Datatel

Universities Use Portal to Deliver Information That Is Personalized to Individuals’ Roles

Colleges and universities seek software to help them improve education in many ways. Datatel, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, has developed a portal based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 that uses uniquely defined workflows to serve individuals in ways that are customized to their roles. Institutions use Datatel Portal to personalize collaboration in a single, integrated solution with a low cost of ownership.

Business Needs

Educational institutions all seek to help their students succeed, but they achieve that aim using different methods. Thus, as colleges and universities look at portals and other software that can aid education, they do so with disparate goals that arise out of their particular needs.

With Office SharePoint Server 2007, we can modify workflows and security to help people communicate in a much more personalized way.  Tom Reynolds Chief Technology Officer Datatel

“Customers come to us to solve an array of problems,” says Liz Murphy, Chief Client Officer at Datatel, a provider of technology solutions and insight to higher education institutions. “They may want to manage a classroom environment, augment teaching and learning, improve communication with students and faculty, aid in collaboration, streamline workflows, or enhance the role of teams, clubs, and other non-classroom activities. Often it’s a combination of problems and opportunities like these.”

Yet few software providers are well suited to meet these diverse needs. “Many providers offer multiple applications or multiple platforms,” says Murphy. “Some of their solutions were developed for business and are now being transferred to education.” For example, traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions operate in the context of performing specific functions. “Yet education is person-focused rather than transaction-focused,” she says.

Educational institutions seek adaptable, personalized portal solutions to address their specific needs by putting their people at the center of the technology.

Solution

Datatel, based in Fairfax, Virginia, is a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner with 31 years of experience working exclusively for colleges and universities. It has developed a portal solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 that serves as a personalized one-stop service center for faculty, staff, students, and other educational stakeholders. Datatel is the 2009 Microsoft Public Sector Education Partner of the Year, and Datatel Portal was a finalist for the 2008 Microsoft Partner of the Year Award in Information Worker Solutions: Portals and Collaboration.

Datatel Portal includes 40 predefined personas, which are personalized user experiences created specifically for roles that individuals play at an institution. (Some people play more than one role—for example, as both faculty member and graduate student.) Each persona has uniquely defined workflows, solutions, and required information.

“Datatel Portal is built on the rich innate capabilities of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to aid collaboration,” says Tom Reynolds, Chief Technology Officer at Datatel. “With Office SharePoint Server 2007, we can modify workflows and security to help people communicate in a much more personalized way.” For example, if a first-year student arrives on campus with the intention of majoring in biology, joining the debate club, and playing on the tennis team, she selects those personas and gets a portal experience personalized to those interests. The portal can include collaboration sites for faculty and student organizations. Faculty can also use the portal as a learning tool for course syllabi, class events and discussions, wikis, assignments, Web links, meeting minutes, and other functions.

Datatel has also enhanced the user experience with the Microsoft Silverlight™ browser plug-in. “We’ve used Silverlight to transform traditional ERP look, feel, and usability,” Reynolds says. Rather than focusing on a transaction such as registering a student or paying a bill, Datatel Portal focuses on people and relationships.

Most Datatel customers migrate to Datatel Portal gradually. “It depends on their strategic objectives,” says Murphy. “The decision about how to implement a portal isn’t about the technology; it’s about the underlying framework that the institution builds for its content. Building that framework often takes two-thirds of the institution’s time commitment—we can then implement the technology to meet those goals fairly quickly.”

Benefits

Colleges and universities use Datatel Portal to implement an integrated yet personalized collaborative solution with low cost of ownership. Customers express an overall satisfaction rate with the solution of more than 95 percent.

• Personalized information. “Traditional students, in the Facebook generation, are used to receiving only the information that interests them,” Murphy says. “Institutions must be able to deliver personalized information through a solution such as Datatel Portal in order to be considered relevant to prospective students.” Because individuals have different personalities and learning styles, each student wants to receive different information in different ways—but all can use Datatel Portal to engage with university resources in their own style.
• A single, integrated solution. Datatel Portal is an integrated solution that meets all of a university’s needs—not only for teaching and learning but also for administrative tasks such as fundraising and human resources. Where competitors sometimes aggregate multiple applications under an umbrella, Datatel takes advantage of its experience working exclusively with universities on Microsoft products to develop each component of its portal. “With a single mission and platform, we can focus our entire company on each customer’s vision,” says Reynolds.
• Low cost of ownership. Because Datatel Portal is built on Office SharePoint Server 2007, it takes advantage of campus license agreements that many universities already have with Microsoft, reducing overall costs. Datatel Portal also compares favorably with homegrown solutions, because it is a proven product. “Some of our customers found that they took their eyes off their mission when they tried to build their own portal,” says Murphy. “By partnering with Datatel instead, they gain a rich feature set as well as the flexibility to tailor the solution to their institution.”

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Document published August 2009