Q&A: Modernizing EAE Applications with Pasco-Hernando State College

Pasco-Hernando State College (PHSC) is a four-year institution and one of the 28 members of the Florida College System. With five campuses located within a 1,200 square mile, two-county district, PHSC offers vocational certificates, Associate in Science, Associate in Arts, and two Baccalaureate programs to more than 15,000 students.

PHSC is committed to an “open door” policy, which extends educational opportunities to students of all ages and abilities, including all high school graduates and GED recipients. To that end, the college offers workforce programs that provide training for more than 75 high-demand careers in business, health, industry, technology, and public service. And its popular Associate in Arts degree allows graduates to seamlessly transfer to a four-year degree program within Florida’s 12 public state universities, as well as a number of Florida College System and private college programs.

We recently spoke with Janice Scott, Executive Director of Management Information Services at PHSC, about the institution’s history with EAE and the ways it’s continuing to offer opportunities to students from all walks of life by modernizing its EAE application with the ClearPath Forward™ ePortal for MCP.

Developing Agility: Please tell us a little about your EAE application. How many Ispecs and reports does it have? How many developers support it?

Janice Scott: The EAE application that was partially moved to ePortal is our student records system. It supports all academic records, student records, financial aid records, fee collection records, and more. There are over 500 Ispecs and over 2,000 reports.

Our IT team partners with Pensacola State College (PSC) in a consortium. PSC employs thirteen developers while PHSC has four. PHSC supports the local users and manages all reporting for the college. The ePortal project was exciting for us since our staff is typically not involved in online development. The beauty of the project was that we did not have to modify any logic behind the Ispecs.

DA: How long have you been using EAE on MCP?

JS: PHSC has been using EAE on MCP since 1993.

DA: What was the business need that pushed you to select ePortal to modernize your EAE solution?

JS: We wanted to bring our Web Portal for Students (WISE) into the mobile world. WISE had been usable in the mobile environment before, but it was not very user friendly.

WISE gives students a number of self-service capabilities: they can apply, register, pay fees, display unofficial transcripts, schedule courses, view grades, perform degree audits and graduation checks, apply for graduation, request transcripts, receive enrollment verification requests, and much more. We wanted to bring some of that into the mobile version of the portal.

DA: How have your developers adjusted to using EAE and ePortal Developer?

JS: The adjustment from EAE to ePortal development was actually pretty easy once we received training in Microsoft® Visual Studio® and were able to play with all the different functionality its ePortal plugin gave us.

DA: Are there any features in ePortal you or the developers find particularly useful?

JS: The ePortal Orchestration feature was very helpful. We were able to break down an Ispec into different mobile pages in order to make the experience for the student easier. Some of our Ispecs asked for a great deal of information, so breaking these into pieces made them more manageable.

DA: Do you use other EAE Component Enabler features with EAE on MCP?

JS: Yes, we are using web services and active server pages for our standard interfaces. We are using IEG’s Interface Builder to build active server pages for the standard browser interfaces on the college’s human resources, financial records, and student records systems.

DA: Looking back, what was the biggest challenge you encountered while using ePortal in combination with EAE?

JS: Getting familiar with the Visual Studio environment was a challenge for us. But once we became familiar with it, we were able to customize the order fields in the Ispecs to be friendly for the end user, as well as include Java scripting and Orchestration in the solution.

DA: Are there any recommendations you’d give to organizations that are just now beginning the move to ePortal?

JS: Don’t be afraid of the process. It works very well and within a two-month period we were able to roll out a functioning mobile application to our students.

DA: How have students reacted to your EAE ePortal solution?

JS: They love it. It is easier to use than our web environment.

Many thanks to Janice for taking the time to share her thoughts with us. Please visit PHSC’s web site to learn more about the college’s locations, programs, and mission. And if you’d like additional information about the ways ClearPath Forward ePortal can help you modernize your EAE and Agile Business Suite (AB Suite®) applications, don’t hesitate to email us.