We mentioned in previous Colleague Implementation News issues our live dates and targets, but have had enough questions that it probably makes sense to cover that a bit more.

Testing

• HR and Student Teams: Now

We'll talk a bit more about the stages of the implementation in a future newsletter, but for now, understand that the most of our time is spent in the Testing stage.   In this stage we're busy testing the various combinations of setup codes and parameters and figuring out which combinations work best for CTC's many different types of students.

Once we decide on which codes and parameters we want, we move into the Parallel stage.

Parallel; the Start of Live

• HR System: Dec. '04 - Mar. '05
• Student System: Mar. '05 - Jun. '05 (for Summer 2)

During Parallel operation we start using the Colleague Live Account.   For HR, the team will continue to use the legacy payroll system but will also run those same payrolls in Colleague.   Your "real" paycheck will be printed out of the legacy, HP computer system, but that whole payroll process will be run "in parallel" in Colleague and the Colleague payrolls compared with legacy ones to ensure the Colleague setup is correct.

The Student teams will do the same for their modules. For Summer 2, 2005, we'll start using the Colleague Live account in parallel mode.   All of the registration processes will be run in the legacy, HP system, but we will also reregister students in Colleague.   The students won't be registering themselves in Colleague. We'll do that and compare the results of the Colleague registrations to the legacy, HP ones.

Live; Fully Live

• HR System: April '05
• Student System: July '05 (for Fall)

There comes a time when we stop using the legacy HP system.   At that point we only run the processes in Colleague.   By this point we are "fully live."   Yes, we were live during the parallel process, but we always had a system to double-check our results against.   When we hit the Live stage, Colleague is the only system we'll have running.

The legacy system won't immediately be shut off when we go live in Colleague.   We'll still need access to some of that old data that wasn't converted into Colleague, but more on this in a future newsletter.

Find out more about the CTC Colleague Implementation