South African Presentations

A key component of the registration of research students (for Master’s and PhD degrees) is the compilation, approval and submission of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the first year of registration or a Progress and Planned Activity (PPA) form in subsequent years. In response to a request to move towards a paperless registration system, writable PDF versions of the MoU and PPA forms were created. The next logical step was the setup of an online facility for the submission of the forms, with the eventual outcome of online registration. A critical aspect of the registration process is a series of approvals at the level of supervisor, Head of Department and Dean. A project was initiated which made use of delivered PeopleSoft functionality to enable the submission of the MoU/PPA form by the student using services requests, the subsequent approval steps by the academic staff, and the registration of the student. The most significant challenges faced were not only providing a user-friendly system using delivered functionality, but convincing academic staff to make use of an unfamiliar system which from their perspective was not necessarily more efficient than signing paper forms.

The following delivered Peoplesoft functionality was used as part of the business processes:
Graduate Research Management – Candidate Center, Service Requests and Service Items
Notification Framework
Rules Engine
WorkCenters
Student Activity Guides