11/17 – iSiS Unavailable Tuesday, Nov. 24 @ 9pm – Wednesday, Dec. 2 @ 7am for upgrade

As you may know, the Intercampus Student Information System (iSiS) is being upgraded to version 9.0 on Dec. 2, 2009.The overall look and feel of iSiS will change and some new functionality introduced. During the upgrade process iSiS will be unavailable from Tuesday, November 24th @9pm through Wednesday, December 2nd @ 7am — please plan accordingly. Attached is a document for Administrative Offices that goes into more specifics about the cutover window. Also, please check out the website at http://isis.uml.edu for more information.

SA Go Live Announcement for Administrative Offices.doc

11/11 – iSiS 9.0 Upgrade Awareness

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

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

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

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.

9/1/09 – ISIS 9.0 Coming in December

The University is in the process of upgrading the ISIS Student Administration system.It is expected that bythe end of the fall semester (targeting early December 2009) there will be a new systemin place — ISIS 9.0!

Why Upgrade? The current ISIS application is technically version 8.0 of Oracle’s PeopleSoft application suite. This system went into production back in 2005 at UMassand is no longer supported by the vendor. It is a best business practice to be supported by the vendor and as such was a major driver in the decision to upgrade. Additionally, there is new and improved functionality with the9.0 release which will enhance the user experience for UMass students and faculty.

What is changing? More information will be forthcoming later in the fall regarding all the changes that are taking place. Overall there are mostly look and feel changes, with only a few functional differences. Again, more information coming in November and December.

What do I need to do? Be on the lookout for new information on the ISIS home page. Most training will occur via an online tool called UPK (UMass Productivity Kit) and should meet the needs of all self-service users. Full service users will be invited toclassroom training when that is scheduled. We anticipate all training occurringwithina month of go-live (mid-November thru early December).

Who is Developing andTesting? UMass has a team of central and campus staff who are working to develop and test the ISIS 9.0 application at our Collaborative Services Facility in Shrewsbury. Additionally, there will be campus testing in October for all core offices as well as some faculty and students.

If you have any questions or comments about the ISIS Upgrade please contact the campus project manager – Doreen Bray (doreen_bray@uml.edu ).