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Campus PeriodicalsResources for ReportersSelected Administrative OfficesCalendarsMaintained by pioweb@ucsc.edu |
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Administrative Message September 29, 2004 To: UC Santa Cruz Faculty and Staff From: William D. Hyder, Director, Client Relationship Management, Information Technology Services Re: AIS Communication to Faculty and StaffDear Faculty and Staff: I want to take this opportunity to thank many of you who have congratulated me on my appointment as Director, Customer Relationship Management in the new Information Technology Services organization. I also want to acknowledge the concerns many of you have expressed about the difficulties encountered with the new campus information system, AIS. The new system clearly impacts staff and faculty workload in many departments. The more complex a department's major requirements and prerequisites, the more severe the impact. The yearlong transition from our old system, SIS, to AIS began last December and will be complete at the end of this fall term. Transitions like these are difficult, and day-to-day operations are inevitably affected by the fact that we must begin to work in the new system before it is fully customized to our needs. Bluntly, staff, faculty, and students are all in the position this fall that we must carry out our work in AIS while there are still many aspects of the system that are not fully implemented. We are several months away from launching Information Technology Services (ITS) customer support services, but support for AIS is available now. Macintosh users, before you contact the AIS Help Desk, make sure you are using Firefox, Mozilla, or Netscape browsers. Both Apple Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer for Macintosh have proven to be problematic for logging on to the portal at http://my.ucsc.edu. Contact the AIS Help Desk at ais-help@ucsc.edu via email or at 459-1611 (8 a.m.-noon and 1-5 p.m.) if you need immediate help with your AIS login, assistance with establishing a password hint, or you are experiencing system errors within AIS. If you are not sure if your problem is with AIS or other system problems, you can reach the Information Resource Center (IRC-Help Desk) at 459-4357. Frequently Asked Questions: Why did we have to change information systems now? SIS became an obsolete, unsupported system shortly after it was purchased in 1987 because the campus decided not to upgrade to the new version of the system. Since that time, the campus has locally maintained it and the mainframe computer that supports its batch-oriented architecture. SIS has reached the limits of its ability to support the campus. It would be impossible to incorporate new federal financial aid regulations anticipated this year in SIS. Why don't we have more time for the transition? The AIS project began in 1999 with broad consultation on what the campus wanted from a new information system. From that consultation, it was clear that the campus needed a system that would provide faculty and staff with better access to student records and academic information. In 2001, a system that was fully web-integrated was selected from a group of three candidates that could satisfy our business needs. Preparation for implementation began with that system. During this period, however, the third candidate corporation purchased our vendor with the announced intention of eliminating the product. We were therefore forced to start over again with our second choice candidate, the Peoplesoft system that we refer to as AIS. Despite this setback, the deadline of 2004 for anticipated financial aid regulation reform still loomed. Hence, the AIS project team has had to cope with a compressed period for implementation. Why can't I choose my own account name? Your account number is system generated, much like a bank account number. The number is not something we can change. However, there is some hope for the future. ITS is building a campus Identity Management system that should allow faculty and staff with a UCSC identity to use that account information to log in. We are about a year away, so current account numbers will be with us for now. Why can't AIS give us what we want now? To insure that the project stayed within realistic budget limits, the contract for implementing AIS was a "fixed price; fixed scope" project. That means that in its first phase, work has been limited to providing the system with baseline "vanilla" functionality. As a result, during this phase of the project our ability to adapt the system to local expectations has been very limited. With the conclusion of phase 1 in December, the project will be able to turn to the broader consultation that will fill in the gaps in functionality of the current system. Until that time, however, we must accomplish our goals with the currently configured system. The full potential of the AIS to improve communication and academic support on campus will gradually become apparent as training and improvements to functionality are completed. In the meantime, however, all of us will continue to encounter many minor frustrations and some major concerns. During this trying time, staff will be frustrated that they are not able to provide the level of assistance that they normally aspire to as they struggle to reinvent how to do their work in a completely new context. Faculty will have to come to appreciate the fact that the increased availability of academic information will repay the expectation that they receive information about their courses and provide their grades through the new system. I ask that you be understanding about how we came to the situation that we are in this fall with AIS, and ask you to do your best to be cooperative and civil during the transition. I welcome your expressions of concern and solicit your ideas about what we can do to further help in smoothing the transition. I can be reached via email at bill@ucsc.edu. Sincerely,
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