Self-Service solutions are information-based services that integrate data from various locations or systems to provide the information to customers as they need it. Self- Service needs to be intuitive and an easy experience for the end user. The service also needs to assure high performance and availability to many users at one time. Self-Service will be delivered to all University constituencies (i.e. Prospective students, students, as well as faculty, alumni and academic administrators, etc.). It will be important to coordinate with the other functional areas that have a Self-Service component to ensure accuracy, ease of use and to reduce duplicates. Some of these areas include but not limited to Campus Community, HR, CR, etc. Self - Service has unique security requirements, refer to the “Security Strategy” document.
The Self-Service applications (eApps) are accessed by end users with a browser in which they can update their own data in a secure and safe environment. A single sign-on will provide users with one access point to the self-service applications. Our objective is to use as much of the delivered eApps functions without modifications, unless modifications are deemed essential to the University’s business requirements. The ultimate goal is to reach the concept of “one stop shopping”. All the needs can be met at one location.
The distribution of Self-Service will be accomplished through two complementary technology applications: PeopleSoft's self-service applications and the University's uPortal.Cornell. The uPortal.Cornell will also provide faculty and administrators applications and/or information-based services pertinent to their role and relationships (i.e. student, faculty (instructor and advisee), and academic records administrators).
A comprehensive look at each of the self-service functional requirements from all functional areas, currently in PeopleSoft Production, will be developed. These requirements will be used to determine the production support needed for the capacity load that will hit the system at various times of the business cycle (i.e. Add/Drop and Pre-Enrollment).
Communication plans will be devised to address any issue around system outages, timely messages or downtime to customers; this will be critical to the success of Self-Service.
User/focus groups (e.g., Student, Faculty, Advisor, etc) will be formed and session conducted in all areas in order to determine the needs as well as help to test the system and processes.
Self-Service will be responsible for providing information in a timely fashion to end users. This team will develop and identify the needs of the other areas that have self-service functionality. Self- Service will coordinate focus groups to understand and capture the necessary information to support the self- service for that area.
Subject matter experts from the STARS project team will provide expertise and guidance on content during the development of the self- service areas.
Focus groups and training services will be closely integrated with Training, Documentation, and Support for self-service and the training of Students, Faculty and Staff as it will be important in the success and the usability of the self-service areas. Information gathered through user group activities will assist in the development of how we present content that best suits the needs of different groups and users. Managing the balance among these services will be critical in providing useful and effective end-user support. For example, we need to understand how many students will be signing on to registrar and within what time frame in order to support that activity from a technical perspective.
Self-Service will be working closely with all testing aspects, internal (project testing team) and external (i.e. Students, Faculty, etc) to ensure the best performance and information dissemination possible.
Self-Service, CIT (Cornell Information Technologies), Training, Documentation, and Support training coordinators, Human Resources and Contributor Relations along with others will work together to decide what information, where, and when to display and make available access for their end users for self-service. In addition, Self-Service will work with security administrators to provide users with the appropriate security roles and database access in order to function in self-service.