Student Orientation and Registration
(SOAR) at UW-Madison is designed to introduce students, parents and
guests to the UW community. SOAR brings students and parents to campus
for a 1 1/2 day session. Students meet with academic advisers, plan an
academic program, register for classes, learn about university resources
and experience campus life. Parents will also learn about advising,
registration, resources, campus life and the transition from high school
to college. Thirty-three sessions for freshmen and 5 sessions for
transfer students were offered by the SOAR program. Paper-and-pencil
registration would be slow, labor intensive and subject to
error. Web registration would be an ideal
approach to making sure the SOAR program ran smoothly. The audience for
the SOAR site presented a well defined set of customers: high school
seniors or transfer students and their parents. Since we could not
assume they would be very tech savvy, the web interface would have to be
very easy to use. There were also backend integration challenges with
enterprise systems. Only entering freshmen who have paid their
enrollment deposit receive an invitation to SOAR. The web application
would have to look at current data from the UW Integrated Student
Information System (ISIS) to check the student's status. For program administration, we also
had to create dynamic templates for labels and mail-merges and dynamic
letters so they could import contact information to mail. Not everyone
had an email address so there would still be an amount of paperwork that
needed automation. The new site ( http://www.wisc.edu/soar) would allow
students and parents to register for one of the 33 SOAR sessions using
authentication based on student number. The program staff would be able
to manage Registrants, Session Reports, Labels and Letters, Sessions and
Registration Fee breakdown. On the Reservation Administration screen
(lower left), the organization can manage dates and session
limits. On the backend, the web database
received a nightly data load from ISIS with all applicant information to
do authentication. During authentication, the web application would look
at admission term and whether they paid their admission fees prior to
accepting a registration. For more information, call Tech Consulting at 265-SHOW(7469) or send
email.
Client
Challenge
Solution