ISIS Peak Use Work Group

ISIS Peak Use Report, page 19

Report

Purpose

The ISIS Peak Use Work Group was established as a result of the request of Leonard Sandridge, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, to focus on processes in place and make recommendations that would ease the demand on ISIS during four peak periods: late August, when students return to Grounds; November, during pre-enrollment for the Spring semester; January, at the outset of the Spring semester; and April during pre-enrollment for the Fall semester. The goal is to make sure key processes are adequately efficient before consideration is given to any future investment of resources. Don Reynard, Director of Applications and Data Services for Information Technology and Communication (ITC), and other ITC staff played key roles in an effort to educate the work group. Miles Gibson, Process Simplification Coordinator, drafted this report after integrating the perspectives of several constituencies.

Members

Nancy Rivers, Chair, Office of the Vice President for Management and Budget

Lynn Davis, Student Financial Services

Miles Gibson, Process Simplification

Yvonne Hubbard, Student Financial Services

Ce Kimata, ITC

Bob LeHeup, Office of the University Registrar

Rachel Most, College of Arts and Sciences

Gary Nimax, Office of the Vice President for Finance

Don Reynard, ITC

Carol Stanley, Office of the University Registrar

Anda Webb, Office of the Vice President and Provost

Current ISIS Processes

Technical Limitations of ISIS

Prior to the implementation of the new mainframe and operating system, the ISIS database had a technical limit of 250 simultaneous connections. Under a new licensing agreement, that limit will rise to approximately 1200 simultaneous connections, although ITC will not be able to determine a real maximum until the performance of the new mainframe and software has been benchmarked against the standards of the previous mainframe and software. Without sufficient power to handle these connections, ISIS’s new limit of total simultaneous connections may fall well short of 1200 and could remain at 250. (See Appendix A for detailed ISIS technical information). ISIS is currently available most days from 2 AM to 9:30 PM. Its downtime is longer on Sundays to accommodate weekly and special maintenance.

Demand for ISIS

Demand for ISIS is highest during the heart of business hours, from mid-morning (when student use rises dramatically) through the afternoon. Staff use is largely limited to business hours, although ITC has worked with many departments to move the running of as many large reports as possible to nighttime hours (see Appendix E for a complete lists of nighttime reports). Faculty use may not be limited to business hours (no survey has been conducted on faculty use of ISIS), but use tied to faculty advising is highly likely to be performed during business hours (during or immediately prior to advising appointments). Students tend to use ISIS at all available hours and are the constituency most likely to be attracted to evening and nighttime use. A 2003 survey of undergraduate and graduate students showed an overwhelming preference for ISIS downtime to fall on or after midnight, leaving ISIS available at least until midnight (see Appendix B for full survey results).

Pre-Enrollment, Final Registration, and Adding and Dropping Courses

The peak periods of ISIS are driven mostly by:

· pre-enrollment, which all returning students perform in November and April (incoming first-years pre-register for most courses during summer orientation, although most complete course registration during the peak period in late August);

· final registration, which all students must perform;

· the adding and dropping of courses, which most students perform during peak periods, often multiple times;

· and the various actions of faculty advisers, academic departments, and school registrars.

Students tend to defer their use of ISIS until the peak periods, often out of necessity. Final registration cannot be completed until all student holds have been removed, and students often are not in a position to pay all financial holds (e.g., tuition bills, parking fines) or have registration holds removed until they return to Grounds shortly before the start of classes. Approximately twenty percent of the University’s 19,650 students have a financial or registration hold in August, and approximately thirteen percent return in January with a hold. With a significant proportion of students receiving some sort of hold every semester, final registration, at least in its current form, will likely remain a contributor to heavy ISIS use during the August and January peak periods. For example, in August 2003, more than 6000 students—almost one third of all undergraduate and graduate students--performed final registration on the two busiest days for ISIS, the Monday and Tuesday before the start of classes.

The November and April pre-enrollment periods are by design peak periods for adding and, to a lesser extent, dropping courses. For instance, during seven school days immediately preceding and following Thanksgiving 2002, more than 90,000 courses were added or dropped via Web-based ISIS. Returning students are not allowed to add or drop courses from the third week of June until the first week of August (to facilitate the pre-enrollment of new students during Summer Orientation), and very few returning students begin adding and dropping again until late August because of the rules of supply and demand. If, for instance, a course becomes full during April pre-enrollment, students know that there is little likelihood of their being able to add into the course until late August, when many students will be dropping courses to make room for the addition of others. Few students drop courses until they are ready to add others, further contributing to the bottleneck. Therefore, although returning students may begin adding and dropping courses in early August (after a mid-summer moratorium), the demand for these courses ensures heavy use of ISIS in late August, when many students repeatedly attempt to add desired courses.

Furthermore, current rules require students to enroll in a minimum number of course hours without exceeding a maximum. As a result, many students enroll before the start of classes in “placeholder” courses that they have little or no intention of taking, simply to satisfy the minimum requirement. When they wish to attempt to add a popular course, the rules on maximum hours often necessitate that they drop the placeholder course before attempting to add the other. Thus, over and over during Final Registration, a student might drop a course, fail in an attempt to add another course, then add the original course back to his schedule. Some students add or drop the same course twenty or more times during a single final registration period

Demand for Web-Based Services

The stress on ISIS during peak periods has been exacerbated by the push for Web-based services. Responding to demands from students and faculty, the University Registrar and Student Financial Services (SFS) have collaborated with ITC to expand the services offered by ISIS on-line, in recent years adding access to information about bursar’s and registration holds, the Virginia Student Academic Audit (VISTAA), grade reports, detailed searches of the Course Offering Directory (which while technically not a part of ISIS is often accessed from ISIS), and many more. Student demand is not limited to a desire for this Web access: built upon their experience shopping and surfing the Internet, students want instant access to these services and increasingly view any delay as substandard.

