Friday, April 27, 2001
9:00 am

The UNC Shared Services Alliance Advisory Board met in the Executive Conference Room of the General Administration Building in Chapel Hill, on Friday, April 27, 2001 at 9:00 a.m. The Chairperson called the meeting to order.

The following were in attendance.

A motion was made and approved to accept the minutes of the March 30, 2001 meeting.

Alumni/Development Update

The Interim Executive Director gave update on the Alumni Development Functional Work Group meeting. It was noted that board members from NCSA, UNCA, UNCP and WCU were in attendance at this meeting. Basically the presentation by SCT was much better than the original ADS presentation. The presentation was more equivalent to the Banner presentation. A technical person from SCT had done the previous meeting for the Alumni Development workgroup and it was over the heads of the people in attendance. This presentation also dealt with the GUI interface for ADS and the previous presentation did not cover it at all. The meeting produced good discussion from the group with a beneficial question and answer session. Basically the group supported the Board's decision to purchase these products. There is still an outstanding piece of information that SCT needs to supply on the JDBC driver that we need pricing for. The campuses also need PowerBuilder v6.5 to use the GUI interface. Procurement has been given the JDBC and PowerBuilder information so that they can get pricing and we will know what it will cost. It was noted that Web for Executive has the GUI for FRS. We need to look closely at scheduling the implementation of the product. One thing that came out of the survey is people would really like the systems in test before scheduling training. Touchnet is working with Samford to provide the functionality to ADS for making a donation online. This functionality should be delivered from SCT by the first of the year.

Campus Pipeline

At the Campus Pipeline presentation on March 2 there was consensus by the board to proceed with Campus Pipeline project as planned, but that the board needed to make a decision about the future regarding Campus Pipeline.

The best date percentage for discount on campus pipeline was given if the board makes a decision in the June timeframe with a lesser discount if the decision is rendered in December. At the last meeting the board discussed waiting to see what the next release held before making a decision. The board agreed that there was a high degree of likelihood that the portal will need to be a free and flexible environment. Procurement requested the campus pipeline decision be brought back to the board because of the e-mail situation at one of our campuses that needs to be resolved by July 1. The board will need to make a decision so the campuses with the email problem will know how to proceed, but there are other issues that need to be resolved as well. The point was made that the issue of advertisements will probably continue to come up. It was also noted that a letter is expected from the Library community regarding concerns about links to learning resources that will warrant some response. What has been seen thus far does not directly mention Campus Pipeline, but it is a primary issue that will need to be addressed. The board also needs some direction about compliance to ADA accessibility.

It was agreed that it is not our functional assessment to make that should be decided by the functional users not by the board in isolation. The board needs to bring closure to this through some formal process so it has an answer to take back to Campus Pipeline. If each campus has different feelings it will be clear that it is not an Alliance issue but an individual campus issue.

Reporting Tools

At the ADS functional workgroup meeting last week the topic of reporting came up and some of the Board members in attendance asked to put this on the agenda. It was discussed as an Alumni Development need but clearly cuts across all the functional workgroups. It was noted that campuses have tried to address this issue through a number of ways such as Web Focus, Connex and SAS just to name a few. It was requested that all workgroups be involved to see what different campuses are doing by coming together for campus reporting presentations followed by a question and answer session. It was the perception of some members that by having the functional groups do some analysis around this issue relative to practices that are currently in place and bring something forward to the board as a funding request to procure, train, develop and support it could potentially go a very long way in the areas where folks are not getting any near term benefit from Alliance activities.

The board requested that the functional workgroups be brought together in mid-July to view reporting solutions at various campuses as the beginning of the process to identify a reporting tool for the board to consider. The Interim Executive Director will take on the charge to bring the functional workgroups. The board members were asked to assist in identifying tools/solutions being used at their respective campuses to share with the functional people.

PSP Status Update

PSP project is closing out its 4th week. The Interim VP for Information Resources shared the project scope and charter with the board and asked that all questions related to the PSP be directed to her or Ginnie Evans the Project Manager.

The project was started with a skills-build philosophy. PwC was primarily brought in to supplement our capabilities for doing a development project of this nature and having the skills both in project lead and development lead to pull it off. It was done based on an assumption of quite a bit of intelligence around ourselves, our environment, what we use, what we need, what we have and as you may be aware that intelligence was built through the design work and the prototype project that proceeded this was primarily led PwC. The first couple of day after the kickoff meeting, it became apparent that the degree of knowledge transfer that had been anticipated actually had not occurred, at least to our satisfaction. I made the principles aware of this and the original lead was brought in the background to help leverage further guidance and direction.

For the most part, this was a new team and had no prior knowledge and they had a learning curve to overcome. Some of the functional people from Western came in to discuss the PSP some things previously decided upon were revisited so we are doing things again that had already been thought through. There are two things I would like to leave with you:

1. Some of this was by design. Some of the things revisited were revisited on purpose.
2. The lack of having a development environment in place and the need to build it as we proceed. The first team of consultants knew this but evidently the new team did not know this and came in with the wrong set of assumptions.

