Asia Presentations

Koç University has been using PeopleSoft since Fall 2014 enrollments and from that time on there is an ongoing effort for creating a comprehensive Dormitory Module built in PeopleSoft Campus Solutions that will leverage most of the university’s Dormitory Management business processes, especially the ones that revolve around the students.
The need for this module rises from the existence of a previous framework and from the wish to incorporate these processes into PeopleSoft, where we try to keep most of our student related data, including their financial transactions and bursary information. So the overall aim was to have a common platform where all the related departments could function seamlessly. Here are the most prominent Dormitory Management requirements that are addressed via this module:
• Students should be able to apply for the dormitories, with the opportunity to specify the term, the dormitory program, their roommate, and room type preferences.
• Dormitory staff should be able to track all the applicants and the already residing students’ Academic Records, Scholarships & Placement Preferences over the years without having the need to visit the specific Student Records, Student Awards and Financial Aid components.
• Being able to efficiently place the applicants to the available facilities with the consideration of all the above-mentioned student preferences, academic and bursary aspects.
• Automating the process mentioned above by taking each dorm type’s different prioritization of students and the status of students.
• Once the students are placed, they should be given a chance to decline the dormitory rooms, to prevent unnecessary confusion and financial charges.
• Ability to gather Room Change and Renouncement Requests from the students throughout their active dormitory period.
• Handle the dormitory placement announcements, communications, as well as, the contract documents that the students need to fill in.
• Being able to easily configure the whole module through various setups on the front end, such that the developers are out of the picture in the long term.
• The Dormitory staff should also easily get reports and statistics on all the activities within the facilities so that it would ease their management life.
Having the time and financial constraints it was a must to reuse as many existing modules within PeopleSoft. To be able to implement all these requirements it was found appropriate to work with the following delivered technologies and functionalities:
• Foundation Tables such as Facilities, Buildings and Room Characteristics. These would form the basis of the dormitory buildings, rooms and their types.
• Activity Guides are utilized for dormitory applications and placement declinations.
• Student Self Service Navigation Tabs are used to embed the Dormitory Requests component where students can request Room Changes and Renouncements.
• Notifications Framework and Communications for various notifications and housing contracts at certain stages of the process.
• BI Publishing for generating various reports and contract documents
• Student Records, Financial Aid and Packaging Variables data is used to feed to the Dormitory Placement Component, as all that is considered while placing students to the facilities. This would remove the need for the dormitory staff to deal with the corresponding original components.
Let us come to the newly added functionalities that was require to put things together. To be able to control the whole module with ease, there was a need to develop several setup components that would define the Dormitory Room Types, Room Rates, Dormitory Request Types, Address Region Codes and the most detailed one, the Dormitory Program Setup. The latter setup component forms the core of the module and lets the staff control the calendar that governs the application & residence dates for the students in a particular academic level and plan combination, as well as their ability to choose facility types.
The Student Placement component is one of the most important parts in the puzzle, as it is used to filter all the applicants (placed or not) with over couple of dozens of filters that help the staff during the placement period. This component lets the staff place students in batch and can also serve as reporting tool. There are plenty of links that would facilitate the user to reach all the information regarding a specific student as it is vital during the placement decision process.
These and several other administration related pages, as well as all the student related components would be explained during the presentation with a hope that the information would be useful for the other universities that have a similar use case as Koç University. Besides it is noteworthy to mention that this project is still in an ongoing process, and further improvements are planned for the near future.