Communications

The University Registrar, SFS, and the schools all communicate with incoming students via email, yet many new undergraduate and graduate students do not activate their University email accounts in August. By August 8, 2003, only 57% of new undergraduates and 41% of new graduate students had activated their accounts. By August 22, those numbers rose only to 74% and 65%, respectively. Almost all students activate their University email accounts by the end of September, but delayed activation means delayed receipt of important messages that affect final registration. The University Registrar, for instance, sends in the final week of August two sets of emails to all non-registered students, who may be more likely than the general student population not to have activated their email accounts. And because the accounts have been created—just not activated--emails sent to these accounts do not bounce back to the senders, so there is no sure way of knowing who has received the message.

Process Simplification reviewed summer communications from Student Financial Services, the University Registrar, and the College’s Dean’s Office and found them to be clear and understandable. These offices maintain a reasonable limit on their summer communications with students and avoid duplicating communications sent from other offices.

Changes Made

1. New Mainframe Hardware

The new mainframe for ISIS was installed in late January 2004. Pre-enrollment for fall 2004, the first major ISIS event to take place using the new mainframe, ran well. One key factor seems to be the new mainframe’s single processor: The old mainframe had a three-way processor, with one-third of total CPU’s dedicated each to CICS, SUPRA, and CrossPlex Thus, when any of these three reached its capacity of 33 percent of the total CPU’s, its performance would degrade, even if one or both of the other processors was not performing at capacity. The new mainframe has a single processor, configured so that power can go where it is most needed. During pre-enrollment in April, CICS, SUPRA, and CrossPlex at different times went well over 33 percent of CPU’s, and the mainframe occasionally hit 100 percent of CPU’s, but performance never degraded. As a result, operations that occasionally took minutes to complete during previous peak periods ran at their normal speeds, typically of less than one second. The new mainframe also has 10 to 15 percent more total power than the old mainframe, but the versatility of its single processor seems to have made the biggest difference in improved performance.

Measurement: The pre-enrollment processing load in April does not come close to equaling that of fall semester final registration, but ITC will continue to “tweak” the system in search of further improved performance.

2. ISIS Online

ITC made enhancements and changes to the application in late winter and early spring 2004, which appear to have improved response time and through-put during the fall 2004 pre-enrollment period in April.

Measurement: Subjective measurements from this process will serve as baselines for comparison with the next major ISIS event in August. These subjective measurements include such questions as: Did things improve? Did they stay the same or get worse? While no substitute for quantitative reporting, subjective measures may be the best (or only) means available for evaluating overall performance, given the complex inter-relationships of multiple components. For example, with the implementations of a new mainframe, new operating system (see number 3 below), and application changes, it will be impossible to isolate and quantify the effects of each on overall system performance.

3. New Mainframe Operating System (ZOS)

This upgrade was implemented in late May 2004.

Measurement: The next major ISIS event, fall 2004 final registration in August, will provide subjective measurements that will serve as baselines for comparison with the next major ISIS events in November 2004 and January 2005.

4. Ensure That All New Students Activate Their University Email Accounts

In its Packet B notice to incoming students, which is sent in early June, ITC directed students to activate their University email accounts no later than July 1. During Summer Orientation, which provides a captive audience of 98% of incoming undergraduates, students are again being directed to activate their accounts either during or shortly after their Orientation session, if they have not already done so. Parents in attendance are being told that activation is important to ensure that students do not miss important information about holds or course enrollment. A further contributing factor is Housing’s decision to put housing applications on line: Students that activate their email accounts will learn sooner about their housing for the fall.

Graduate students are harder to reach, but the Dean’s Office in the College is working with departments to emphasize the importance of activating University accounts. Many of these departments may in fact be relying upon email to communicate important information to their new students, thus providing an incentive for them to help.

Measurement: ITC will monitor the activation of new email accounts throughout the summer.

Changes Under Consideration

5. Change the ISIS Online Shutdown Time (from 9:30 PM – 2:00 AM to 12:00 AM – 5 AM)

Rescheduling overnight production jobs to allow for a midnight shutdown will require planning by the ADS Student group and the users, as well as a commitment from ITC Operations to support more activity on third shift. ITC must first benchmark the impact of the new mainframe operating system on the current ISIS shutdown schedule of 9:30 PM to ensure that batch run times have not increased from the old mainframe’s numbers.

Status: ITC is currently benchmarking the new mainframe operating system and has not yet determined whether or not ISIS’ downtime can safely be moved. If a later downtime is implemented, SESPOG, ITC, and other related offices will work with University Relations take advantage of the opportunity to market this change to students, specifically citing ITC’s responsiveness to student demand as reflected in the related survey (see Appendix B).

Measurement: ITC will again apply the subjective measures described above to the results and compare them in a very general way to the April course enrollment results. To have an equal course enrollment process for comparison purposes would require that ITC wait until November, when course enrollment takes place for the spring 2005 semester. (Fall final registration in August should only be compared with another final registration, since that activity is unique and significantly different from the pre-enrollment cycles.)

6. Encourage Faculty to Use Web-Based Wait Lists for Classes

The Dean’s Office in the College of Arts and Sciences has developed a Web-based waiting list tool that it wishes eventually to make available to all faculty at the University. When faculty use the system, once it becomes available, they will choose a date after which admission to their course is by instructor permission only. Instead of logging onto ISIS repeatedly in attempts to add the course, students will instead need only to add their names to the course’s waiting list, which is accessed via the College’s website, not ISIS. This tool will not affect the process of actual course enrollment, which remains a manual effort performed by support staff via green-screen ISIS.