I think PeopleSoft has a lot of potential and I hope to be able to use it to make my job more efficient. It seems like there are so many bugs, though. It’s frustrating to do just the little bit I do in PeopleSoft. I am wondering if PeopleSoft will ever have the capacity to do more advanced things that I’m interested in doing. I am hoping for the best.

We received training several months ago and now that we rely mostly on PeopleSoft (rather than AIS) much of what we learned has been forgotten. I’m sure we are not utilizing the system the way we should, rather stumbling across info that we need. So far many of the reports that are needed are not available or we don’t know how to run them from the data warehouse. I do like the work that has been done to provide reports on the class enrollments. These save a lot of time! We are very eager to have the recruitment and prospective student tracking systems added. At present it is frustrating to have to double enter data on students into PeopleSoft and our database. Given the frustrations of the software and transition I think the staff involved are doing a great job of helping us get integrated. They are always willing to help answer our questions and clarify things as needed.

HR/Payroll is an enormous time commitment for departments. Too much is being dumped on departments with absolutely no regard for the personnel involved. The timeframe is too tight. The training is inadequate. Graduate student appointment MUST be addressed. Funds saved HAVE TO flow down to the department level. It is absolutely unacceptable to pay the IRS on top of increasing the workload of a department to the breaking point where personnel are going to refuse to stay. When is the University going to recognize that they have gone too far? When we’re broke because there are so many errors due to entry errors resulting from turnover and poor training?!

This department is fortunate to have a great payroll person who has invested a tremendous amount of time and effort to understand her job and Peoplesoft. The rest of us are extremely poor substitutes and I shudder to think what will happen if we are ever forced to take over her responsibilities for any period of time!

E-mails from the help desk about technical problems are frequently so cryptic that it’s difficult to tell what they mean or how the problem affects access to PeopleSoft.

Training doesn’t seem to be keeping pace with student services needs to update records or form new policies/procedures. Frequently there is not enough advanced notice to attend town meetings or the sessions explaining differences in 7.0 and 7.5.

I find the information I’m getting via the list serves to be helpful for the most part. I think it is a good way to communicate. It sometimes seems as if we get conflicting instructions on how to do certain processes. I realize this may be a product of the upgrade. I appreciate all of the hard work of the Enterprise team. I don’t think you get enough credit for the behind the scenes miracles the team pulls off.

Thanks for asking!

If you want honest answers, this survey needs to be distributed in a way

that will allow anonymous responses.

The problem with any new system is that the training is too general and includes too much stuff that does not pertain to my particular situation. Then there’s the time lapse between training, actual implementation, and actual usage. It is very, very frustrating to know that a tidbit of information was very accessible under the old system and is either not available under PS or is so buried that you can’t find it. PeopleSoft is not a very intuitive package. it requires an advanced working knowledge of the panels and some of us don’t use the system enough to ever acquire that.

Although I am negative about PeopleSoft at this time, I think the work of the project staff has been admirable and heroic. What we need is a system that doesn’t crash so frequently and much more hands-on training now that we have PeopleSoft up and running. Most of us attended classes before we were on line. Abstract training doesn’t work. Cheat-sheets would also be helpful. There also needs to be more time in training devoted to "real" problem solving on an actual system. A "live" help line needs to be part of the transition process, especially when confronted with the problems we face. Some type of summary screen needs to be programmed, similar to the 015 screen in BASIS. It’s too difficult to pull lots of info together quickly in PeopleSoft.

The only real thing I have a complaint about is that I need to get more clarification as to when certain training is being offered. When are dates set up for these?

I really can’t honestly fill out this survey. I have only had one or two classes. When the initial training sessions were offered I was told not to go because we were in the beginning stages of our Admissions Process and since most of it wouldn’t apply to me at that point I should wait. Well, I’ve waited and classes just don’t seem to be scheduled very often. I work with all aspects of student life. Registration, including magic numbers, course lists, adding/canceling courses and much, much more. To top it off, all 90 of my students couldn’t register via computer for Fall Semester - each one had to go in and personally register at Fraser. These students had all been registered for SS. My students still can’t add/cancel, etc. They are told they are not in the system; yet when a college pulls up their names in PeopleSoft they are listed! No one seems to be able to figure out why my students can’t register, or change classes (within the appointed time) or any other problem they may have.

