Staff members test PeopleSoft Student Administration software system. Photo by Thomas Shea

Students are not the only ones taking final exams this month. The University of Houston’s new PeopleSoft Student Administration software system recently was put to its first comprehensive test.

“We’re very pleased with the results of the testing,” said Craig Ness, project director. “We’ve identified some areas needing improvement and can work to resolve them before the next round of testing in early February.”

Fifty staff members from the offices of admissions, student records, student financial services (bursar) and financial aid gathered daily in computer labs at University Business Park to test the system.

Teams from theses offices worked for months to configure and test their own business processes within PeopleSoft. Last week’s integration testing, however, brought all the teams and business processes together to interact as they would do throughout a year. UH-Victoria and UH-Clear Lake staff members also participated in the test as well.

Project team members wrote 271 scenarios in which more than 100 students apply to UH System universities, get admitted, request and receive financial aid, register for courses and pay fees — and, of course, all the other transactions that happen in a student’s academic life, such as changing majors, removing stops, getting grades and graduating.

The exercise compressed an entire calendar year in the lives of these test students to encompass the widest variety of activities that staff would need to do to help them through their academic careers, according to Ness.

The purpose of the testing is to find glitches at this early stage and to fix them — sending any problems discovered to the project leads to reconfigure and on to the programmers to rewrite, Ness said.

He added that in early February the revised processes will get another week of integration testing to be sure that all known glitches have been addressed before the system goes live.

Some participants received their first significant hands-on experience with PeopleSoft Student Administration at the testing.

Cheryl Gillis, coordinator of archival records in UH’s Office of Registration and Academic Records, finds PeopleSoft much easier to read and use.

“If you have a student come in without a plan, it’s much easier to show them options,” Gillis said.

Consuella Mosley, supervisor of customer service in the Office of Student Financial Services, also is excited about PeopleSoft.

“I think the students will really like the self-service features: There are more ways to navigate, and it’s easier to manage your accounts,” she said.

Ness is satisfied with the way the project is proceeding.

“Many dedicated people put in a lot of hours to make the integration testing work this week,” Ness noted. “Their efforts will help smooth our transition to PeopleSoft in March.”

For more information and a training schedule, see http://www.uh.edu/peoplesoft.

Sandy Frieden
sfrieden@uh.edu