ConnectUNI Update

It has been far too long since our last update on the ConnectUNI project.  However it is not that there has been a lack of progress.  Here is a quick summary broken down by topic area:

Recruiting:

1. A number of new integrations have been set up supporting admissions and their need to try new things and bring in new names and support new programs.  

2. Added waitlisting option to Graduate Application Review Portal (GARP). This allows Review Committees to indicate qualified applicants that can be added if a slot becomes available. This was a request from the Graduate College and MSW, Counseling, and Speech-Language Pathology programs who would benefit greatly from this functionality. Will be used for the first time when processing Summer 2025 and Fall 2025 applicants.

3. Summer 2022 Orientation brought a number of changes regarding how students register for orientation as well as how each orientation date is set up.  Prior to this time incoming students would sign up for orientation just by date, however some programs can only handle so many incoming students in a day.  It was very difficult to ensure there was a good  balance between the various programs.  With Blackthorn our events module in the ConnectUNI platform, we were able to develop a schedule and limits by groups of programs that made sense, thus ensuring we don't exceed limits.  So now a student logs in, and based on their current planned program, they are presented with available dates.  When a date fills up it comes off the calendar for that group only, and other programs can continue to sign up new students as long as they have more slots.  This has been working very well.

Events/Blackthorn: 

1. Summer 2021 we worked with the STEM program to begin using blackthorn for summer camp registrations.  Following a successful pilot that summer, use of the platform has continued to grow to include nearly all summer camps held on campus.

2. A number of areas have begun using blackthorn events to set up their conferences including student, staff and professional conferences put on by the university.

Current Student Retention/Support:

1. During the 2024 year, the team spent a large amount of time working on the Advance Registration Outreach effort.  This is really the first part of Student Success phase II that campus has been waiting for.  With this effort advisors can log in to ConnectUNI, and see in real time who has registered, who has not and why.  The platform is also used to drive communications to the students if they have barriers to address before they can register (such as holds, outstanding bills, etc…).  Our goal is to continue to define deliverables the team can achieve each year in this area.

Other:

1. Fall 2022 defined data retention plans for salesforce data.  In spring 2023 implemented changes to archive and purge data no longer needed.  We have continued this effort and completed an additional round of data archival and purging for new data in 2024 and one final round will be done in 2025.  In the future we will archive data annually, and will review data retention for new elements brought into the system.  This is required to keep UNI’s storage costs in salesforce in check and ensure the data is clean, meaningful and timely.

2. In 2023 the team worked on implementing a subscription center, which provided a hierarchy of interest areas that can be set up.  This allows people to “subscribe” and “unsubscribe” from topics as they please so they are not continually bothered with emails that don't interest or pertain to them.  This is in place and can easily have new items added to it over time.

3. BCS - John Pappajohn Center went live in Salesforce January 2024. IWRC has approved their setup in Salesforce and we are in the initial data load stage for their 20 years worth of data. Advance Iowa work stopped Summer 2024, but they have recently indicated they are interested in resuming that work.  NOTE: BCS efforts were able to move forward at that time because they were willing to work with IT to fund a consultant to get much of their work completed.

4. Each January as the legislature starts their work, emails are generated to various constituents to bring awareness of issues important to UNI.  As of 2024 the ConnectUNI platform has been used to do this work.

5. In late 2024 we identified a number of areas on campus that are using tools like mailchimp to send mass emails to both on and off campus constituencies.  Those using uni.edu email addresses were scheduled to no longer work as of the end of January.  So we met with those groups to help them understand their options and when appropriate helped them move their efforts to the ConnectUNI platform.  This effort is wrapping up yet this spring.

6. The Salesforce platform, which connectUNI is built on, undergoes 3 new releases per year from the vendor.  These are scheduled and we can not opt out of these.  While this is much simpler being a cloud system, our team must still conduct testing, and identify issues and fix them to ensure our users are not impacted by these updates.

We have a small team and supporting the ConnectUNI platform and recruiting is a high priority, but it is our hope to continue new work when possible for student success and retention.  We plan to work with leaders in that area to identify chunks of work that can be delivered over time with incremental releases prior to each new registration period when possible.  

If you have any questions about the deliverables listed above or would like to share your thoughts on student success and retention items that should be reviewed sooner than later, we welcome your input, just let us know.

Thanks

Kevan