow for any prolonged shut down.

Hopefully this explanation (or excuse) sheds some light on the challenges faced when selecting this upgrade week. If you have additional questions or comments please letusknow.

11/11 – iSiS 9.0 Upgrade Awareness

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The iSiS project team is using multiple methods to keep students, faculty, and staff updated on all the changes occuring withiSiS. UML Today will bea significant part of the communication plan, so please be on the lookout for the latest news in the “On Campus” section. In addition to UML Today, there will also be information shared on theHAWKi boards,the Connector,WUML, Facebook, and theiSiSweb page.Preview thenew ISIS Poster that willsoon be seenaround campus.

Here are some older UML Today postings:

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11/10 – Faculty Orientation Sessions Scheduled

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Optional presentations on Faculty Self-Service functionality are being conducted for anyone interested in learning more about the new iSiS 9.0. An overview of the changes and new features will be demonstrated. These are the following open sessions:

Friday, November 20th, 8:30am to 9:30am, Alumni Hall

Monday, November 23rd, 1pm to 2pm, O’Leary 222

If you are interested in attending one of the sessions please sign up here.

11/5 – iSiS Training for Staff Announced

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Yesterday afternoon UML Staff members who have ISIS access were invited to training via an email. There are approximately 320 employees from across campus who are staff users of ISIS. While the changes to ISIS are not overly significant in terms of functionality, there are big changes in the look and feel. Hence, thecampus business owners determined that it was best to require all staff users to attend one 3 hour training class. This class will show users the newest features and show them how to access online support.

If there are questions about who was invited please email UML Training.

Faculty and Students will have the opportunity tobe orientated to the system via presentations andonline communications. Some information is already available on the respetive training/orienation pages for UML Faculty and UML Students.

10/22/09 – Campus Testing of Self-Service Completed

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Faculty and students participated in the testing of the ISIS 9.0 environmentover the last few days. There were no major issues identified and all key business functions worked as designed. A few people identified some enhancement suggestions and those are being tracked for future consideration.

A common theme we heard from users was that the user interface was improvedand that end users shouldn’t have any difficulty transitioning to ISIS 9.0.

Business offices have also been involved in testing and most of that is also going well. There are a few issues still being worked by the project team in Shrewsbury, but so far we do not see any roadblocks to a December go-live.