As with the financial and HR implementations that preceded them, testing is a large part of preparing for OnePurdue’s new student systems.

The initial round of “mock” testing — the first major integration test conducted by the Enrollment and Student Affairs (ESA) team — was completed Nov. 9, and the few issues that were discovered were resolved within hours, said ESA Team Lead Lori Shipley.

“We found some data that did not convert into Banner the way we expected it would,” she said, “but they were very, very minor and were fixed quickly.” (SunGard Higher Education’s Banner software is the suite of applications that will comprise the bulk of the new student systems.)

Much of the work needed to get ready for Banner involves converting massive amounts of student data from the old “legacy” systems to a format that can be used by the new databases. Mock testing involves validating that data to find errors. Mock 1 took three weeks: two weeks to load the converted data and one to test it.

“The problems we found were not with Banner,” Shipley said, “but with the way the data had been set up. Mock showed us where we need to tweak the system to make it run the way it’s supposed to. This ‘rework’ should be completed by Nov. 26.”

Banner Financial Aid will be the first OnePurdue student system to be released — currently scheduled for Feb. 11 — so Mock 1 was primarily focused on that data. Financial Aid processing doesn’t work in a vacuum, however, and depends on other student information, such as a student’s admission status or major before aid can be awarded.

“Financial Aid is very rule-driven,” Shipley said, “and configuring Banner involves a lot of rules to determine eligibility and other factors. And Financial Aid rules are usually very complex.”

Purdue’s legacy systems use rules as well, but since they were written in an old programming language (COBOL), adjusting them or writing new ones can take a long time. With the new student systems, users will be able to change or write new rules themselves.

“That’s why people buy software packages like this,” Shipley said, “so control is in the users’ hands.”

About 20 DFA staff members joined the entire ESA team during Mock 1, and most of them worked on validating converted data.

“They were a big help,” Shipley said. “Because they’ve been back in the office while our team has been out here (in Research Park) for two years, they were able to reconfirm whether some of the new Banner business processes were accurate or if they needed to be adjusted because something had changed back in DFA.”

There will be four mock tests before Banner goes live in 2008: two for the Financial Aid release and two for the Banner Student modules; each one must be finished before starting the next.

The team will begin converting data for Mock 2 Nov. 26.

“Mock 1 did what it was supposed to do: find errors and allow us to rework those errors,” Shipley said. “Now we can get ready for Mock 2.”

Submitted by Lori Shipley, Enrollment and Student Affairs Team Lead

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All schools and colleges, Purdue’s three regional campuses, and every academic department are represented on a number of governance and advisory groups, including the Oversight Executive Committee, Implementation Steering Committee and ESA Advisory Committee.

In addition, a network of “organizational communicators” (OCs) was recently formed to add channels of communication that did not exist before. Made up of almost 80 individuals from areas throughout the Purdue system, including some deans, the OCs will help circulate information about OnePurdue’s new student systems. (Click here to see the complete list of OCs.)

“With all the information we’ll need to communicate over the next several months, they will help make this process go much smoother,” said Jeffrey Vitter, Frederick L. Hovde Dean, College of Science. “Keeping everyone informed is very important to the success of this project.”

The ESA Advisory Committee also includes several student representatives appointed by Purdue Student Government.

“Our students will begin using OnePurdue in the fall semester next year,” said Pam Horne, assistant vice president for Enrollment Management and dean of admissions. “The new Banner applications will have a big impact on them, so they need to start hearing about it. Their participation is becoming increasingly important.”

(SunGard Higher Education’s Banner software is the suite of applications that will comprise the bulk of Purdue’s new student systems.)

The following are just a few of the key academic leaders and students involved with the Banner implementation:

West Lafayette and Purdue North Central will not reside in the same instance of Banner during the initial implementation of OnePurdue’s student systems. Our long-term vision, however, is to use a technology that will support multiple campuses in the same instance, which would allow Purdue to save on infrastructure costs. When we do implement a multi-campus technology, each campus will only be able to see the other’s data if they are in shared tables. Even then, Calumet, IPFW and North Central data will need to be fed into the West Lafayette instance of Banner to support central academic record, transcript and degree audit processing.

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Click on the image below to view the most recent implementation schedule planned for OnePurdue's new student systems, which will be released in 2008.

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