Posted on November 12 at 10:49 a.m.Suggest removal

JJanowiak,

I know students are frustrated, but your post presumes to know a lot about the process. OU designed the OLD SYSTEM. The one everyone loved.

Many of those same people helped implement this new system. Does that mean we've lost our minds and deserve to be fired? No. We had to make a change because of the ailing (and 40 year old) infrastructure supporting our existing online services -- not just enroll.

Developing customized products in-house, though, was entirely too expensive and time-consuming. We had to purchase a system. This new system, which includes the enrollment modules people are frustrated with, is a suite of products developed outside of OU and employed at over 1,100 Universities nationwide.

Did we expect it to be better than enroll? No. Enroll was one of the best enrollment applications anywhere. No system out there had an enroll module that could touch what we offered already. I don't know of too many schools that offer trial schedules.

But we also couldn't make a million changes to it before rolling it out because of the risks. We just transferred 40 years worth of data, services, and databases. If we had also made thousands of customizations to the user interface, it would have been impossible to troubleshoot even the easiest problems. Students can still enroll, and the system is available 24 hours a day. If we had tried to shoot the moon, who knows if either of those statements would be true.

So we unfortunately had to roll out the default product, which you're using, and we'll begin making changes (already have) to make it as user-friendly as enroll was. Trial schedules and better tables (to view course listings) are the first two priorities on the list.

As for your AWFUL PRODUCT statement, you're only viewing one small aspect of the overall system in enroll, which is, we'll admit a pretty critical aspect. However, there are so many other things oZONE offers (outside of the enroll aspect) in the way of infrastructure, added features, and options for the future that the old system couldn't. It will just take a little time to put it all together in a pretty package.

If you have any specific feedback about the site, we would love to hear it.

On

Posted on November 5 at 11:15 a.m.Suggest removal

dio,

You are right...the computer itself isn't 40 years old. What is 40 years old is the application infrastructure -- the operating system, coding languages, database structures, data stores, and the linkages between these things. You can see that in the fact that we had to shut the old system down every night at midnight and bring it back online at 8 am. The existing user interface was built on this aging foundation.

While you're right that the interface is not great, OU isn't the first school to make this switch. Over 1,100 Universities are using this system, including a few other schools in the state and a handful of Big 12 schools. The user interface will have to grow over time (students hated enroll.ou.edu when it first came out as well) ... unfortunately that's the nature of large ERP projects like this one. Let me know if you have any additional questions.

On

Posted on November 5 at 11:09 a.m.Suggest removal

OUSooners,

A major part of this conversion was a database update and upgrade, which changes how data is managed and "pulled" to display dynamically on any page you want to view.

This would mean, essentially, that we would have had to convert the data, then redesign enroll from scratch, tying the new database and data streams into the new design appropriately.

We looked at doing this, but the up-front cost and risk to the project was too great. As is, we can troubleshoot issues very easily because we are using the default installation of this product. If we had made thousands customizations to the interface, troubleshooting, support, and, potentially, accuracy and reliability could have been compromised.

We plan to start updating the user interface as quickly as possible, especially the table padding in the class search result page. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until January (when pay and student services go live in oZONE) before we begin making too many updates.

The enroll portion is part of a larger suite of products purchased to build a better infrastructure and foundation for student services. The user interface will get better over time, much like enroll.ou.edu did.

On