Magic numbers: obtaining a magic number for the first two weeks is not a problem but when you need "student specific" or magic numbers authorized by a Scholastic Committee and what seems like hundreds of other approvals - it’s unnecessary - at least in our unit.

I’m very frustrated. In defense of the system, I realize I have not had enough training to understand some of the problems; however, I do know when too much is too much.

I need someone to call who can answer a question on the spot. When we were trained, someone helped us acquaint ourselves with the system. He, then quit. We have not had anyone help us since. When problems arose, we were notified after the fact. In some instances long after the fact. Where business processes conflicted with training there was no one to provide that communicative link between the enrollment business processes and the departmental business processes.

Although I work in a CLA department my primary emphasis is Graduate Students and the interface between what has been and what will be appears to be lagging behind undergraduates. I believe that PeopleSoft will work; but the learning curve is high and there are not transition systems in place (or I don’t know about them) to deal with things such as milestones, timeline accountability, even registration warnings.

Faculty and students are used to receiving department specific reports which I haven’t been able to get done. CLA has provided funding to re-enter information from the old DbaseIII program which is much appreciated; however, Graduate School specific reports are not available in Peoplesoft. The last I heard (August) it was not even known what the field changes would be from IDEA to PEOPLESOFT. Where do I get the Fall 1999 information — Hard copy adds three weeks.

I’d be willing to serve on a committee to provide input about what our satellite graduate offices need.

Although I’ve attended several training sessions, I’m totally lost. I don’t think this is the fault of the PeopleSoft trainers or planners, however. I think my problem is two-fold: (1) there is a lag time of 2-3 months between training sessions, and (2) my computer may be part of the problem, i.e., not allowing me to get on. Either that or I’m just woefully lost. The PeopleSoft trainers have been knowledgeable, articulate, and supportive. Also, being dedicated to the user-friendliness of Macintosh, the menus and procedures of PeopleSoft/PC don’t seem friendly or logical. I must find a way to become familiar with the menus on very scarce time.

I would appreciate some advice, but I don’t think repeating the training sessions will help me. Is it possible to have someone take a look at my machine (Mac G3)? Our IT person tried to correct something on my hard drive a few weeks ago and found that there was something wrong but hasn’t yet had time to diagnose it. I will try to arrange a time for her to take another look. Wanting to stay with a Macintosh, I purchased a G3 after careful consideration and talking to people such as Phil Kachelmeyer and others; however, after reading the recent PeopleSoft article in CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, I’m wondering if the upgrades have rendered my machine too small.

Thanks for any help.

I don’t like the idea of having to register a student in a course after the second week of a semester. We should only give permission, students should be responsible for their own records.

My frustrations are mainly with how often the system goes down, or freezes all applications on my computer. This invariably happens when I’m on the phone with a student! I usually have to reboot, or even turn off my computer, as all applications, even logging off, freezes, and I’m unable to do anything. Then my computer scans for viruses, I log on, clean my cache and sign on again to all my applications. This happens daily from anywhere to 3 to 7 times. It makes it hard to get my work done.

The other frustrations stem mainly from learning how to work around PeopleSoft for all the problems that crop up and for which the system is not programmed to handle. As we all learn more about the system, I hope some of the procedural problems will be ironed out.

I do not yet have access to PeopleSoft, but am told I will soon and will use it for student services. I have received some training, but will need review when I finally do have access. Also, hopefully, some of the bugs in the system will be worked out by Spring semester.

I do wish that when I do go to training, we could be trained on the actual items we are covering and then we could have some hands on experience, while we are still there. The trainings I have been to, go way too fast and the trainers seem like they do not have enough time to train us.

I’ve been trained, but never logged on. I’d like to see training for managers on how to make best use of the new systems.

There is really only one person that I have been working with. She is amazing, but not enough people know what they are doing in the system. The other day I had a problem with registration, so I called the St. Paul Registrar’s office and the person who answered the phone had no access or training in PeopleSoft. I should be able to call departments (especially like OTR) and have them able to access student records... I feel like the training is too concentrated. I am one of the few people on my floor with training in PeopleSoft, and I am often left to answer questions about the system (which I don’t mind)...but what do you propose that the current AIS users will do in the face of Y2K? Which isn’t far off.

