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Over the past year, several hundred faculty, staff and executive officers from throughout the campus have been engaged in a comprehensive effort to upgrade and improve the university's principal administrative systems. Working in cooperation with PeopleSoft Corp. and a set of partnership universities throughout the United States, significant progress has been made toward the implementation of streamlined data systems in such areas as admissions, student records, financial aid and payroll.
Unfortunately, it will be another year before students can drop courses online, due to a necessary change in the schedule for the new PeopleSoft student administration software announced last week by Fred Rogers, senior vice president and chief financial officer of the university. The main reason for the change, Rogers said, is that the first version of the new software will not allow full interaction via the World Wide Web.
"We already have a very rich environment where students can get their grades online and utilize CourseEnroll and other advanced services, one that permits faculty and staff to access the information they need via the web. The first version of the PeopleSoft student software doesn't have that full-access capability, and we don't want to take away those services," said Rogers.
Version 7.0 of the PeopleSoft student software (actually the first version, but numbered to match other PeopleSoft software) was delivered to Cornell in December 1997, and the Project 2000 Student Team has been testing it since then. The second version of the student software, due in December 1998 and numbered 7.5, should have the web capacity required for the enhancement of the Cornell system. In order to maximize services to the student community, the Student Team recommended delaying implementation of the system until PeopleSoft delivers version 7.5, and Rogers accepted that recommendation.
"We're disappointed with the need to delay," said Rogers, "but we're confident that waiting for the revised PeopleSoft version will result in a smoother and far more effective transition here at Cornell."
The Human Resources and Payroll module of the PeopleSoft system will go into use pretty much as planned, Rogers said, with the first new paychecks coming out in January 1999 and the improved COLTS system for on-line time collection being activated at about the same time. In order to tie it together with the new student system, the human resources software will be updated almost immediately to PeopleSoft version 7.5, due to be released in December 1998, and this will cause some other innovations to be delayed.
Technical staff will first focus on the human resources upgrade and then on implementation of the new student system in 1999, so work on the finance module will be suspended for one year, Rogers said. Some members of the Finance Team will return to their home units temporarily, while others will continue to work on planning the project. The version of the financial system that Cornell plans to put in place is scheduled for release by PeopleSoft in May 1999.
"I think it was a good decision. We need to get the people systems up and running first," said John Finamore, who has returned to his job as chief financial officer for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences after being "on loan" as co-director of the Finance Team. "The staff on the team were sorry to stop, but we did a lot of good work. We will spend the next four or five weeks documenting what we have done to date, and it will be at an excellent starting point next year."
There will be no change in the services now available to students, according to David Yeh, assistant vice president for student and academic services and head of the Student Team, except that the ability to add and drop courses online will not be added in the fall of 1999 as planned. For faculty and staff, Yeh said, the new schedule means that faculty will not be able to post grades on-line as soon as expected.
Yeh added that Cornell has carefully planned the way the student system will interact with the financial and other modules of the PeopleSoft software, since it will finally permit the university to use a single, integrated database linking everything from accounting and admissions to alumni affairs and development.
"It's like an airplane, which has hundreds of little systems -- hydraulic, electrical, plumbing. Because it's an integrated system, every component is related to every other. You have to be very careful about changing anything without careful analysis," Yeh said.
"We now have a group working on this part of the problem, called the Campus Community Module Group," Yeh added. The group will have representatives from student, alumni and payroll administration sections.
Another reason for waiting for PeopleSoft version 7.5, Yeh said, is that in version 7.5 the rules will be uniform for updating records in the student and financial systems, making it much easier to tie the two systems together without making expensive custom changes in the software.
The revised schedule for the elements of the student system, as announced last week is:
·August 1999 -- Admissions and Campus Community (unchanged)
·November 1999 -- Financial Aid/Fellowships (1 year delay)
·January 2000 -- Student Records (1 year delay)
·July 2000 -- Student Financials (1 year delay)
·July 2001 -- Advisement (1 year delay)