PeopleSoft Integration with Blackboard

Posted by David Carter-Tod on Friday, July 08, 2005

One of the elements that we have discussed and planned for with Blackboard 6 was the automatic creation of classes based on PeopleSoft data and the resulting automatic enrollment management that would come with that. As we have indicated in our meetings, we have been working towards implementing that for Fall.

However, we are at the point where we need to reconsider that deadlinefor a number of reasons.

Our top priority is system stability and performance. Dedicating resources to the integration work will consume time that we need to spend on these elements.

After reviewing the business processes at all the colleges, we understand that there is a wide variety in practice at the colleges. We need more time to work together as a group to come to a consensus as to how best implement the integration. We have focused on introducing the new functionality, most notably the roles in the Community System. The roles in the Community System have formed the groundwork for our implementation of the Content System which is targeted to be released to all instructors in November. With theContent System in place, it will change how faculty manage and store their content for their courses. One consideration has been that many instructors merge and collapse course sections in order to not edit the same piece of content in multiple locations. We need the additional time this fall to study how faculty usage may change withthe implementation of the Content System and use that data to inform how we do our integrations.

We will convene an integration workgroup this fall to begin working onthe integration. We plan to have the group use the data gathered fromthe Blackboard course creation and enrollment business process interviews to draft a recommendation on how best to proceed with theintegration of Peoplesoft user and course data with Blackboard.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Matt, Sue Ann and David