[huzaifa47]

McMaster University is replacing it's Information Technology Systems through a $30 Million allocation over 5 years. Myself as the Student Representative(since November 2010) on the Systems Renewal Committee and various staff members have been hard at work over the past year laying the ground work, hiring staff and consultants and ascertaining requirements of various departments. We are at one of the latter stages of this project.


Here are the future steps remaining:

• Dec 5 – 16 – Vendor demos for top 2 Vendors
• Jan / Feb – Software Selection / Vendor Negotiations
• Jan / Feb – Issue RFP for Systems Integrator (implementation support)
• Apr / May – Systems Integrator Selection / Negotiations
• Jun / Jul – Kickoff ERP Project implementation

When completed the Systems for McMaster Academic Administration and Research Technology (SMAART) will provide better solutions and access for: Student Portal, Recruitment, Registration, Financial Aid & Scholarships, Graduation and more!

All McMaster Students are invited to attend two sessions by vendors who are presenting their respective products that claim to improve student experience.

The sessions are especially geared towards students and everyone who has ever been inconvenienced or dissatisfied with the operation of MUGSI/SOLAR is encouraged to help us shape a better product and help myself and the rest of the committee to assist in further informing the process in making a better decision.

Here are the dates:

Vendor #1: 2:30 - 4:30pm CNH B107

Vendor #2: Dec 15 – 8:30-10:30 CNH B107

I hope to see you all out there!

Will this be like the Google email system ?? NEVER IMPLEMENTED ???

Originally Posted by L'Étoile

Will this be like the Google email system ?? NEVER IMPLEMENTED ???

No, its legit. So is the new email system.

To be fair, these are projects of two very different magnitude and circumstances with only one tiny little thing in common: Technology.

The Google Project's "only" barrier is quite simply the Privacy Laws of the Province of Ontario; that process is taking a legal wrangling and back and forth contracts of months and months; It's much easier to implement something like that in USA where there is much more freedom. The actual physical implementation doesn't take more than 72 hours. As I last heard, the contract is once again close to being signed and it should be implemented over the winter break.

This MUGSI project on the other part of a much bigger implementation that is right now Code Red Priority for all McMaster departments since it fundamentally affects and changes the day to day operation of the entire University. Every single computer in a McMaster Office is going to be connected to and affected by what's happening here and as such things are going along at a fast pace. There are also no legal complications since it is all hosted locally. It is an ambitious and risky project due to it's scale, complication and effect on thousands of employees and students but so far I have seen promising signs that at most by Summer 2013 there will be a brand new MUGSI.

Also If possible PLEASE hit attending and invite your friends/share this facebook event I created for the demo's http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=2253532 74203933

Originally Posted by huzaifa47

The contract is once again close to being signed and it should be implemented over the winter break

Should have been implemented last winter break....

Originally Posted by L'Étoile

Should have been implemented last winter break....

I empathize with your disappointment, however as I said it was and is completely out the hand of anyone in the MSU. The case is entirely upto the legal teams of McMaster and Google and there isn't much we could do about it.

Who are the two vendors presenting their services? Is it like the google vs microsoft thing or is this something completely different?

Originally Posted by rlevitin

Who are the two vendors presenting their services? Is it like the google vs microsoft thing or is this something completely different?

The two Vendors are Sunguard Banner and Oracle Peoplesoft. The difference between the G Vs Msoft survey and this was that with the former UTS pretty much said "We'll go with whatever the students decide". With this project though things are alot alot more complicated and for the MUGSI component myself, McMasters Vice President Academic and Associate Registrar will be going through a comprehensive analysis and ranking process in order to make our decision in an objective manner.

However, I plan on strongly factoring student input and I'm sure so will the registrar's office in their decision making. Similarly, the demo's are definitely a work in progress and can be tinkered based on student input, so if there is something alot of student's REALLY don't like, I can formally ask the vendor/s if it's possible for them to modify or not.

Hope that helps, feel free to ask more questions!

Hey Everyone! The session is from 2:30-4:30PM Today! If you are short of time I would recommend attending from 3:30-4:30PM since they will be demonstrating the new registration system at that time! (December 6th)

Unfortunately, I woke up ludicrously late today and couldn't make the presentation. Can anybody who saw the vendor demo fill me in on the details?

Originally Posted by Lessica

Unfortunately, I woke up ludicrously late today and couldn't make the presentation. Can anybody who saw the vendor demo fill me in on the details?

Today was Oracle Peoplesoft's presentation. I was overall pretty impressed with their functionality.

They offer waitlisting, higher capacities, ability to break up registration into a token system where whoever got in first has the option of getting a number which gives them a separate time to come back and register with a smaller number of people(eg: They let in 500-1000 people at a time and then smaller segments of 200); but regardless the capacity is much much higher, the software is capable of dealing with it but I don't have an actual number since it's heavily dependent on Hardware from Mac's side. They also have a much more advanced degree audit system where it breaks down your requirements into sections and gives you listed options on what courses you need. You also have the option of getting all your mandatory courses in one page(which will be useful for Engineers that only have the choice of a few electives.). Similarly with waitlisting they can automatically put you into the course once a spot opens up or email you with a 2-8 hour window where you can utilize your waitlist spot. Everything is also centralized into one singular portal, very similar to Avenue to Learn.

Originally Posted by huzaifa47

Similarly with waitlisting they can automatically put you into the course once a spot opens up or email you with a 2-8 hour window where you can utilize your waitlist spot.

Wow. I have the feeling that either of these would drastically change the way people sign up for courses. Definitely removes some of the 'luck of the draw' - or rather, 'luck of the clicking for hours on end' - aspect that plagues us all.

Originally Posted by Lessica

Wow. I have the feeling that either of these would drastically change the way people sign up for courses. Definitely removes some of the 'luck of the draw' - or rather, 'luck of the clicking for hours on end' - aspect that plagues us all.

Absolutely! I made sure to bring up waitlisting and all these features for months within the Student Advisory committees over the past year when we were doing our requirements definitions aka what do we expect/want from the vendors.

I was talking to a UTS staff member afterwards and even he said that quite a bit of the user load is just simply people going back into check if course a and b finally opened up and not to actually "register" for courses.

Is this a decision that will be made solely by the MSU along with McMaster and software providers, or will there be a referendum for students and faculty?

Hey Alomar, this decision will be made through a big group of subject matter experts and senior employees from various departments and their cumulative ratings will be tallied into one overall score.

For example UTS, Human Resources, Advancement, Finance, Research etc have their own people specifically concentrating on their section. I'm the sole student representative looking at the Student Records side of things and will be adding my vote/analysis to the pool.

This is an incredibly complicated affair and for example I've had to read literally hundreds and hundreds of pages of Request for Proposal documents from Oracle and Banner. I could have arranged an unofficial poll but unfortunately only a few students attended the first vendor demo and I can't release the RFP documents either since they are confidential as per industry practice; furthermore the vendor selection is to be held in the first week of January. I'm all for making sure I have as much student input as possible but the circumstances of this project are rather difficult. That being said I've been monitoring, reading up and working on this project since Summer 2009, through talking to UTS staff and observing MacInsiders I'm confident I'll know what the best possible option for students is come January.