Administrative System Committee-November  12th, 2001

Members present:

Cheryl Schreindyl, Kathy Yeager, Mary Luckstead, Michael Quiner, Ron Urban, Brian Dohe, Varga Fox, Jed Schwendiman, and Sherrie Kamara.

Agenda items covered:

Michael Quiner spoke on the following issues:

Datatel gave Whitman an award for Duck sessions, which the College received a $1,000 credit towards Datatel services. Michael thanked those who sent in letters regarding the Duck sessions.

Admin budget: Requests are completed, the budget is not expected to be increased this year. WCTS budget requests will be looked at by priority from the requester and recommendations made.

Resource 25: Resource 25 is expected to be up and running next week. Brain Dohe will be attending training in January, and the patches are in place for it to run with Datatel information.

Datatel Release 17  workshop in Spokane December 11 & 12: Human Resources will see the most impact with the new release, and some changes for the business office. The conference is expensive, Michael will get more information out regarding the conference specifics.

Equipment Allocation: All staff assigned NEW computers should have them in place. Reallocated computers are in process to be finished in March or April.

NWDUG 2002: Whitman is hosting the conference next year.  Michael had a handout with a list of topics WCTS came up with, and asked the group for other ideas, tracts to cover, and presenters. Last years conference had 7 tracts, 3-4 sessions per day, and 66 different  presentation times, and not all were fully utilized, our goal is to do better than that. The conference website will be up and running next month.

Educause: Is a large conference with 6,000 people attending. Michael said he talked to several vendors, including Blackboard, & Document imaging systems. Whitman currently is using Blackboard for the card swipe system, and course management. We are looking at other Blackboard levels to better serve the College. Michael checked out 3 vendors for document imaging systems and like ImageNow. One of the problems with imagining systems is digitizing documents, Varga said Financial Aid uses CCSI for students at $5.00 per packet. Issues to examine are the digitizing process, tracking and searching. Jed asked if the card swipe system was being considered for the residence halls. The expense at this point makes it unlikely along with the questions of; what happens when we loose power? Would students not bother to lock their rooms?

Millennium conference: Michael attended the JSI user’s conference which is the Development office system. Several people brought up the issue of Development being on a separate system from all other college offices and  problems associated with this specifically address updates. Prior to Datatel addresses were rolled over daily between  offices. Millennium is working toward crystal reports which are the industry standard, similar to Safari in Datatel.

WhAIS web page:

http://wcts.whitman.edu/whais

Information is expected to be updated. Michael asked the group what kinds of information they want to see. He plans to include of list of patches and install dates.

Jed, asked about the possibility of viewing budgets on line, through WebAdvisor. Kathy Yeager said viewing budgets on line may be possible but printing a hardcopy is another issue because of the expense of adding more Datatel capable printers.

Jed also asked about email list protocols, who has access to what lists and what can be done about unwanted emails. The topic was discussed; there was no consensus on the topic.