Colleague Slate Integration

Project Status

Estimated project completion: see Projects

Executive Summary

This project aims to select a vendor for professional services to integrate Ellucian Colleague and Technolutions Slate enabling the Admissions and Recruiting Department to easily track applications, document submissions, and interact with prospective students. Prospective students and applicants will receive an improved and efficient experience while fulfilling the requirements for admission. A project team has been formed to develop requirements and select a vendor. Information Systems and Services (ISS) will work through procurement and implementation under the advisement of the project team.

This project is a collaboration between three departments: Admissions and Recruitment; Enrollment Systems; and, Information Systems and Services. This project is expected to be completed in August 2024.

Business Need & Background

McLennan Community College (MCC) interacts with thousands of people per year through its admission process. In 2019, MCC selected Technolutions Slate as the main Admission and Recruiting Customer Relationship Manager application and began internal training and internal integration work. To date, capacity constraints and limited technical expertise have blocked staff’s ability to complete this integration.

The current makeshift integration has caused additional work, and decreased efficiency for staff. At the same time, Slate has proven to provide a better experience for prospective students. Data is only shared from Slate to Colleague and no integration exists with the document management system automatically. Staff are forced to perform many manual tasks and, sometimes, double work in separate systems.

A complete and thorough integration is needed to provide automatic and fast data sharing between applications to streamline the enrollment process and provide a better end user experience Unfortunately, technical expertise and capacity constraints prevent the ability to perform this work in-house. A professional services vendor is needed.

Project Description & Scope

This project focuses on developing requirements for Admissions and Recruiting that address issues with the current integration and implement new features that will improve efficiency and aid prospective students in the admissions and enrollment process.

The project team will create and approve requirements. Those requirements will be sent to vendors with documented experience performing integrations between Colleague and Slate. The project team will participate in solution analysis. The project team will approve timelines, review/approve all communications, and help ensure the success of this project. After a vendor is selected, the project team will procure and work with the vendor to implement the solution.

Before deployment or updates to the integration, employees will be trained on the maintenance of the integration and documentation will be provided. The current integration will be removed and replaced or reconfigured with the new integration. Each requirement will be tested to ensure completion.

This integration is not focused on any other departments. However, the integration work done here will aid in adoption of other departments sometime in the future. Future department work may require additional training or work and are out of scope for this project. If the scope or additional requirements are added, the budget or timeline could be vastly impacted.

Admissions and Recruiting will continue to own the Slate application. ISS will continue to own the Colleague application. The two teams will work together when integration updates are needed. Updates outside of outages will be managed through the change management process.

The Executive Sponsors will review and approve this scope and any major changes to budget or requirements.

Project Schedule (Original)

Project Management & Governance (Original)

Documentation

• Colleague Slate Integration Project Charter

Last updated: 7/29/2024