Information Technology Services

Upgraded to the Latest Financials Release

The success of the University's applications and technical infrastructure is driven by University-wide collaboration through cross-campus discussions and shared projects. These services in turn support the daily operations of our business and educational communities.

In the latest Financials release, the University's campuses and UITS applied this shared service model to deliver new financial application capabilities for the institution. With an approach founded on industry leading practices, the University introduced an application with improved support of business processes and state of the art web-based functionality, including:  

• Implementing a one-stop online University catalog for purchasing lab, office, and maintenance supplies  
• Improving contract compliance and visibility of spending  
• Reducing the purchasing cycle time for all University users  

The University's ongoing commitment to learning and collaboration will bring about more transformative improvements to the Financials application in the years ahead.

Implemented a University-wide Grants Application

In the University's A Vision for the Future, President Wilson asks the University of Massachusetts to focus on becoming a world class organization.  "We need a culture, a structure, and a set of tools, systems, and practices that foster greater collaboration and promote academic, administrative, and research excellence" (A Vision for the Future).   

The implementation of a full integrated suite of Grants applications reflected President Wilson's objective.  The Grants suite implementation culminated in a consolidation of 14 different legacy Grants applications throughout the University.  The University's campuses provided subject matter experts, who designed, developed, tested, trained, and deployed the application.   

The Grants suite supports the University's shared data by:  

• Interfacing with other Financials modules (e.g. Accounts Payable, General Ledger, Commitment Control)  
• Enabling users to extract data from the application that was previously a manual process 

The Grants application provides the University's research community with enriched, timely, and more accurate data and information, and increased streamlined business processes.  This state of the art software application toolkit is vital in this ever competitive market for research.

Enhanced the Student Administration Application

The University promotes academic excellence and supports campus participation in all enterprise projects.  The University's collaborative services model for Student Applications is comprised of a collegial consortium focused on supporting the faculty, students, and staff from the Boston, Dartmouth and Lowell (BDL) campuses.  This model supports a key priority of the Board of Trustees: "Improve the student learning experience" (Board of Trustees Strategic Priorities).  In FY2007, the Boston, Dartmouth, and Lowell campuses added value to their Student Applications based on feedback from the faculty, students, and administration.  A few of the major achievements are outlined below.  

The Student online web application allows prospective students to apply for admission to one or multiple campuses online.  This online service was expanded at several campuses to include new programs, such as Lowell's Continuing Studies & Corporate Education (CSCE), Dartmouth's Professional & Continuing Education (PCE), and Dartmouth College Now.  College Now is "[an alternative admissions program intended] for those who have completed high school or its equivalent, and who want to and can do university-level work, but whose academic achievements have been hampered by certain social, educational, or economic obstacles" (Alternative Admissions: College Now/START).

The Student Self Service application functionality expanded with several improvements in FY2007, namely:  

• Information was added to the Class Roster to enhance faculty members' ability to analyze the students registered in their courses, such as class capacity, number of students enrolled, number of waitlisted students, number of students who dropped the class, and class meeting pattern.  Email functionality was added so that the instructors can now email the entire class or select individuals.  
• The search capabilities and performance on the Class Search/Schedule of Classes pages were improved, offering a more streamlined experience for Students.  
• The Grade Roster was significantly simplified and streamlined allowing faculty to enter grades faster and more efficiently at terms end.  

In response to new Massachusetts legislation requiring all students to verify their health insurance, new functionality was added to support the Self Service Health Insurance Online Waiver Process.  Read more in the Foundations for Efficiencies and Cost Savings for the University section below.

Focusing on Human Resources

The Human Resource Management System (HRMS) application set the benchmark for University-wide enterprise projects in 2002 as the first application implementation to use the shared services model (Read more about this model in The Years Ahead). The project met the Industry Leading Practices of the day, optimizing the skills and capabilities of the University while promoting collaboration across campuses and departments.  

Recently, the University implemented functionality for the new Health Care Reform Act (HCRA). The University enterprise HRMS application achieved the milestone of completing the 140th successful payroll on the current application set.  The HR application has also led the design of application disaster recovery.  A regular test process is in place to ensure the recovery is ready and working in the event we ever need to utilize it. These milestones show the University's continued efforts to provide a heightened level of service and systems reliability, one of the UITS Strategic Goals.  