We receive dozens of e-mails from assorted listserv groups. Many of them are in technical jargon, and I have no idea what they are telling me. To tell me the XYZ input is not working is meaningless to me, since I don’t know what it is and if it affects me in any way. Use English to explain technical jargon: many of your users are not technical types, we are office and administrative staff types. We are frustrated enough trying to make PeopleSoft fit our needs and wishes, let allow trying to read minds using a totally different language.

We really need technical support available. Also support for Mac users. There’s a lot of us out here. "High ups" should talk with the workers to see how it is really going. It’s not all sunshine & roses in the depts.

I’m sure PeopleSoft will get better as we use it.

Training classes are most beneficial to those depts that are larger, traditional. My dept required more specialized training. Had to seek that out myself.

I am a front line worker (phones). The students are all going bonkers, very angry and upset and I don’t blame them. This whole semester has been a disaster from beginning to end. Hopefully next semester Spring 2000 will go somewhat smoother?!

Thank you for the survey. I think the system implementation is quite an undertaking and I appreciate all of the efforts involved. One major setback I have experienced is a "How-to" replace old processes with new ones, which took much time from my colleagues and me. Overall, I think that once we work through the bugs, we will be in good shape. I especially enjoy the on-line class list website; our faculty are excited about it as well.

A lot of PS information is disseminated, but I believe the information could be much clearer than it is. Obviously, the inadequacy of PS in regard to some registration procedures has made it less than laudable. PS can be quite useful, but also can be quite frustrating and often a hindrance.

The information flow to department users has been slower than I would like (for student services users, if not also for human resources and financials users).

PeopleSoft is way too slow! Movement from panel to panel is cumbersome. Although more info is available, it’s difficult to get all of the essentials in one panel. Please speed it up!!

What safeguards are in place? If one portion of PS is "down" (e.g., financials), can the others still function?

Many of the listserv memos have been for TC campus only but have not been written that fashion.

The emails provided on the listserv are helpful, but there are too many to keep track of . Also most provide duplicate info. Which one is important enough that I need to keep it for future reference? What if I guess wrong and need to refer to something that I deleted? Much easier to have you guys put the info on the a Web site for us where it’s already categorized or in date order or something.

We in the trenches really need some encouragement that this is worthwhile. So far I’ve seen our services degrade in PeopleSoft, while we’re working harder than ever. What a payoff for our efforts! It would be helpful to understand when the payoff will occur because knowing the "VISION" alone doesn’t cut it for the long term.

I feel that I receive enough information, but it is too much to absorb at one time. Working with students, payroll, grants, human resources, etc., it is too hard to keep up with all the changes and also attend all the meetings. Staff from smaller departments are the ones that suffer as we do not have the staff to do the additional work. With PeopleSoft there are more responsibilities given to the departments, which is fine, but we do not have the staff or funding to do a good job. I believe that refresher courses on the web or computer labs will help.

It is too soon to tell how effective the system will be in serving our students. I find it very cumbersome and "layered" to go through to get the panel I want. I don’t what the implications are for my job yet.

A lot of the info sent [to UMD] have attachments which I cannot open. I deal with transfer students and after I admit them (which is a smooth process), I am not sure how to continue so I can add the evaluation and get a print-out to send to the student. I know this is being worked on, but it is hard to balance my workload when I don’t know what to expect and how long it will take to do it the new way.

Though we have been told "hourglasses" are a small price to pay for the capability of what peoplesoft can do, it makes our job very difficult whether it is entering new applications, posting fees and payments, or just inquiring. The huge delays that we experience takes its toll on the students we are helping or even just our everyday business.

Overall I’ve been pleased with the information flow and have gotten much needed information through that process for the whole ESP system. I find that process changes within my team don’t always come my way and will learn of these changes when putting through migration of development reports/programs. This is mostly in part to my not being physically located in Twin Cities for the week and needing to rely on someone from the team updating me when I am down weekly.

It would make my job easier if basic information about students could be found on one or two panels.

1.Combining the Student Grades Update/Display Panel so staff can see what college the student is registered in and what courses he/she are registered for .

2. Combining information from the Student Groups and Service Indicator panels, to see what Holds a student might have along with the Tracking Flags (Student groups). Also if this info could be summarized instead of using the Up/Down arrows to browse.

3. Combining info from Student Advisor panel with info from the Student Program /Plan panel to be able ????????