Office for Information Technology

Administrative Information Systems

Admin Systems Team - click for full size picture

The Administrative Information Systems (AIS) team supports the adminisitrative operations of the College.

Among other tasks, the AIS staff

  • helps the Admission Office keep track of prospects, applications, test scores, ratings, and acceptance letters
  • helps the Financial Aid office analyze student need and write award letters
  • supports the programs that register students, schedule and balance class sections, produce student schedules and class lists, and keep track of grades
  • works with the Controller’s Office to produce student bills
  • maintains and supports the College’s financials system which tracks all business transactions and generates financial reports
  • maintains and supports the human resources (HRMS) system which is used to recruit, hire, and compensate employees

The Administrative Information Systems team supports the college’s PeopleSoft systems and more than 50 other systems on campus. We work with staff members in most administrative offices on campus to provide reporting capabilities using a variety of SQL-based tools, including PeopleSoft Query, Crystal Reports, Microsoft Access and SQR. The AIS team also provides guidance for offices working to put administrative information on the Web using tools such as PHP and MySQL.

PeopleSoft Applications

The college uses PeopleSoft’s HRMS, Financials (FS), and Campus Solutions (CS) applications.  HRMS and FS have been in use since 2001. The first module of the CS application to go live was Admissions in early 2003. We now use the following modules: Admissions, Financial Aid, Student Financials, and Student Records. The AIS staff has customized the PeopleSoft applications to support operations at Williams.  All customizations are carefully reviewed and designed to facilitate ongoing maintenance.

Human Resources / Payroll

We went live with the Human Resources component of PeopleSoft in January, 2001.  Modules in use include Core HR, Recruiting, Payroll, Benefits, and Time & Labor.  Human Resources and AIS staff continue to maintain and enhance the system, including the addition of self-service functionality for employed students, faculty and staff; developing new reports to satisfay internal and external requirement.  The most recent enhancements include the implementation of the Time & Labor module and a Williams-developed student employment and application module for use by students, student supervisors, and HR staff.

Financials

Williams began processing financial transactions with PeopleSoft Financials (FS) in July of 2001. The college currently uses the General Ledger and Accounts Payable modules.

One of the first and most difficult tasks facing the FS implementation team was the creation of a new chart of accounts compatible with PeopleSoft’s design parameters. The chart of accounts is in essence a very large collection of alphanumeric codes used to describe various aspects of financial transactions. Deciding how to organize the codes to work best with PeopleSoft and yet reflect the internal organization of the college was a substantial task.

Reporting of financial information to those who need it is a large part of any financial management system and the PeopleSoft FS team has worked hard to make it as easy as possible for users to get the reports they need.  The team has developed a web-based view into a large set of reports created on a nightly basis. Security has been designed so that each authorized user can see the appropriate reports. The PeopleSoft environment also offers a rich source of ad hoc reporting capability to those who need it.

Campus Solutions

The third and largest phase of the PeopleSoft project was the implementation of Campus Solutions (CS). The CS application includes functionality for admission, financial aid, course catalog and student record maintenance, student financials  and other student-oriented functions. Full implementation was completed in the first quarter of 2005.

Work done on the Campus Solutions project included

  • modeling the Williams College academic structure in SA
  • prototyping the functionality of every module
  • making detailed implementation decisions,
  • populating hundreds of setup tables
  • converting admission data such as geographic regions, secondary school data and test score data loads.
  • converting the Williams course catalog
  • converting student record data, including biographic data, demographic data, and academic history
  • testing system functions and verifying successful conversion
  • rolling out web-based self-service for faculty and students

We look forward to continuing to use technology to improve the administrative aspects of the college. We’re excited about providing students and faculty better access to their own information. We believe that these new systems have improved our capabilities to meet the primary business objective of the College: To recruit, matriculate, educate, and graduate students.