In addition, the University's HR Applications team supported the recent Financials application release. The HR Applications team provided the Financials Project team with data and applications integration and human capital, as needed. This cross-application collaboration ensures accurate, streamlined data throughout the University's applications, which in turn supports the campuses' daily business processes.  

The University continues to "improve the delivery of Administrative and IT Services" (Board of Trustees Strategic Priorities). The planning stage for an upgrade and enhancement of the current HRMS application to the latest version of the Human Capital Management (HCM) application was initiated in the last months of FY2007. Read more about the HCM project in The Years Ahead.

Increasing the Value of University Procurement

The University's campus representatives in collaboration with UITS enhanced the Procurement module during the Financials applications upgrade. The University's administrative and finance community was introduced to a University supply catalog and new functionality that supports business process improvements.  

University supply catalogs allow campuses to go online to view all available catalogs.  For example, an eProcurement end user can search for lab and office supplies from all University contracted vendors and compare a variety of product attributes such as product specifications, size, dimensions, and discounted prices. With this common catalog, the University was able to meet its goal of controlled spending by moving towards University-wide contracts.  

The University introduced the requisition process to Procurement with the advent of the Financials upgrade. The implementation of this simple, streamlined process replaced what was considered a cumbersome and complex Purchase Order (PO) process. The requisition takes considerably less time to complete, providing a faster delivery of the requested items to the vendors and increasing the data accuracy of the purchases.  

A new electronic document transfer business process replaced the previous manually driven process. In the past, the University printed and mailed purchase orders to vendors. Now the electronic document transfer allows Procurement to electronically send purchase orders to Vendors and receive information from the Vendor in the same manner. This strategic sourcing provides more accurate information, reduces data entry, and increases efficiencies with the University catalog vendors.

A Shared Investment: The University Vendor File

The University's campus representatives worked with UITS to consolidate six campus vendor files into one University vendor file during the Financials applications upgrade. One common file benefits the University by reducing vendor maintenance, supporting University-wide contracts, and simplifying the 1099 information. The shared file will help the University understand overall purchasing trends and information through key vendor partners and turn that into savings for the University.  

The U$ave Program Expands

The University released the second generation of the U$ave purchasing program for personal computers to the campuses, students, faculty, and staff in June 2007. This program takes advantage of the volume purchasing power of all five University campuses and the President's Office and returns substantial discounts to the purchaser.  

While designed primarily to serve the computer purchasing needs of the campuses, U$ave also extends its benefits to personal purchases by University students, faculty, and staff. The availability of this program to University students helps "maintain and improve affordability and access" (Board of Trustees Strategic Priorities).  

After a recent competitive bidding process conducted by the University's President's Office in collaboration with all five campuses, the U$ave program has expanded to include a three-year contract award for desktop and notebook computers to Dell, Inc. and a one-year award of preferred configurations from Gateway and HP for Tablet PCs.  

In collaboration with the campuses, UITS will look for additional opportunities to expand this program given the success of the U$ave program with desktop devices. This may include servers, storage, printers, or other equipment.  

Currently, discounts range between 20% and 40% depending on the model purchased. For more details on the great offers, visit the official U$ave site.

Faster Results: The New Health Insurance Online Waiver Process for the Student Administration Application

A major Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell (BDL) Student Self-Service project designed and developed in FY2007 was the Health Insurance Online Waiver Process. Students can now enroll or waive health insurance online, instead of manually submitting insurance forms to the administrative offices as was the prior process. The information entered online is immediately reflected on the student's online view of the bill. This streamlined process ensures data accuracy, faster turnaround time, and cost savings for the University.

A Valued Partnership: Oracle/PeopleSoft Strategic Purchasing

The University enhanced its investment in Oracle, a global market leading applications and technology company.  The University combined the purchases of application and technical infrastructure services in FY2007, including the Business Intelligence suite, Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) licenses, and an application training suite of products called the User Productivity Kit. This strategic investment shows the University's continued confidence in Oracle's applications and established the new business model the University now has with Oracle (see Focused on Service). This investment allows the University to drive leading practices and consistency throughout its applications, building a stronger foundation for the University's business community. 

