SIS Working Groups Make Progress for DEM
The Student Information System (SIS) is the backbone and data source for much of what the Division of Enrollment Management does: academic records, curricular schedule build, and much more. Recently, several working groups have been developed to help prioritize initiatives and implement improvements within SIS.
The Operations Working Group helps to identify priorities and recommendations to ensure things run smoothly day-to-day in SIS, supporting many of our basic functions. The eForms Working Group was developed to help with the strategic implementation of eForms. This group helps channel and deliver best practices and recommendations for eForms, which helps guarantee that forms constructed from the ground up work seamlessly with PeopleSoft and Campus solutions.
Both of these groups help foster collaborations across DEM. They also provide actionable recommendations to the SIS Steering Committee, in turn making recommendations on behalf of DEM and our partners. This close collaboration between working groups and the steering committee leverages team members technical expertise and results in better informed solutions, improved user experience, and better transparency regarding decisions that impact DEM team members and partners.
The Operations Working Group has recently recommended a twice-a-month move to production (increasing from once a month) and is currently working on recommendations around SIS performance metrics and collaborative approaches to new PUM functionality in SIS.
The eForms Working Group has established a number of important standard practices, security processes and technical approaches, resulting in the successful publishing of 2 eForms and work on 4 additional projects that will be complete in the next few months. These eForms are beneficial because they require less developer time, are user friendly, and are designed to work seamlessly with SIS software.
The improved functionality, stability and security of SIS has been, and will continue to be, positively impacted by the SIS working groups. The collaboration allows the SIS Steering Committee to stay focused on high level strategic engagement for DEM and partners while the working groups provide boots-on-the-ground expertise and guidance for improvements to SIS that will result in better campus solution software and a reduction in staff time and associated costs in the future. DEM is eager to see the continued success of these working groups.