IT Leadership Team March meeting recap

The March IT Leadership Team meeting covered University Financial Aid, Faculty Workflow, MS365 CoPilot Experience, and an Ask SLT live discussion.

University financial aid

University Director of Financial Aid David Blackmon and  Director of Student and Academic Support Systems Tim  Hinckley recently presented an update to leaders on the progress of the University Financial Aid Analysis project. The project has three primary objectives:

• Align schools with University and Federal compliance requirements.
• Streamline current processes and procedures.
• Optimize Banner, Yale’s Student Information System used for the past 25 years.

The teams are currently making their rounds at each school at Yale, where they are documenting and analyzing financial aid policies, processes, and current system usage. This analysis enables the teams to build roadmaps for process updates and system enhancements. One impressive aspect of the project is the exceptional collaboration between Hinckley’s ITS and Blackmon’s University Financial Aid teams. This dynamic partnership has been one of the driving forces behind the project’s current success, combining the expertise of both departments to identify areas for improvement and develop innovative solutions. The seamless cooperation between ITS and University Financial Aid exemplifies the power of cross-functional teamwork in addressing complex challenges and delivering results that positively impact the entire Yale community.

The University Financial Aid Analysis project is poised to deliver transformative benefits to Yale’s financial aid ecosystem by prioritizing compliance, optimizing system utilization, and simplifying processes. Hinckley and Blackmon’s update provided valuable insights into the project’s progress and its far-reaching potential to impact the Yale community positively. Their presentation also highlighted the value of interdepartmental collaboration in achieving shared goals and driving meaningful change within the institution.

Faculty academic leave process

IT Director and Hyland OnBase service owner Darrell Cook introduced Director of OFAS Diane Rodrigues and Senior Systems Analyst Lance Joseph to the meeting. Together, they provided an overview of Hyland OnBase, a strategic platform that supports document management and workflows, including (eventually) contract management. They described the first OnBase implementation at Yale, the faculty academic leave workflow.

Initially starting in 2019, then delayed due to COVID-19, the team resumed their work in fall 2021. After evaluating three tools, they chose Hyland OnBase and conducted their first use case in September 2022. Rodrigues remarked that she felt like her unit—the Office of Faculty Administrative Services (OFAS)— “won the lottery when we got selected as a use case” to improve the processing of requests for sabbatical/research leaves.

The use case aimed to streamline how 12 schools with 12 different procedures processed their requests, including caregiver/medical leaves. The former system relied on a patchwork of disparate tools, manual tasks, and email, which caused a six-month response timeline, limited visibility into the process, and many errors along the way.

Through OnBase, leaves are now managed using an electronic form, with submitters receiving electronic confirmation, chairs getting automated notifications, statuses being visible, and leave approvals automatically uploaded to Workday. The new system offers enhanced automation, seamless integration, heightened security, improved efficiency, transparent monitoring, and increased user satisfaction.

In addition to these enhancements, Joseph noted that the system was designed using a user-centered approach, which he feels ensured the satisfaction of everyone involved—from the submitter to the approver.

Due to the success of this project and the benefits of utilizing OnBase, Cook has been offering roadshow presentations on the platform, evaluating other workflow consolidations, exploring contract management features, and more.

Microsoft 365 (M365) CoPilot experience

Finance Director Charles Barnett and IT Director James Helbling shared an update on their experience with Copilot for Microsoft 365, described by Microsoft as an “everyday AI companion” or AI chatbot.

The presenters initially noted certain benefits of CoPilot, including that it:

• Is embedded into the M365 suite, eliminating the need to copy and paste over to a different platform like ChatGPT
• Efficiently summarizes emails, documents, and Teams chats
• Effectively combines search of public and private documents
• Helps to catch you up on Teams notifications and write summaries and action items

However, they also spotted potential drawbacks, such as:

• It is not as intuitive as you would think, with answers being ineffective or poorly written, eliminating the ability to implement responses without further refining
• Prompts that are a paragraph or two long experienced more errors.
• Excel functionality overall underperformed
• Currently, it isn’t the most intuitive AI tool to use, but it has promise

Based on his initial exploration of Copilot for M365 and the steep learning curve (“much steeper than ChatGPT,” according to Barnett), he does not recommend broad licensing but does recommend continued testing. Candidates for continued testing would include those who need to summarize or generate sensitive text and are willing to commit to sharing their learnings and best practices with other Copilot users at Yale.

Ask SLT live

The group discussed updating the IT Leadership Teams channel and email lists to include all applicable leaders. No additional questions were asked or answered.

The next IT Leadership Team meeting is on Wednesday, April 24, from 9 - 10:30 a.m.