Meeting & Agendas

Approved. {LN, LK}

The Committee moved to approve a recommendation to the ACC Technology Steering Committee to purchase CROA (Colleague Reporting & Operational Analytics). Several people indicated that they would like to see a draft of the proposal before it is submitted to the TSC.

A soft launch has been in effect since October 2015, but a wider launch is expected shortly after the return from Spring Break. The upcoming launch is contingent upon Ellucian's release of version 2.11 which is expected to include enhancements to the Restrictions Holds functionality. Self-Service 2.11 is supposed to be available sometime in February 2016. The current 'gateway' to Self-Service is Online Services. Once the 'Portal' is ready, Online Services will no longer serve as the gateway. There was a lengthy discussion about the need for adequate training. Some colleges have reported that students have needed minimal training, whereas other colleges that have implemented Self-Service have advised for the need of robust communication and training. The situation at ACC may be more confusing to students, as well as advisors, because Self-Service will be going into production around the same time as Degree Map, version 2, the Civitas product that also supports student planning. Another concern for IT is to ensure that the infrastructure will be able to support a wide open launch of Self-Service at peak periods of Registration.

There are many new and enhanced products where the assistance of the Professional Development Technology Specialist would be helpful for training purposes. The Self-Service project is one that would especially benefit from assistance as there are some important training goals. The Self-Service project would also benefit from release of an approved video demo. The draft version that was shown at a recent meeting was met with recognition that this would be an important communication tool.

An initial conference call is scheduled for sometime in February.

Regroup is the ACC software that was purchased to replace Listserves. The email functionality was purchased, but not the texting functionality. To acquire the text messaging component, the cost is $48,000. The Dean of Arts & Humanities is very much in favor of expanding student communications capabilities to include text messaging. A Department Chair recently requested Waitlisting be set up to utiilize text messaging. It appears that many people have ideas on how text messaging could be used to assist with student communication. Ellucian has reported that Waitlisting works very well Regroup for text messaging. The Dean of Arts & Humanities has been given the 'green light' to solicit support for an analysis and recommendation as to whether ACC should seek to acquire text messaging functionality. The ERP Systems Steering Committee would like to support that effort and is willing to assist in the cost-benefit analysis. Per Committee members, the first step in the analysis should be a demo of Regroup as most of the committee members have no knowledge of what it does and how it works. Part of the discussion revolved around the existence of other products that utilize text messaging; e.g., Accudemia, In Queue (?), and Ellucian's CRM products Recruiter and Pilot. Willie has aked for list of all ACC software products. (IT would also like to acquire that list.) Kathy J has asked for a product relationship chart. These two requests make take some time and research, but it is agreed that these would be helpful tools and good information.

InfoPath is reportedly no longer supported by Microsoft, but its Sharepoint product is believed to have some Imaging Software capabilities. As the Portal will reside on Microsoft's Sharepoint, and the Portal projects is starting up in earnest, we should be getting more information soon on its imaging capabilities. We are also trying to arrange for demos of ImageNow (now called Perceptive) and Soft Docs, an Ellucian vendor partner product.