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LYNX News
A monthly newsletter for WSU Staff and Faculty
Volume Two, August 2004
LYNX Admissions is at the Gate
The LYNX Admissions team has their pistols polished and loaded for their rodeo on September 20, 2004. As of that date, students applying for admissions beginning Fall 2005 term will be processed and admitted through LYNX. WSU can admit every student type imaginable (pending some Continuing Education types) including international, undocumented, transfers, transfer readmits, senior citizens –everyone.
Most miscellaneous daily processes are lassoed, such as temporary files, web application reports and scholarship entries. WSU’s three web applications work great and have snappy signature pages.
The team has built communication plans for accepted students and prospective students with incomplete files. They can evaluate all types of residency including courtesy military and Native American.
Finance Reports Online!
LYNX finance reports are now available on the web through Crystal Enterprise (a web-based report distribution tool). The Current Month Transaction Report, Departmental Pay Report, Expenditure Summary and Detailed Transaction Report are all available through this service and can be run when needed. The reports can be generated in a variety of formats and viewed online or sent in a spreadsheet or word processing format through GroupWise and/or downloaded in a PDF format for crisp printing.
These reports are made available by the Accounting Services Department and are part of the University’s transition to the Lynx/Banner systems. Eventually the hard copy finance reports will be discontinued. For more information concerning training for Crystal Enterprise, you may contact jking@weber.edu.
LYNX Student Registration/A-R to Go Live for Fall 2005
The LYNX Student Registration and Accounts Receivable components will ‘go-live’ for Fall 2005 semester. This will save considerable time and effort for the Financial Aid, Accounts Receivable and Registration sub-teams while only impacting the ‘go-live’ calendar by approximately two weeks. LYNX Registration will begin April 11, 2005.
STUDENT UPDATE
Academic history is the most complex of the data migration processes from STAARS to LYNX and accuracy of the data is essential. The Academic History team is hard at work testing student records data to ensure accuracy once ‘live’ with LYNX. With ‘go live’ scheduled for October 15, 2004, WSU students, faculty and staff can anticipate a new look and feel to the official WSU transcript.
CAPP is on track to begin testing with department feedback in November. The ‘go-live’ of the CAPP component is on track for February 2005.
WSU has purchased a payment gateway called TouchNet to facilitate online payment for students and provide cashiering functions. TouchNet interfaces with LYNX and streamlines account payments for the WSU community. Installation of TouchNet will occur during the Fall 2004 semester and will be fully integrated with LYNX in time for the Fall 2005 LYNX Registration.
The Financial Aid team has completed their initial training for building the Financial Aid portion of LYNX. They are now working on completing the system, testing the data and reviewing WSU processes.
Continuing Education and Student Affairs have been active with all of the Student sub-teams to integrate their business practices with the LYNX system.
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LYNX News
A monthly newsletter for WSU Staff and Faculty
Volume One, July 2004
Welcome!
Welcome to the first edition of the LYNX News! Over the past year Weber State University has made great progress toward implementing LYNX, a state-of-the-art integrated computer application tailored to WSU’s specific needs. The internet-based integrated data will have the effectiveness, efficiency, security, availability, integrity, and performance required by our students, staff, faculty, alumni, and friends.
LYNX went ‘live’ in July 2003 with the foundation system components and LYNX Finance (i.e., general ledger, purchasing, and accounts payable.) The finance piece continues to be expanded including fixed asset inventory and budget. In early 2004 the next two pieces of LYNX, Human Resources and Alumni/Development, went ‘live’.
The combination of Human Resources, Finance, and Alumni/Development (including imaging, workflow and reporting functions) has successfully laid the foundation for the biggest and mission-critical components of LYNX that are still in front of us. Over 50 employees are busy building the pieces for LYNX Student and Financial Aid. The next eight months will be crucial as the pieces are put into place, decisions made, and campus trained.
LYNX Student touches almost everyone on campus from students to employees. The monthly LYNX News is intended to keep the campus up-to-date on what’s happening and what’s coming as we move forward with the Student sections.
The new LYNX system enables WSU to be creative and effective in the use of our limited technology resources. Your patience is greatly appreciated as we transform WSU’s technology for the future.
Jean Fruth
LYNX Project Director
LYNX Human Resources Rocks!
