Vanilla Without the Dots: Tips and Tricks for

Admissions 8.0

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Mark JacqueAssociate Director of Admissions

Towson University

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Mark Jacque

Associate Director of Admissions

Towson University

Past presenter at HEUG and MSACROA conferences. Setup and rolled out admissions module at Towson University ahead of schedule. Setup and

maintain all 3C functions for admissions office as well as for other peripheral offices

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The session will begin with a discussion of successful approaches used by Towson for leveraging the 3Cs to track and document activities between the student and the admissions office. A system enhancement that proved very

successful at Towson will be discussed in regard to the 3Cs. Other topics will include what to consider for reporting needs and the 3C Engine when planning

your setup values, examples of quality control through queries, as well as where and when to look for the small fires before they become major

conflagrations. Some strategies to help admissions and peripheral office staff make the transition from the legacy system to PeopleSoft as smooth and

painless as possible will be considered. Finally, the session will conclude with insights on when to abandon workflow that simply isn’t working in the real world and when and how to tweak what actually does work but could work

better.

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Setup:

Naming Conventions

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Naming conventions are more important than you think. They

help group and organize student types, communications, checklists, events and triggers.

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Naming Conventions for Standard Letter Codes

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Naming Conventions – Communication Categories

Naming Conventions – Communication Contexts

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Naming Conventions – Admit Types

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Setup:

Events & Triggers

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You can then use events and triggers to pull the setup

together and further automate your admissions processing.

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application engine event definition

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application trigger definition

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admit event definition

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admit trigger definition

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matriculate event definition

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matriculate trigger definition

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Pulling it all Together:

Letters

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With the proper use of merge code you can setup a letter

generation process that pretty much runs itself.

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Letters

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Letters

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Letters

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Letters

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Letters

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Pulling it all Together:

Checklists

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checklist summary

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new student checklist summary

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After the fact 3C Tips

Letter CodesLetter Generation

&Checklists items

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After the fact 3C TipsLetter Codes:

Change letter codes each year. You may end up with a student who has three admit letters on the communication summary.

By changing codes each year letter descriptions themselves can incorporate the year. You can then recycle codes after a five or

ten year period.

U22 = 2005 Admit

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After the fact 3C Tips

Letter Generation:

How can I alphabetize letters?

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After the fact 3C Tips

Not in PeopleSoft

Microsoft Word is a bit more helpful

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After the fact 3C Tips

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After the fact 3C Tips

Checklists Items:

Keep in mind item statusKeep in mind items themselves

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After the fact 3C Tips

Item Status: Some that are not so obvious you might want to leave as initiated for

students to view info in self service.

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After the fact 3C Tips

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After the fact 3C Tips

Checklists Items

Try not to go overboard with them.

We started out with one for everything conceivable and have cut items every year since going live.

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After the fact 3C Tips

Admissions Comments

Admissions comments can be used to insert various text not appropriate for all students in your letters as

either part of the body or as a post script

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After the fact 3C Tips

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After the fact 3C Tips

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After the fact 3C Tips

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After the fact 3C Tips

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After the fact 3C Tips

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3C Modification

We had a programmer develop a 3C batch load that has simplified the 3C process generally and checklists specifically.

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3C Modification

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3C Modification

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3C Modification

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Setup:

Training Issues

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At Towson, the most difficult part of training was overcoming

the resistance to change combined with ingrained habits reinforced over years of doing

things the same way.

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The best solution I found was to link the old to the new

whenever possible.To lay out processes in a step-

by-step fashion.And provide pictures!

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Admit Type Table

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Program Action Table

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Users Guide

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Users Guide

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Setup:

Quality Control

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With everything new and everyone getting up to speed at different rates, I found it very

important to keep tabs on what the data looked like.

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Residency Trouble Shooting

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Residency Trouble Shooting

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DOB Errors

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DOB Errors

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Crystal Reports

What would we do without them?

What can we do with them?

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Crystal ReportsRewriting SQL

For your Crystal Reports to work properly, the SQL statement must be rewritten to take into account the effective dating and sequencing used in PeopleSoft

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Crystal Reports

PS_ADM_APPL_PROG."EFFSEQ" = (SELECT MAX (PS_ADM_APPL_PROG."EFFSEQ") FROM "SYSADM"."PS_ADM_APPL_PROG" PS_ADM_APPL_PROG WHERE PS_ADM_APPL_PROG."EMPLID" = PS_ADM_APPL_DATA."EMPLID") AND PS_ADM_APPL_PROG."ACTION_DT" = (SELECT MAX (PS_ADM_APPL_PROG."ACTION_DT") FROM "SYSADM"."PS_ADM_APPL_PROG" PS_ADM_APPL_PROG WHERE PS_ADM_APPL_PROG."EMPLID" = PS_ADM_APPL_DATA."EMPLID")

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Crystal Reports

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Crystal Reports

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Crystal Reports

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Crystal Reports

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CHANGECHANGECHANGECHANGECHANGECHANGECHANGECHANGECHANGECHANGE

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You need to change the way you think about processes.

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We used to process applications in a straight line, from

bio/demo to, sometimes, final decision.

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Bio/Demo > Academic > Tests > Decision > ResidencyCoding

Don’t stop me now, I’m on a roll

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With PeopleSoft we changed that.

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Reluctantly

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To This

From This

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The data entry in PS lends itself more to working on one, perhaps two pages only.

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Bio/Demo coding

External Academic Summary

coding

Test Results coding

Decision coding

Residency coding

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Q & A

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Mark JacqueTowson University

mjacque@towson.edu

410.704.2811 v

410.704.5794 f

Contact Info