As the University reaches its centennial birthday, a project is underway to provide better service to students, staff and faculty.

Over the next 12 months students and staff will notice various new features to the MyBGSU Web portal, their user ID numbers, schedule of classes and more.

Yesterday in an open-forum the director of the BG@100 Project, William Gerwin, gave a brief overview of the steps taken, present progress and future goals for a new system.

This project started in February 2003 when the BG@100 office initiated a cross functional review of the administrative system, where they surveyed 257 people from the University who used the administration program on the Web.

After reviewing the responses from the surveys, it was decided that a PeopleSoft product would be implemented at the University. In January 2004 the development of plans for creating Human Resources and Payroll started.

PeopleSoft, according to the BG@100 Web site, is the company that makes the administrative software application which allows users to have one or more permission lists to one’s User ID.

“This new technology will allow us to be up to date with our users,” Gerwin said.

There are two PeopleSoft systems that work together. One is Human Capital Management, which is used to manage the University’s human resources, administration and payroll. The second is Financial Management Systems, which will replace the current Advantage Financial to work with financial activity.

“This is truly an interactive system,” Gerwin said.

Currently, certain applications on the MyBGSU Web Portal are unavailable at later times in the evening, but the MyBGSU will be available around the clock with the new PeopleSoft system.

Valerie Ziernicki, a senior majoring in marketing, said she remembers when she needed to check what time a class was at 11:30 p.m. and a message came up that said the service was unavailable.

“It’s kind of silly to have something like that not available,” Ziernicki said.

Students, staff and faculty members will notice some changes over the next 12 months.

Currently, the committee for the project is doing some major testing on admissions, registration and billing. Next month “user acceptance” testing will begin, where the offices that will use the system sign off to see if the system is working properly. They will also be providing some initial training and presentations about the academic structure, such as the information on degrees and majors.

Gerwin said they’re putting this information into the system first “so the systems knows what BGSU looks like.”

Then they will compare and contrast the current and PeopleSoft systems.

After those two tests comes the stress test, to see whether the new system can handle the workload, such as multiple students checking their schedules on Blackboard.

Gerwin recommends that both students and staff members attend the upcoming presentations in order to fully understand the project.

Master Data Management Committee is who comes up with the ideas of the project.

“[The committee] makes sure the university have in place what they need,” Gerwin said.

Another change students will notice is their PIN number will no longer start with a “P” but a zero. Students will also notice how their address is seen on various systems for the University. The current system with multiple addresses such as home, business and mailing will all be converted into one address; the mailing address.

“Once we go live with PeopleSoft there will be a gradual transition,” Gerwin said.

The project is expected to be complete Dec. 31, 2009.

There are about 38 people working on this project who have a lot of work put on their plate.

“We’re in full throttle right now,” Gerwin said.

Ziernicki said she believes the new system is a good idea.

“It will cater to a college student’s lifestyle as being up late,” Ziernicki said.