Under the leadership of Ben Read, Payroll Manager, employee data was converted to LYNX Human Resources in December 2003 and payroll has been running in LYNX since January 2004. The majority of employees now receive their direct deposit notification electronically through e-mail. Beginning in late March employees have been connected through LYNX self-service to view their personal information and perform basic HR tasks online such as Benefits Enrollment. LYNX HR self-services include paycheck history, and vacation and sick leave balances. Components of LYNX HR are being used in preparing the 2004-2005 University budgets.
Congratulations to the LYNX Human Resource Team for a job well done!
Alumni Development’s Smooth Move
In early February we could hear a sigh of relief from University Advancement as the LYNX Alumni and Development sections went live with over 125,000 alumni and donor records successfully moved from the old system. Thanks to a lot of hard work, long hours, and the dedication of the LYNX Alumni/Development Team under the leadership of Carol Ruden, Director of Alumni Development Services, it was one “smooth move.” Congratulations team for a great job!
Good Things to Know About LYNX
Most people on campus will access LYNX through LYNX Self-Service. This is available as a “Quick Link” in the WSU Faculty/Staff Portal.
Supported Web Browsers for LYNX Self-Service:
• Internet Explorer and Netscape versions 4.0 and higher.
• The following versions are recommended:
- Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher
- Netscape 6.2 or higher
- Internet Explorer for MACs 5.1 or higher.
A select group of people will need to access LYNX Internet Native Banner (INB). In these instances the following web browsers are recommended:
• Internet Explorer 5.x or 6.x
• Netscape 4.x or 6.2
Since all access to LYNX is through the web, the desktop hardware required for LYNX are none other than the Microsoft requirements for the various operating systems. These can be found at http://www.microsoft.com. Actual desktop requirements will vary based on the applications and features installed.
LYNX STUDENT - IT’S BIG!
Over 50 people are working to learn, build, test and implement the new LYNX Student sections. With so much work to do and so many people involved the LYNX Student project, under the leadership of Jennifer Willener, Academic Advising Coordinator Special Projects, is divided into six sub-teams: Admissions, Registration, Academic History/CAPP, Financial Aid, and Accounts Receivables.
In addition, the Student project has an Advisory Group to provide feedback and input into decisions and processes changes. The Advisory Group members are Bruce Bowen, Richard Sadler, Dale Ostlie, Katherine Zublin, Mike Cena, Gina Bunch and Marie Kotter.
LYNX Student will be brought up in five phases that are tied to the University schedule.
Phase 1: Admissions (September 2004)
LYNX Admissions will be going live in September 2004 for students applying for admissions for summer 2005 and beyond. Students applying for admissions for fall 2004 and spring 2005 will be entered into the STAARS system. Their information will be transferred to LYNX with the rest of the students.
Phase 2: Academic History (October 2004)
The Academic History sub-team is migrating historical academic transcript information from STAARS to LYNX. While testing the migration they have been reviewing and ‘cleaning up’ STAARS data along the way. They have successfully tested migrating over 100 transfer records and are currently testing printing and transcripts in LYNX. WSU Official Transcripts will have an updated look and ‘Scrip Safe’ paper once LYNX transcripts are ‘live’.
Phase 3: Financial Aid/ Scholarship (February 2005)
Financial Aid and Scholarship share functionality in the LYNX system. The offices are working closely together to build the system to meet WSU’s specific needs. February 2005 marks the beginning of the Financial Aid year for students attending in fall 2005 through summer 2006. Since Financial Aid is heavily regulated by the Department of Education and new federal regulations for the next year are announced in October, the LYNX Financial Aid sub-team is aiming to be ready in September so the remaining work will be focused on federal regulation changes.
Phase 4: CAPP (a.k.a. Grad Eval) (February 2005)
Academic History and CAPP are closely tied together. In addition to moving the historical academic records, the sub-team is busy building the program codes and rules, including transfer credit articulation that underlay academic progress.
Phase 5: Registration, Catalog, Scheduling, and Accounts Receivable (April 2005)
This is the final phase of LYNX student. While these functions are the last to ‘go-live’, the other sections depend on the catalog, course schedule, and faculty workload functions. The Registration sub-team has successfully migrated catalog information from STAARS to LYNX and are reviewing 2,727 courses for accuracy, pre-requisites, co-requisites, etc. They have nearly completed their review of all catalog-level courses for WSU’s seven academic colleges.
In the next issue of LYNX News:
Finance Reports Online………………………….……
Portals – What are they? WSU Student Portal…….
Latest News from LYNX Student……………………
Weber State University, VP for Information Technology Office Ogden, Utah 84408-1005 ciooffice@weber.edu, (801) 626-7889 |