March 2022 IT Projects

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Advancement CRM

The University of Maine System sought proposals for the provision of a comprehensive Constituent Engagement Management (CEM) solution for Advancement that will assist in the design, management, and execution of an online strategy for content management, email marketing, online giving, event management, membership management, and social networking integration. The RFP was awarded to UC Innovation for their Ascend product. Ascend runs on top of the Salesforce platform, is cloud-based, offers state-of-the-art functionality including robust mobile presentation, automated logic-based communication tools, and a high degree of configuration/customization. Ascend will be used by the Advancement and Alumni Association areas of UMS.

Ascend and Social Studio demos were recently conducted and planning and onboarding are underway.

Automated Gym Waiver

This project is focused on developing a unified UMS employee gym waiver and deploying a solution for electronic completion of the waiver in MaineStreet. The technical team has prototyped a waiver tile in Employee Self Service and is working on necessary updates to the data feeds.

Classrooms for the Future

Over the last six years, the Classrooms for the Future (CFTF) team managed and installed 259 full classroom technology systems across the University of Maine System. Additionally, web conferencing equipment was added to 172 of those classrooms in response to COVID-19 and a number of rooms received a partial installation.  All upgrades have been completed and equipment maintenance reports are being finalized.   Overall, 46.3 percent of the rooms throughout UMS have been completed, leaving 300 classrooms still in need of upgrades.  The percentage of rooms that were completed per campus varied depending on the initial state of identified rooms and on the campus’s ability to provide supplemental funds for the work.    

Graph depicts percentage of rooms upgraded per campus. UMS 46.3%, UM 55.4%, UMA 36.6%, UMF 41.8%, UMFK 54.7%, UMM 36.7%, UMPI 54.8%, USM 35.5%

 

Course Merchant

Multiple departments within the University of Maine System (UMS) are in need of an e-commerce solution that will: a) Integrate with the UMS Brightspace learning management system, including registration b) provide access to both maine.edu and non-maine.edu users, c) enable registration, payment, and tracking.

The project team continues to make progress with decision-making around structure, roles, and permissions in Brightspace, as well as Course Merchant (CM) configurations. Course Merchant has completed the initial site design, which is currently under team review.

Dell Connected Configuration Service

This project is focused on leveraging Dell’s factory imaging services, which will mean that a standard image will already be on computers when they arrive on campuses.  Project objectives include increased efficiencies in procuring and deploying PC hardware and improved customer satisfaction through a more streamlined procurement/deployment process.

The task sequence has been completed and testing is underway. The team is in the process of providing Dell with a list of all computer systems to be used and tested.

Discoverer Migration

This project is in the final stages of migrating users away from Discoverer as a reporting tool.  Power BI training for Finance will take place on March 14 and March 22. Power BI and Peoplesoft Query reports continue to be created and shared out with Finance users.

Grants Management Solution  (Kuali)

This project will implement Kuali’s pre-and post-award solution that will provide enterprise-level grants management to support multiple campuses.  Efforts are currently focused on the financial setup and integration, data migration, validation testing, and resulting configuration changes.

MaineStreet UX Enhancements 

This project will implement HighPoint’s Schedule Builder module, which will be accessed by students via the Student Center. Schedule Builder will provide students with an easy-to-use interface that offers a variety of filters and options with real-time information to aid them in creating a course schedule that fits their needs.

The Functional Team has been focused on application testing for the past several weeks. They will reconvene next week to make final decisions about initial configurations and continue planning for go-live.

Repaving MaineStreet

The Repaving MaineStreet initiative will be comprised of three primary projects: Implementations of HR and Finance cloud platforms and a re-implementation of Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, the University of Maine System’s (UMS) student information system. It is designed to re-engineer our current MaineStreet environment serving all community members with a particular focus on improving student access to academic programming opportunities across the University of Maine System while enhancing usability and self-service functionality.  The initiative will provide an opportunity to establish greater data coding consistency to help drive process efficiency and enable the University to fully leverage the core capabilities of our enterprise systems in support of UMS strategic objectives, particularly the requirements driven by Unified Accreditation.

The following efforts have been completed or are in process in preparation for the Repaving MaineStreet initiative: 

  • Completion of the ERP Assessment initiative with Huron, Inc. to assess current HRMS, Finance, and Student Administration business processes, identify opportunities for improvement, and develop a plan to optimize processes and technology to support UMS’ strategic objectives, particularly the requirements driven by Unified Accreditation. 
  • Consultations with UMS functional area teams for HR, Finance, and Student systems to verify the level of priority assigned to opportunities identified during the ERP Assessment. This work contributed to mapping the prioritized opportunities into distinct projects. 
  • Demos of Oracle’s ERP and HCM cloud platforms to determine if upgrading to Oracle’s cloud platforms will support the opportunities and requirements identified during the ERP Assessment or if a review of other solutions is necessary. 
  • To help determine if a transition to Oracle’s Student Financial Planning (SFP) module is desirable, initial demos of the platform were conducted. SFP is Oracle’s Financial Aid cloud solution that provides user-friendly and streamlined Financial Aid Self-Service functionality and automates the processing of ISIR records, award packaging and distribution, refunds, and enhanced analytic tools.
  • An RFP process is underway to select an Implementation Partner that will work with the UMS during all phases of the Repaving MaineStreet initiative.

Team Dynamix – Asset Management

The purpose of this project is to implement a new Asset Management system to include a new tool as well as business process improvements. The project team has worked with each campus to import desktop and laptop devices that were not part of the automation.

The team made a strategic decision to set aside work on adding software to asset management pending more information on how it will interact with the service catalog and ticketing for change management.  The team will focus on adding other classes of hardware such as printers, classroom technology, and networking equipment.

Team Dynamix – IT Service Management

This project will implement an IT Service Management (ITSM)/Project Portfolio Management(PPM) solution that will provide the tools necessary to enable the organization to improve how it manages resources, services, and service management and project portfolio processes in a manner that is consistently reliable, transparent, sustainable, measurable, and aligned with institutional priorities. The solution should assist in advancing IT towards greater organizational maturity in ITSM and PPM for the University through a thoughtful application of IT Service Management principles.

Team Dynamix – Knowledge Management

US:IT has transitioned to a new Knowledge Management System and is migrating away from the “Confluence” system. Along with new knowledge base software, we have made changes to our processes to document issues and questions quicker and more efficiently. The goal of our new Knowledge Management system is to improve self-service resources for all students, faculty, and staff and to improve the ability of our help-desk staff to access answers quickly.

For quick access to our Knowledge Base, please visit our new Information Technology and Support page.

UMaine/UMM MaineStreet Integration

This project will incorporate UMaine and UMaine Machias into a single institution in MaineStreet (UMaine – UMS05) by integrating UMM (UMS04) course, program, student, and employee data under UMaine.

The team is currently focused on finalizing the plan for applying and testing configuration changes in MaineStreet Campus Solutions that will support the basic structure of the UMM regional campus (UMS04) within UMS05. There are key decisions that need to be finalized prior to executing the plan. Given that completion dates for initial and foundational steps in the plan are past due, a Fall ’23 target is at high risk.

USM Website

This project is focused on building a new USM website based on the standard USM WordPress theme with development as necessary to meet functional requirements. Current efforts are focused on-site design, fit/gap assessments of technical solutions to functional requests, and custom feature/tool development. 

The project team has successfully prioritized all technical requests and the technical team is focused on the site build. Having completed the design and prioritization, Marketing is shifting its efforts to focus on additional functional planning, including training and content creation.