Status

Weekly

Every week we meet multiple times as a team, as well as in a project management meeting to review our progress. Additionally we are conducting knowledge transfer sessions with our consultants, Sierra-Cedar.

5/24/2021

FLUID is set to go-live this weekend, May 29th! The new look and feel of SIS has gone through multiple rounds of successful testing. Please continue to review your own SIS documentation to account for these changes and plan to attend an upcoming training session.

5/3/2021

Our FLUID go-live date is just one month away, set for May 29^th. The FLUID Project team and several other volunteers are busy testing the FLUID interface into next week. As a reminder, this new user interface will impact all SIS users – Students, Faculty, Advisors, Staff, etc. Due to the addition of FLUID Homepages and Tiles, it is strongly recommended that you review your own, local documentation (websites, videos, how-to guides…) to ensure these changes are captured.

We have scheduled weekly FLUID demonstration/training sessions leading up to the end of May and beyond. All sessions will be identical and will include an overview of FLUID for all user groups mentioned above, with time for questions and comments. Registration is not required, and the day, time, and Zoom links are listed below. Each session will also be recorded and made available afterwards.

• Thursday, May 6^th | 10:00 – 11:30am

• Tuesday, May 11^th | 3:00 – 4:30pm

• Thursday, May 20^th | 10:00 – 11:30am

• Tuesday, May 25^th | 3:00 -- 4:30pm

• Thursday, June 3^rd | 10:00 – 11:30am

4/19/2021 - Significant Update

As you may know, EAB Navigate has recently been established as the primary tool for student onboarding, academic planning, and registration. This decision has shifted the project focus away from the FLUID student experience, which means student users will continue to use SIS as they are currently. Navigate will become the launching point, allowing students to complete some tasks within that system, or be linked over to SIS for others. Navigate is set to be re-launched, with the goal of becoming the primary student tool. The Navigate re-launch plans will be communicated in the next couple of weeks.

For the first release at the end of May, students will encounter a simplified FLUID homepage that helps direct them to the current, Student Center page (My Student Information) and gives them a direct link to EAB Navigate that is specific to the authenticated user, along with a third, ‘Help’ tile.

Our FLUID work with non-student users (Staff/Advisors/Faculty) is still on track, with specific Homepages and Tiles being implemented in the same, upcoming May release. Several ‘Business Process Tiles’ have been created to allow users easy access to all of the SIS pages required for a particular process. Users will continue to have access to the familiar ‘Classic’ SIS directly from their Homepage. Additional tiles will be added as we move through future FLUID releases.

We will be scheduling some live demonstrations and training opportunities in the coming weeks.

4/5/2021

We are working with a core group of college experts to nail down the details on some of the pages in the Fluid experience for students. At the same time, we are working with SIS module owners and business specialists to identify key tiles and navigation collections for faculty and staff. A key focus is on how class search will work, and we are also working on making class search visible to the general public (e.g. from Case Western University).

3/29/2021

This week some of our focus is on the experience for faculty, advisors, and staff. What tiles do they need and what will be most useful? Some of the more detailed work for them will be in Phase 2 of this project however, so the Go Live experience may be relatively plain. We are also working on how to make class search visible to non-logged in users, and additionally filling out the functional specifications for student-facing functionality.

3/23/2021

Ack, I missed last week, but if a status doesn't post on a page and no-one is around to see it, did it really not happen? We are ramping up "knowledge transfer" this week, which is mostly our consultant Kori trying to get the rest of us up to speed on how Fluid works in PeopleSoft. We are also seeking input on the initial faculty, staff and advising home pages in SIS.

3/10/2021

We finished our initial phase of usability testing with students. We are grateful to the students who took part and tested out the proposed interface. It is always enlightening to watch someone use something. This week we are continuing discussions about Navigate and more review of existing customizations.

3/1/2021

SIS was upgraded to 9.2 over the previous weekend. This means that the Fluid interface is now possible. Of course, we have user testing and development still to do and that is something we are doing this week, specifically conducting one-on-one usability testing with students.

2/22/2021

This is the week of the SIS 9.2 upgrade, so many people's attention is on that event and what needs to be done there. We are continuing to push forward with our usual activities and looking forward to usability testing with real students.

2/15/2021

We are continuing to meet with module leads about existing customizations in the 9.0 interface. We are also planning the student usability testing which we are excited to be doing. Getting feedback from actual users trying to use your interface is always revealing (and humbling). We intend to have our phase 1 wireframe sign-off at the beginning of March. For the next couple of weeks, the SIS Technical Upgrade will probably consume everyone's attention.

2/8/2021

This week we are analyzing the results of our meetings with college staff about the Navigate platform. We are also reviewing our draft wireframes with colleges, and meeting with SIS module leads about customizations in the 9.0 interface.

2/1/2021

Our focus this week is conducting focus groups with college staff who have broad responsibility for the Navigate platform, with a focus on Navigate Student. Our goal is to understand what the college current usage patterns are, and what their plans are. Often when college staff see the Fluid interface they ask about the future of Navigate. We do not have an answer to that question, but are developing our understanding and working out what each platform can do for our students and employees.

1/25/2021

This week we are summarizing what we have learned from the six focus groups conducted the previous week. We are also working on understanding how Navigate fits into the student experience, as well as working on getting Fluid set up in our development environment which is one of a number of tasks that involves working with our Business Analyst team. We have more knowledge transfer scheduled this week too.

1/18/2021

This week we are conducting student, faculty, and advisor focus groups. The student focus groups build on the results of a survey of students conducted via Canvas over the winter break. We are currently analyzing the results of that survey. We are also looking to work with our Business Analysts in part to make sure we coordinate our work with the other SIS Strategic Initiatives.

1/11/2021

A key activity this week was a walkthrough of our initial wireframes for the student experience. This was conducted with the core college SMEs (subject matter experts) and they gave us some great feedback. One of the challenges of designing the student experience is going to be keeping the cognitive load of a page as low as possible while allowing for the complexities of our system and requirements.