Solutions Architecture | Enterprise Architecture in Higher Education

SGHE Summit – Electronic Banner Access Request (eBAR) Workflow

Apr 272010

Electronic Banner Access Request (eBAR) Workflow – Portland State University

Replace paper form routing from Portland State University

Electronic routing – replaced two paper forms with Banner Self Service online form – uses Banner Workflow to route the request

Advantages of eBAR Workflows

faster than paper request process
can be routed to multiple users in parallel
no time wasted delivering paper between offices
no lost paper forms
password delivery via BSS = security
copy permissions from an existing user
“I Agree” checkbox for Acceptable Use Policy
dynamically routes to supervisor (right now user picks their supervisor)
auto creates workflow account for supervisor
supervisors can assign any workflow user as proxy
created a way to determine segregation of duties when applying Banner user classes and in particular objects (requester must explain why they are requesting access that violates the segregation of duty conflicts)

Business Decisions

Authn
- Banner INB
- Enterprise LDAP
user creation
- used workflow

Workflow Setup

workflows can not span orgns but a workflow can initiate a workflow in another orgn
TIP – design your workflow around your orgn not around Banner modules

Roles

System Administrators = IT Staff
Business Analysts = IT Staff, Banner Coordinators
Request Approvers = supervisors
HR Employee = Human Resources staff
Banner Coordinators
Business Affairs Director
Account Creator = DBA
eBAR Admin

Demo … run through Banner Self Service and Banner Workflow

Challenges

modeler hangs when trying to validate model – had to reduce the number of activities in the model by moving processing to dB procedures, save results in temp tables, etc
mapping external event parameters to workflow model – load all 30 parameters into a temp table before event fires, map one parm to find others
using javascript in custom activities – use a dbproc to gen javascript
custom activity forms are very limited – create a custom activity with only a few text areas, use a dbproc and javascript to create the functionality

Lessons Learned

design for easy maintenance – making changes to the Workflow model can be tedious – put as much into dbprocs to keep model simple
design for user friendliness – generate HTML view to display over the Workflow form, use drop down menus and checkboxes, dynamically create these menus and checkboxes

Lecturing on EA @ BCIT – Rethinking my Approach

enterprise architecture, higher education, strategic planning 5 Responses »

Jan 262010

Tonight, I had the privilege of being a guest lecturer on Enterprise Architecture for a class at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. My colleague Brian Hosier invited me to give an overview of EA for his students.

I had to do some serious chopping of my 2 hour workshop to get things down to a manageable timeframe. Even then, I felt extremely rushed and barely skimmed the surface of all that Enterprise Architecture is. The class went well and I got great questions from the students. I hope this short introduction to EA helped some of them think about the big picture.

As I was presenting, I realized how much our EA practices are IT influenced. This is a natural thing being that we grew EA out of IT and IT is where it primarily resides. As I presented some of the artifacts we developed, it became apparent that I need to rethink how to present EA to newbies. After a bit of theory and overview, I presented how EA can be applied strategically, tactically and then a bit on business architecture. The problem was that for each area except Business Architecture, my examples were very technology focused.

I will make time to review my course material to see how to restructure it to better communicate the complete breadth of Enterprise Architecture. Perhaps reviewing my notes from the Carnegie Mellon Certified Enterprise Architect program I completed in 2009 will help. I need to find more examples of artifacts that are more people and process oriented. In today’s fiscal climate, perhaps more focus on cost savings by focusing on managing complexity and its impact on organizations.

Microsoft’s “New Efficiency” Campaign for Windows 7

strategic planning 2 Responses »

Oct 292009

I attended a half day seminar offered to IT leaders in Vancouver today by Microsoft Canada. Essentially, this was the launch of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010 to the Vancouver market. There were about 100 people in attendance.

Here is my Twitter stream from the session today … http://twitter.com/#search?q=leodesousa msft

The day began with an engaging keynote by Jim Carroll – Futurist, Trends & Innovation Expert. Jim spoke laid out themes of :

Run the business
Grow the business
Transform the business

Next, Jim provided examples from his consulting engagements to highlight the themes. One of Jim’s quotes was “Success comes to those who evolve.” Another quote, “Many kids going to elementary school will have careers in fields that don’t exist today. Think about a “location intelligence” professional.” With the huge growth of spatially related data, there is a real need for people skilled in location intelligence.

Jim also talked about the “new economy” typified by:

A relentless focus on growth – changes in construction mgmt focused on green sustainable initiatives
Speed to change product lifecycles – auto makers who can retool production lines in 10 days vs 10 months
Ability to speed up business cycles - new video games maximize sales in the first 4-5 days

The rest of the morning was Microsoft folks building on Jim’s themes and relating them to the “New Efficiency” slogan. Microsoft’s proposal is that the 3 following things make up the “new efficiency”.

Run the business = create cost savings
Grow the business = increase productivity
Transform the business = ability to innovate

Microsoft also played on the old saying of “Do more with less” by pushing “With less, do more”. A bit too much marketing for me.

One last factoid that struck me was Microsoft’s investment in research. Microsoft spends $9.5 billion USD on R&D annually – that is more than most company’s value!

My big ask would be that Microsoft fully adopt open standards and focus on reducing IT complexity in the technologies they provide the market. Overall, a valuable morning with good information and a bonus that I got to catch up with my good friend @whitebill.

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