 

Massachusetts.edu Redesign

The Board of Trustees Strategic Priorities has identified a strategic need to "position the University effectively in the higher education marketplace through a strategic marketing program." This priority has spawned marketing programs, a branding and communication strategy, and the strengthening of ties with key stakeholders, including the business community.  

In 2006, the President's Office redesigned the UMass System web presence (http://www.massachusetts.edu/). The site has become the revitalized platform for University-wide communications; this includes supporting the UMass news announcements, as well as increasing the effectiveness and timely delivery of information to the University's varied audiences. 

President's Office Implements a Shared Content Management Tool

UITS in conjunction with project sponsors designed, developed, and implemented a web Content Management System (CMS) tool to support a federated model for content development. The transition of content management removed the reliance on the IT department to make web content changes.

In the new CMS model, content authors across departments are empowered to edit and update their content on massachusetts.edu in accordance with their departmental needs. By extension, this also provides the content authors the ability to present their message in a thoughtful, consistent manner -- with a focus on their targeted audiences.

The tool's foundation was built around flexibility. New functionality continues to be added in order to meet the needs of the University's audiences. The new application components follow a consistent, streamlined approach, and are in alignment with branding and communication initiatives. These components included surveys, enterprise search, and video messages. Check out the latest television ad "Transform" featuring Governor Deval Patrick for an example of rich media/web video accessible on Massachusetts.edu. 

• Significant increases in systems hardware were made to support the consistent growth in web based concurrent usage and peak potential.  
• Enhancements were made at both the application server farm level and backend database tier.  
• UMOL front facing entry point web sites were moved to a tier one datacenter.  
• A state of the art highly redundant clustered network and load balancing technology was installed.  
• Live interaction solutions leveraging the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) were deployed with complimentary collaborative tools such as online white boarding, application sharing, video streaming, and text chat.  

Several of these capabilities are being utilized to web enhance more traditional or blended course offerings across the University.

Establishing Identities across the University: Identity and Access Management

A year-long process of establishing the University's need to manage computer-based login identities and access to network-based resources has been completed. Bids were received from several leading Identity and Access Management solution providers and Oracle's IdM suite was selected. The benefits of Identity Management include:  

• The future use of one username and password to access programs and information services (databases, file shares, etc)  
  
• Quicker turnaround on creating accounts for new users and more secure logins  
• Improved auditing functionality leads to better security surrounding identities and access to data.  

This first phase sets the stage for improvements in the cross-campus computing experience for the University. Read more about the future of Identity Management in The Years Ahead.  

Exploring New Collaboration Tools

During FY2007, UITS planned and architected the overall solution for the implementation of numerous collaboration services.  This solution included the procurement of a server farm and storage platform, archiving hardware/software, and the negotiation of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) Implementation Contract.  Read more about the next generation of collaboration tools in The Years Ahead.

Planning the MITI Upgrade Project

The Massachusetts Information Turnpike Initiative (MITI) provides greater access to educational services throughout the state.  This is made possible by a state of the art network infrastructure.   

The MITI network serves the University campuses and several other entities, including state and community colleges, hundreds of libraries, and several state agencies (e.g. Trial Court, Department of Education, Board of Higher Education, Massachusetts District Attorney's Association). The MITI network is truly a statewide network, covering the Cape (Cape Cod Community College) through the Berkshires (Berkshire Community College).

In FY2007, UITS began a comprehensive multiyear project to upgrade the MITI backbone. The goals of the MITI upgrade project are:  

• Upgrade capacity across the entire network to a 10 Gigabit network that is positioned to more easily add bandwidth as the demand continues to grow for Internet and Internet2 access and services  
• Renewed existing fiber leases for an additional five years; reduced dependency on older, less reliable fiber routes  
• Extended fiber reach into two strategic collocation facilities, one in Boston and one in Springfield providing easier access to many different service providers and geographic redundancy  

Once this project is completed in the mid FY2008 time period, the University will have greatly improved the network's availability, resiliency, and redundancy, thus better assuring our customers of uninterrupted service.

Developed a Blueprint for High Availability and Disaster Recovery across the Enterprise Suite

In FY2007, UITS mapped out backend architecture to support the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications. Read more about this architecture strategy at Evolving to Support the University.