The whole point of this update is keep people informed on what's going on. To let you know that what has been brought to my attention has been addressed expediently. Looking for the appropriate environment to do the development work and handle the system administration and those kinds of functions are things that can be resolved, but clearly could have an impact on the time line of the project. We've all done development and know how those things happen. The team is jelling and the work is coming together but has taken more time on the front end.

The charter attempts to restate assumptions and let us know what we were going to get, but remember this is not a one-phase process. It will evolve and be enhanced as we move forward. This was the primary reason in trying to position the Alliance staff to be able to support and continue to develop and enhance the PSP. We are not going to get everything done in the first cut, but we have a commitment to a viable and functional product that actually delivers.

The one pager that has project scope lists the baseline items that were originally presented to be a part of the PSP. This is primarily to address questions from our last meeting as to whether those are going to be included or not. You will see language in the project Charter that has a single sentence "satisfy web student services requirement by web enabling eight of the baseline services."

The structure is what was focused on the most. The campus has the ability to identify point of interface. Either the back-end or some other subsystem does this and each campus can uniformly plug its solution into the portal and it will hopefully work as it is designed. This is the design principal being focused on the most. Western does have some capability for transferring course articulation so for Western we can say we are capable of conducting these particular services.

Weekly updates will be sent to the board so everyone can track solutions.

Proposed Alliance Fee for Campuses

As required by the By-Laws, the Advisory Board shall propose an annual membership fee structure for participation in the Alliance. At the March meeting the Board asked the Interim Executive Director to bring to this meeting a proposed fee for participation in the Alliance. The fee proposed by the Interim Executive Director is $300 per campus - full and associate campus. The fee would be used to cover meetings and administrative support for Board and functional workgroup activities. Given the current budget situation this proposed approach is a way to minimize the impact to the campuses. This fee would be payable July 1, 2001.

The motion was made and seconded to approve the fee of $300 per campus for participation in the Alliance and said fee will be payable July 1, 2001..

Proposed Future meetings

A proposal was submitted to the board by the Interim Executive Director to begin meeting on a quarterly basis. This would not preclude the ability to convene at other times if there was a need to do so. It was recommended to leave the May meeting as scheduled in Wilmington and implement the quarterly schedule in June. If this proposal is accepted the first quarterly meeting will be held in August. The by-laws state the meetings will be semi annually, more frequently as needed. The monthly meetings were extremely beneficial as the Alliance got started and began moving forward.

The motion was made and seconded to adopt the proposed meeting schedule as presented.

This meeting schedule adopted is as follows:

August 24, 2001
November 30, 2001
February 22, 2002
May 31, 2002

Election of Officers

The chair serves a one year term with the vice chair serving a two year term, first as vice chair and then moving up to the position of chair. By-laws call for voting in July. The reason for moving this agenda item until after the meeting schedule agenda item is to propose that at this meeting the board form a nominations committee that can solicit candidates for these position so the board can elect officers at the May meeting in Wilmington.

The motion was made and seconded to move the voting from July to May. New officers will assume their duties in July.

A nominating committee composed of John Smith, Steve Jarrell and Jeff Williams was formed and charged with bring the names of nominees for the positions of chair and vice chair to the May meeting.

Interim Executive Director's Report

BrassRing was approved by ITS. The UNC master contract, statement of work, and pricing spreadsheet are in the process of being signed by Career Connection. This has been reviewed by legal and signed by the Vice President of Finance at GA. The Purchase Orders has been submitted to Career Connection for the BrassRing solution. At least two campuses have received an invoice from Career Connection for the old amount. The full member campuses that currently have Brass Ring should let their campuses know that the Alliance will be paying for Brass Ring under the new agreement this year and the associate campuses participating should make sure their campuses pay the correct amount based on the new agreement.

Information was distributed regarding arrangements for the May board meeting at Wilmington. Dr. Tyndall was thanked for allowing Kim Kelly to make the logistical arrangements for the May meeting. The meeting will be held May 24, 2001 at 3:30 at the Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort, Wrightsville Beach. The location is not far from the site of the TLT Conference. The meeting will take place in the Veranda Alcove with dinner being dutch treat. The meeting is scheduled to adjourn at 9 p.m. All the board members need to register for the TLT conference and make hotel selections by April 28.

Four of the functional workgroups have a chairperson. They are as follows:

The workgroup spreadsheet will be updated to reflect this and sent to the board.

The Board was updated on the Functional Workgroup meeting and the presentation at the UNC FRS Conference. It is important that Board members go back and share board information with the different groups on their campus.

The six-month Interim Executive Director assignment is ending. If you need to contact me, I can be reached at either the GA or UNCP email address. The Chair will need to develop the May agenda.

Procurement Update

The board was given a status update on the projects the Procurement office is currently working on.

Other

The Interim Vice President for Information Resources and CIO provide some updates to the board about positions and funding.

Meeting adjourned.