ConnectCarolina: Enterprise Resource Planning

The first go-live of ConnectCarolina, the University's new integrated administrative system, went smoothly by all accounts. The launch was on time at 8:00 a.m. on Monday, July 20, 2009. A triage team continues to monitor the system, but any problems have been minor and easily corrected.

Users with questions or issues should contact the Help Desk. If you have questions about training, contact the This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

This first phase of ConnectCarolina centralizes management of person information (students, faculty and employees) in one system. We successfully converted more than 800,000 people records from legacy systems to the new ConnectCarolina environment. This provides the foundation for the subsequent deployments of ConnectCarolina functionality.

The University’s new enterprise portal (portal is a web-based front-end access to PeopleSoft and other enterprise applications) and online campus directory were also launched. The portal is the place for current students, faculty and staff to go to use the directory. Other content, including links to campus resources, are also available through the portal. Over time, more transactional functionality will be added to portal and it will replace Student Central and Faculty/Staff Central. The portal will not replace www.unc.edu as the primary information source for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The ConnectCarolina project implementation continues with the launch of a new online application for undergraduate admissions in August 2009; the roll-out of components for the new student systems will continue through October 2010. New HR, payroll and finance systems based on PeopleSoft will be developed and implemented over the next few years, giving the University a fully integrated administrative system.

Employees who will be using PeopleSoft through ConnectCarolina are required to complete Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) training through an online module created by the ConnectCarolina training team in conjunction with the Office of the University Registrar (OUR). This course reflects the University’s commitment to providing secure access to and maintaining the confidentiality of student records in the PeopleSoft environment.

The FERPA online training module is available through Blackboard. However, the University's Blackboard learning management system is undergoing an upgrade this summer. On July 28, 2009 begining at 6:00 a.m., the current Blackboard site (http://blackboard.unc.edu) will be unavailable for 12 hours. That means Blackboard content, including FERPA training, will be unavailable for those 12 hours. On July 28, 2009 at 6:00 p.m., an alternate Blackboard site (http://bbsummer.unc.edu) will become available.

All those who need to comply with FERPA training are urged to do so before the scheduled shutdown at 6:00 a.m. July 28, 2009. However, after 6:00 p.m. on July 28, FERPA training will be available on the alternate Blackboard site (http://bbsummer.unc.edu) .

The access code is still RAM@UNC.

FERPA training will be available on the alternate site until the new version of Blackboard is launched.

For questions about FERPA training or any other training issues, contract the This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

ConnectCarolina is now live, right on schedule. The new portal and online campus directory launched this morning at 8:00 a.m. Click here to view the portal; click on the directory tab to access the directory.

A couple of notes about directory updates:

Please be aware that changes to privacy settings may take up to five (5) minutes to be reflected in the directory. Note: privacy settings apply to address and phone number information; full person privacy (invoking FERPA) must now be set through the registrar for students or through University counsel for employees.

Additionally, certain changes (see list below) made through the Update Personal Information screen will not be reflected in the directory until Thursday night. This is because we are still running the old directory schema behind-the-scenes and it does not have mapping for all of the PeopleSoft values. This means that if you change or add the following fields, they will not be reflected in the directory until we switch to the new directory schema Thursday night:

• Preferred name
• Business address 2
• Mailing address
• Business alt phone number
• Local phone
• Cellular 2

The many months and hours of hard work will meet with success tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m.! The ConnectCarolina system will experience its first go-live with the launch of the portal and the new online campus directory.

Production testing conducted throughout last week and this weekend yielded only a few minor issues and we hope the first week of production will go just as smoothly.