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The UF Office of Information Technology Newsletter | |
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myUFL Portal Growing in Usefulness and Usage | |
On March 31, 2003, the myUFL portal was launched with a handful of campus news pagelets, the Weather Channel, DDD Memos and UF News. Today, this new gateway to UF systems and information offers more than 50 news sources--including campus news from the university and most colleges or divisions, the local news (Gainesville Sun), state news (Miami Herald), national news (New York Times), International News (BBC), higher education news (Chronicle of Higher Education) and technology news (Wired.com) as well as items of local interest including local movie show times.
Early on--to provide an early introduction to the concept of single sign-on and one-stop shopping--UF Bridges integrated the portal with existing UF administrative systems such as the Admin Menu, ISIS, SASS advising system, GatorLink Account Services, and the UF Directory. Since then, we have launched a series of new systems including Enterprise Reporting (August 2003) and the University Athletic Association's Gator Tickets Application (October 2003). In April 2004, a new budget tool was introduced for college administrators as well as a crosswalk application to help the campus transition from the old accounting structure to the new PeopleSoft ChartFields. Since May 5, 2004, myUFL users can create and reset their GatorLink passwords in the portal. Later in May department security administrators will manage access to myUFL applications using a new security application in myUFL. On June 18, most employees will enter their time and/or leave directly in the portal.
myUFL is increasingly popular with UF's faculty, staff and students. On launch day last year, with little promotion or fanfare, we had just 300 users log on to myUFL. In March 2004, the launch of the Gator Tickets application for students, helped to push the daily average to 2,300 users. Counts for the month of March 2004 show over 67,000 different users and a total of 150,000 sessions. The highest single day total has been 15,788 different users on March 15, 2004, the opening day of the Student Football Season Ticket Lottery. April saw a return to normal usage numbers with 49,500 different users and a total of 106,000 sessions over the course of the month.
While some difficulties were experienced with the new password management system in May, Bridges has made several improvements and portal service has returned to normal. These early launches of major myUFL systems such as the portal, Enterprise Reporting and password management, help us to identify and correct problems before the financial, human resources and payroll systems are implemented beginning June 18.