The most apparent differences for users are listed on the Heads-Up web site. Upgrade changes are primarily behind the scenes, better positioning the University to implement improved functionality in the future.

The period of rapid fire change has subsided. “Users are entering a period of relative calm,” assures Virginia Evans, Assistant Vice President for Integrated System Deployment & Support (ISDS). “That is less true, however, for ISDS and the central offices.”

ISDS has a list of 98 high-impact issues on which it is currently working, from maintenance and responding to problems as they arise, to addressing many of the requests that were put on hold during the upgrade process. Then there are the questions and requests that come in daily, and the functional upgrades promised with the 11i technical upgrade.

“We are plugging through the immediate issues as quickly as we can,” says Evans. “For those system enhancements that take a significant amount of time and resources, we are establishing a Change Management Council (CMC) to help us prioritize which changes should come first.”

The CMC will be comprised of five representatives from the central offices, five from school offices, and five at-large members. It will begin meeting this summer.

“We should be done with the large-scale projects for awhile,” advises Evans. “What comes next will be more limited in scope and target specific modules. We will keep users informed through the IS Exchange and other communications of what we are working on over time.”