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Administrative/Business Apps

VBA To Return to Mac; Office 2008 SP1 Released

5/13/2008

Microsoft Tuesday released Service Pack 1 for Office 2008 for Mac, the first major update to what the company called its most successful Mac Office launch in 19 years (in terms of sales volume). In a surprise move, Microsoft's Mac Business Unit also announced that it plans to bring Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) back to the Mac platform with the next major release.

Student Retention: Are Schools Taking Advantage of Technology?

5/13/2008

College and university administrators consider personal attention to be the most critical factor in retaining at risk students. But what role should technology play in the effort? While many consider technology-based interventions important to student retention, few seem to be using such solutions, and only 2 percent have any kind of early warning system in place to identify at risk students, according to data released to Campus Technology by higher education strategy firm EducationDynamics.

American Samoa CC Upgrades Administration Management

5/12/2008

American Samoa Community College has gone public with its intention to buy software and services from Datatel to build an administrative system and enhance services to its community of users. The school will be using Datatel Colleague and ActiveCampus Portal to replace a legacy system.

Business Intelligence Tool Means Healthy Data at UVA

5/8/2008

University IT groups will recognize the challenge of combining disparate data from more than one department in order to create meaningful reports for various users. At the University of Virginia Department of Medicine, which is overseen by UVA's School of Medicine, data was coming from two very different accounting systems, which meant problems for faculty members whenever they needed to run reports.

Texas, Arizona and North Dakota Campuses Sign on for Higher One Refund Management Services

5/7/2008

Higher One, a financial services company serving higher education, said 15 colleges and universities have signed agreements in the first quarter of 2008 to use its OneDisburse Refund Management system to handle disbursement of refunds to students.

Update: Windows XP SP3 Available

5/6/2008

Users of Windows XP can now gain access to Service Pack 3 through Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center, according to an announcement issued by Microsoft Tuesday. Distribution of the service pack through Automatic Updates will be available "in the next few months," the announcement added.

Tiffin U Boosts Student Retention with Technology-Driven Outreach

5/5/2008

Tiffin University said it has seen positive results in streamlining its student retention information and communication with software from Hobsons Student Retention Solutions. The Tiffin, OH-based school is using the application to help it identify, communicate with and help students stay enrolled. Tiffin has about 2,000 students.

Consolidation Bringing IT Budgets Down in 2008

4/29/2008

Information technology executives are focusing on cutting costs rather than investing in technology this quarter, according to a report released this week by research analysts at IDC.

Microsoft Nixes XP Extended-Life Rumors

4/28/2008

Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, which will no longer be sold after June 30, seemed to get a reprieve of sorts when Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer made a quip at a press conference about relenting to customer feedback. However, one of Microsoft's official PR agencies denied the suggestion that XP would get a break from its scheduled end date.

Peralta CC Completes Transition to PeopleSoft ERP

4/24/2008

Peralta Community College District has completed a migration from legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications to PeopleSoft 8.9, according to the professional services company hired to guide the college on its implementation. RWD Technologies said the decision to migrate Peralta to the Oracle platform was driven by the need to unify separate ERP processes across the four-campus system.

Texas A&M University Stays in Touch with Constituents with CRM Software

4/23/2008

The George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University has gone public with plans to use Talisma constituent relationship management software. The school said it hopes to apply the software to the job of multi-department data and interaction management for student recruitment and retention.

Northwestern U Puts Kronos Workforce Central To Work

4/21/2008

Northwestern University has selected the Workforce Central suite from Kronos to manage employee hours and costs. Like many universities, the school has a complex workforce that includes a large number of student employees working at its campuses in Chicago and Evanston, IL. The software will also track absenteeism for the university's 10,000-plus employees, including absences that qualify under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

New Web Service Helps International Students Make School Payments

4/21/2008

Custom House, a foreign exchange and international payments company, has launched a new international service to help universities and colleges accept payment from international students.

Michigan State University Automates Capital Project Management

4/21/2008

Michigan State University (MSU) has implemented with a new internal capital project management application. Skire Unifier provides collaboration mechanisms and control and visibility into individual capital projects and across a school's project and facilities portfolio. MSU eventually intends to extend the implementation to its IT and facilities management organizations in subsequent phases of the deployment.

Zoho CRM Enterprise Edition Adds Role-based Security Admin, Sheet Integration

4/18/2008

Software developer Zoho this week released Zoho CRM Enterprise Edition, an expanded version of the company's Web-based constituent relationship management solution and part of its Business Applications set.

Brigham Young University in Idaho Moves to Jenzabar for ERP

4/17/2008

Brigham Young University - Idaho (BYU - Idaho) has selected Jenzabar's Total Campus Management enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. The suite the school will use includes Jenzabar CX, Jenzabar's Internet Campus Solution (JICS) and the Jenzabar Non-Traditional System (Jenzabar NTS).

First Look: IBM Lotus Symphony Beta 4

4/15/2008

IBM Lotus Symphony is one of the newer free office productivity suites out there, although the Lotus name itself has a long pedigree. Like OpenOffice.org--a free productivity suite fostered by Sun Microsystems--Lotus Symphony uses the OpenDocument Format (ODF), with reverse-engineered support for Microsoft Office formats, such as doc and xls.

Google and Salesforce Ratchet Up the CRM Competition

4/15/2008

In a shot across Microsoft's bow, Google and Salesforce.com have integrated some of their hosted solutions. Customers using Salesforce.com's customer relationship management (CRM) solution now have access to the Google Apps office productivity suite within the Salesforce.com platform. The new combined solution is called "Salesforce.com for Google Apps." It's available free to Salesforce.com customers.

Blackboard Commerce Suite Driving Cashless Campus Transactions

4/14/2008

Blackboard reported that several colleges and universities in the United States have selected software from its Commerce Suite to address campus commerce and security management. The company said that most of the schools have implemented the Transaction System, which administers online, real-time campus commerce, meal plans, vending, and facility access control through a campus one-card.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Turns to Oracle BI for Decision-making

4/11/2008

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute said it is using Oracle business intelligence applications to help users define, analyze and interpret data stored in its Oracle data warehouse. Rensselaer has created dashboards that deliver data to 650 users for planning, forecasting and decision-making.

WebSphere Portal 6.1 To Couple Web 2.0, Enterprise Technologies

4/11/2008

IBM revealed Wednesday that it will ship WebSphere Portal 6.1 this quarter (i.e. by the end of June) with new collaboration, administrative, deployment, and Web 2.0 features based on input gathered from some 4,000 beta testers. The company also announced that it's shipping three of its accelerators for WebSphere Portal this quarter.

Rush Revamps Administrative Systems with ERP, Portal

4/7/2008

Rush University has chosen Datatel Colleague and ActiveApply software to build an administrative system and enhance student recruitment efforts. The applications will replace a legacy administration system.

Grantham U To Implement 'Unified Digital Campus'

4/4/2008

Grantham University, an online university that educates working adults, went public with plans to implement Banner "Unified Digital Campus" solutions from SunGard Higher Education to help it expand its digital campus and improve online student services.

Data Mining at UCF Helps Measure Goals Against Booming Growth

4/3/2008

Rapid enrollment growth is great, but can bring its own set of challenges. Ask administrators at the University of Central Florida, one of the fastest-growing universities in the country. With 46,000-plus students, the university has seen enrollment jump 35 percent in 10 years.

Can Campus IT Outsource to Web 2.0?

4/2/2008

Campuses are starting to outsource e-mail services to popular Web 2.0 mail services such as Hotmail, gMail, Yahoo Mail, or others. Will various office functions also be outsourced? How far will outsourcing to the Web go?