ASR-IT

• Application Development
• Team will be recruiting soon to replace Brittany’s position as a developer in ASR-IT.
• We’re ¾ of the way through updating 120 Oracle passwords for our systems and applications.
• We’re working on stories for Data Integrations, SDP, Roomsearch, and the One Stop Drupal sites.
• Planning for the second quarter of 2023 is underway.
• DORS
• New software release, Yeti 2023.1, deploys to Test February 28. 
• 3 new features were deployed to Test and are being reviewed for approval:
• Configurable Direct Billing Account Field
• Add Conference Number to Conference Pages 
• Display Special Request Public Description Field 
• Cut over to Cybersource from the prior payment process is scheduled for Production this week.
• Jadu
• Ryan Ceresnak, ASR & OUE Jadu Administrator, and ASR’s Jadu (e-forms and workflows) portfolio will be moving from ASR-IT to reporting through ASR Operations & Strategic Initiatives beginning next week.
• The OSF Housing/Living Arrangement Change request form went live in Jadu on Monday February 20. This was previously a PDF form for students to change their living arrangement status for financial aid purposes.
• The Jadu Dashboard project kicked off last week. Ryan is leading requirements gathering activities for OIT. This new functionality will address a significant gap identified in the Jadu system analysis conducted last year by having a custom user-facing dashboard that allows users to manage their work in the system.
• Student Data & Analytics
• Team will soon be recruiting to replace Alex Rose’s position as an IT Pro 3-Business Intelligence & Data Analysis.
• Proof Of Concept between Kafka and Databricks has been completed, which allows us to more easily bring data from one source to another for analytic purposes.
• SDA will present some of our work at the March ASR All Staff Assembly, including the Retention Priority Analysis and Curricular Analytics.
• Admissions work is continuing in the EDW as we strive to deliver the Admissions Trackbook for all campuses.
• SDA team had two presentations at the UMN Student Success Conference:
• Leveraging Data Analytics to Find Potential Leavers and Exploring How to Intervene
• Supercharge Your Intuition with Data and Analytics
• Student Financials, Campus Community, and Shared Data
• HR Image testing in partnership with HRMS BA’s
• Working with HR on legal name changes and preferred name functionality
• Email for Life analysis
• Helping OIT with information on data feeds so they can retire the x.500 from RecWell, bookstores, etc.
• CARES/HEERF and OHE reporting
• Center for Allied Health Programs moving to Pharmacy preparation
• Changes to TFMS export and the search capabilities
• Student Records
• Worked closely with CCAPS and University libraries to resolve access issues for College in the Schools students
• Email for Life Analysis
• Center for Allied Health Programs moving to Pharmacy preparation 
• Coursedog support
• Changes to National Student Clearinghouse reporting
• Preparing for Parchment Upgrade
• Preparing for fall 23 enrollment appointment setup

Safety forum

A third safety forum will be held on Thursday, March 2, from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the Cowles Auditorium and streamed online. University and City of Minneapolis officials will share updates on their efforts to address safety on and around campus and take questions from the community. More information is available at Safety Initiatives at the University.

Chrome River reminders

As conference opportunities increase and travel plans are made, please be mindful of these common errors when filling out your expense reports:

• The business purpose (aka justification) needs to clearly address how attending the conference benefits the department/University. Simply stating conference, professional development, or PERR# does not meet the policy standard. Please see the Justifications/Business Purpose job aid for additional guidance.
• When itemizing your lodging expense, always complete the Allowable Total worksheet/calculation on the Room Charge portion. This field coordinates the verification between expense and per diem limit, which will resolve many of the compliance warning scenarios related to lodging. Please see steps 3c-e of the Lodging Itemization job aid for additional guidance.
• If your travel includes extra personal time either before or after the main conference, always include documented comparisons for airfare (i.e. Conference only vs. Conference plus additional days) from the date airfare was originally purchased so we can document that the department is not taking on additional expenses.

Update from Stacey

I’m writing this on Wednesday evening, and the snow has started for real. I look forward to finding out snow totals in the morning.

In addition to tracking snow predictions, the past week has included many reminders of how connected ASR is to all kinds of work at the University. We provided data from the Offices of the Registrar and Classroom Management to inform reduced operations decision-making. I’ve been in meetings on varied topics ranging from integrations with bookstore systems to exploring staffing arrangements between Rochester and Twin Cities One Stop Student Services. 

Information we are providing to the Email for Life project is critical to understanding why a student’s relationship with the University continues even when they don’t have enrollment. We are coordinating with Human Resources on processes for legal name changes, and the list goes on. I’m grateful to be in a position to see all of these ways that ASR supports the entire University. Thank you as always for your hard work on behalf of our students and the University.

Sports wagering

As we approach basketball and March Madness season, be aware of the laws on sports wagering and gambling.

In short, all ASR employees are prohibited from sports wagering per the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). This is because ASR plays a role in student athletics, specifically in that we:

• Certify that athletes are academically eligible to play
• Administer financial aid for student athletes
• Participate in faculty governance for oversight of athletics

For further clarification, any bracket where there is a bet is considered a wager. This applies whether the bracket is for money or something as simple as an ice cream cone.

The NCAA bylaw prohibits “student-athletes, athletics department staff members, and conference office staff from engaging in sports wagering (Bylaw 10.3). NCAA rules also prohibit non-athletics department staff members who have responsibilities within or over the athletics department, such as chancellors or presidents and faculty athletics representatives from engaging in sports wagering. NCAA national office employees are also prohibited from engaging in sports wagering.” If you have questions or concerns, contact Ingrid Nuttall (ingridn@umn.edu).

Coursedog update: Timeline adjustment

The project team is currently completing Quality Assurance (QA) testing for configuration and data integrations into the Coursedog curriculum and catalog products. While our QA testing is almost complete, the team encountered more issues than initially expected. As a result, we’ll need more time to resolve the issues, and the go-live date will need to be adjusted. Coursedog will now go live at the end of August 2023 (originally June 2023).

The team’s primary goal is to ensure that the Coursedog product is of the highest possible quality for University staff at go-live. The additional 8 weeks of time will allow the team to deliver a best-quality product for users participating in User Acceptance Testing in May 2023. This will result in a better product at launch in August. Over the next week, communications regarding this change will be sent to current ECAS & PCAS users and additional stakeholders.

Staff recognition

We wanted to recognize everyone in ASR who quickly came together to help support a student and their family in the best way possible. Through thoughtful and swift collaboration, the individuals involved were not only able to ease some of the burden of the student and their family but also support colleagues across the University. Thank you to Mila Ly, Regina Moran, Stacey Tidball, Julie Selander, Nate Peterson, and Karen Magness for working so closely together and offering a great example of how strong collaboration across ASR makes a difference in students' lives.

We also wanted to give a BIG shout out of appreciation and thanks to the following staff who were instrumental in getting our estimated financial aid budgets and packages for 2024 new admits in order for Rochester and Twin Cities: Deb Edwards, Kari Ellering, Nate Rosckes, MEG Calabrese, Larry Bloom, Deb Wilkin, Meghan Czarniecki, Molly Nelson, Lugail Hamel, Lauren Peterson, Karen Magness, and the FA-IT team. This required multiple reviews, conversations, and manual interventions during the month of February. Most importantly, it required teamwork!