Meeting Minutes
January 28, 2004

Present: Sue Crowley, John Culshaw, Rick Denton, Eric Gray, Chris Hemphill, Carolyn Landa, Malinda Miller-Huey, Kaye Orten, Gary Pollock, Barbara Todd, Paula Vaughan

Next Core Team Meeting:  February 25, 2:30 p.m., Telecomm 215 – Fourth Wednesday of the month, 2:30 p.m.

Action Items

• Core – send survey ideas to Paula
• Core – send enhancement and new feature ideas to Paula by Wednesday, February 18th.
• Bryan & Chris – solicit ideas from students for student life features.
• PJV – set up a PLUS migration planning meeting (with Gary, Barb, Kaye, Sue, Eric, Rick, Malinda)

Current Status

• CUConnect has been deployed to Sewall, Cheyenne Arapaho, Farrand, Hallett, Willard, the Quad, Baker and Libby.  (Deployment control to one ResHall or complex per day was handled through advertising via posters, table tents and the lab computers.) It will be deployed to Kittredge on Thursday and Williams Village on Monday (2/2).  Through Tuesday (1/27), when 2,292 students had been exposed to the posters and table tents, 283 unique users had tried CUConnect; between 50-70 unique users are logged on per day.  Peak usage appears to be late evening with 20 simultaneous connections; daytime usage is reflecting between 7 and 10 simultaneous connections.
• We will send an ememo to the Residence Hall students probably midweek next week (~February 4).  We’ll let the dust settle there, hopefully achieve a better test of higher volume usage, then start rolling out to the campus.  Marketing for the campus will include a press release, table tents in the UMC, chalking and posters in classroom buildings, links from various computing sites (the Students page on www.colorado.edu, PLUS, the ITS labs and kiosks, etc.), and buff bulletins.  Eventually, we will be pulling features out of PLUS and redirecting students to CUConnect for those features.  This will probably start with the Student Schedule.  We will need to ensure that everyone who needs access to the current schedule has access to CUConnect. (Access for non degree students in particular needs to be verified)
• We currently have 32 features available for CUConnect.  The demo version is available for perusing at https://cuconnect.colorado.edu where you can log on with ralphieb/buff (or click on the ‘View Demo’ link). 

Future Plans
A list of pending features was distributed.  The ensuing discussion included the following comments, recommendations, questions:

• Events Calendar and Consolidated Course information are top priorities among students. 
• Anything involving Registrar-funded resources (i.e., SIS-related development) will need to wait until July as all Registrar resources have been expended. 
• Building a WebCal instance with campus deadlines might be a quick win.
• Dining menus might be a quick win.
• Career Services has met with UCSU to discuss how to further publicize/increase access to BuffTrak.  This needs more visibility.
• PLUS migration is a high priority. We need a detailed plan
  Action Item (pjv):  Set up a meeting including Gary, Barb, Kaye, Sue, Eric, Rick, and Malinda
• Shared file system is a student-funded initiative that needs to come to fruition this semester.  It is ready for piloting – full rollout is dependent upon it being offered through the portal.
• Library channel could be a quick win; it may need to be coordinated with the Library web site’s redesign.
• News channels – the list of potential news sources continues to grow.  Student News will include college & school governments and student groups and may need to eventually break into two news channels.
• Pay for Print balances is a hot topic among students now.  The information is available on the web – but would be better if it could be found within the portal.
• Bursar features are facing a hard deadline.  The Bursar has to decide – by May – whether or not to renew their Sallie Mae contract and the new process would need to be in place prior to Fall Semester start up.  The Bursar’s strong preference is to not renew the contract.

Recommendations for additions to the list:

• Channel of Help/Service Center hours and contact information
• Voting information (Federal law states that we need to publicize voting information).  We might be able to accommodate this through vital announcements and news.
• Enhanced course look up and schedule planner.
• Registration (currently accessed through PLUS – but executes outside of PLUS)
• Survey tool to allow campus-wide creation of surveys.
• Off-Campus Housing search
• Honor Code display (perhaps include as one of the revolving images, occasionally include as an announcement)
• Activity Guide of student groups (build from web-based club guide that UCSU has already established http://www-ucsu.colorado.edu/guide/index.cfm# )
• Action Item:  Bryan and Chris will work with students to collect additional ideas, particularly in the Student Life area.

Considered done
Grad school presence (now have separate academic link folder for grad school, separate announcement topics, and will be working with Grad School to develop a news channel)

Vote on proposed features
Each core member present voted on their top three choices for features to implement in the near term (top choice counted as 3 points, second choice counted as 2 points, third choice counted as 1 point).  The final tally was:

This information will be provided to the Steering Team where there will undoubtedly be further discussion regarding the prioritization of enhancements to CUConnect.

Action Item:  Additional ideas for enhancements should be sent to Paula prior to the next Steering Team meeting (send by 2/18).