Student System Modernization

Historical Notes (Any notes entered into myWCU up to 8/1/2024) 

• The historical notes from myWCU are being moved to RamPortal Advising Notes. This move takes place from 8/1 – 8/16
• Students can see these: Link will be available when historical notes have moved, approximately by 8/16
• Faculty/Staff can see these:  Link will be available when historical notes have moved, approximately by 8/16 

Current Notes (Any notes entered 8/2/2024 onward) 

• Enter all notes in Degree Audit Notes 
• Faculty staff can enter them degree audit. Instructions available here:   Advising Notes How to Access View and Edit.docx 
• Students can see them on their degree audit.  

We decided not to use RamPortal advising notes for two primary reasons: 

Banner does not natively make advisor notes accessible for everyone to see. Meaning that it isn’t automatic that students would be able to see notes advisors entered, or other faculty would be able to see notes entered by a colleague. Therefore, WCU would need to develop and run a process to run a mass update on all notes entered to make them viewable by students and others. This has a higher risk of delays in making notes available and has a risk of errors.  

Banner advising notes are available on the student profile, but aren’t natively accessible from the student’s curriculum in the degree audit. This means that students and advisors would need to go to two different places to see curricular requirements and course selection recommendations. This felt burdensome to students and advisors.  

For these reasons we opted to make the degree audit notes the location of advising notes moving forward.  

We heard from campus partners that retaining advising notes in an easily acceptable location was critical. We were committed to finding a path forward to retaining historical advising note information. While we knew the degree audit notes would be the best tool moving forward, the degree audit does accept any migrated/historical data. WCU learned that there was no way to move historical data from myWCU in the degree audit notes. Therefore if we wanted to have historical advising notes in our new system, we would need to put them someplace other than the degree audit. 

We have heard that some of the documents attached to advisor notes in myWCU are important to retain. Unfortunately, there is not a mechanism to migrate attachments into RamPortal. Therefore, we are actively looking into where else we can store attachments for reference. This exploration is underway and we will aim to have an alternative location before we remove faculty/staff access to view advising notes in myWCU. 

• Training for RamPortal will be on going through out Fall 2024. Please review our Training Website (link to training) for more information 
• AES and the Workstream leads will coordinate security needs for faculty and staff
• All other requests will remain the same via the AES Service Portal

• This is being reviewed to see if something is available that falls within the current FERPA guidelines

• This will vary on the data elements, but will be provided to campus in a functional sheet as the conversions happen
• Example: All academic history for all WCU students will be preserved; but application history will be limited.
• Learn more by visiting our historical data website.

• Some historical data from myWCU will be preserved in external systems even if not part of the RamPortal conversions. 

• The RamPortal url is https://ramportal.wcupa.edu
• Login using your WCU credentials (user name and password).
• For faculty and staff when off-campus: When accessing secure areas of RamPortal it is required to use an encrypted connection provided by a Virtual Private Network (VPN). The VPN ensures that your connection to the server is secure, and that sensitive data is protected. More info on How to Connect to WCU's VPN.

• Faculty will not need to complete a singular task in both myWCU and RamPortal. For example we will not be asking faculty to enter their summer 2024 class grades in both systems.
• Starting on 2/1/24 WCU will have begun its conversion of student records from myWCU to RamPortal. After this date service offices such as The Registrar's Office, the Graduate School, Bursar, etc. Will need to make record updates in both myWCU and RamPortal to ensure data doesn't become out of sync.

• Grades will not have to be entered into both RamPortal and myWCU

• Overview:
• Conversion refers to the process of moving all student academic history - registration records, grade, major, degree conferral, holds, etc. - from myWCU to RamPortal.
• Conversion takes approximately three weeks. This includes the creation of the files in myWCU and the process of loading the data into RamPortal, and the validation of the data.
• During the conversion period, WCU will need to pause making updates to student records to ensure data inconsistencies don't occur between myWCU and RamPortal.
• After conversion of data, WCU will need to maintain student record information in two Student Information Systems (myWCU and RamPortal).
• Timeline:
• Until 1/31 - Record Cleanup: In advance of conversion, we want to ensure that our student records are fully up to date - this means we've updated all student majors/minors, we've assigned advisors, processed all change of grades, dotted every i and crossed every t. We are working across campus to ensure records are fully updated.
• 2/1 - 2/26 - Pausing record updates: During the conversion timeline we will pause all updates to student records to ensure the data in myWCU and RamPortal don't get out of sync.
• 2/26 - end of Summer 2024 - Maintain Records in two systems: When conversion is completed, the Registrar's Office will resume making updates in both myWCU and RamPortal. The need to maintain data in two systems will impact the timeline it takes the Registrar's Office to complete these updates.
• Please anticipate that updates to student major/minors, advisors, grades, transfer credits, holds, petitions, academic standing, academic forgiveness, and other student data will be suspended from 2/1-2/26.
• The following link inclues a bit more information about student data conversion and its impact on specific data elements for your reference. It also summarizes what student record updates will continue during this time. Student Record Conversion to RamPortal-2.pdf

• Effective fall 2024 courses that did not complete general education revalidation will no longer carry the general education attribute for any students.
• This is a change in the current process because students who were admitted prior to revalidation can currently see courses that weren't revalidated as meeting their general education requirements in myWCU

• Please see our historical data website for the most up to date information about where historical data will be accessible, and what data we anticipate no longer maintaining access to: https://www.wcupa.edu/academicEnterpriseSystems/student-system-modernization/historical-data.aspx

• This data is now available in SAS using the same dashboards. 

• At our initial go-live there will very limited reports available for users. If you need data please submit a Data Request Form.

• This is still a fluid timeline with view only access a possibility. There is expectation to remove transactional access from myWCU as we go live with the Fall 2024 semester.
• On 2/1 staff and faculty will lose access to completing the following functions in myWCU, as a result of the conversion of data to RamPortal:
• Holds
• Advisor Assignments
• Updates to major/minor, etc.
• Change of grade
• Posting transfer credit
• Applying for graduation after summer 24
• Petition process (for terms prior to spring 24)
• Updating academic standing
• Conferring degrees
• Academic Forgiveness processing
• Residency updates
• Student test scores
• Student milestones

• The listing of students by either their IDs or First Names is standard Banner functionality. With the move to a cloud hosted environment, West Chester does not have the ability to edit this configuration. We are working on creating reports that will allow the sorting of students by last name, but this will not be possible for the advisee lists or class rosters accessed from the Faculty Center Card.  

• The two-step login process for reports within the Argos component is related to single sign-on and security. We recognize the extra steps that this requires of our end users and will be investigating enhancements this year.