Yesterday Computing and Media Services launched MySlice to replace the online registration program S.C.O.R.E., much to the appreciation of students like Kelvin Ang, a freshman majoring in newspaper journalism.

‘I spent two hours changing my schedule on S.C.O.R.E., and I didn’t really get the classes I wanted to take,’ Ang said. ‘MySlice is definitely faster than S.C.O.R.E. It’s … awesome.’

However, the launch was not an entirely smooth one, said Deborah Nosky, manager of IT communications and professional development.

‘The first day went really well, although for the first hour and a half it was pretty bumpy, so we took it down for a while,’ Nosky said.

Fixing MySlice, Nosky said, involved deleting a corrupted file. The site has been up and working since CMS relaunched it at 11 a.m. yesterday.

In addition to scheduling, students can use MySlice to see what classes they are enrolled in, add and change their addresses, phone numbers and emergency contacts, view their class schedule and check their grades.

Under Employee Services, university employees can view their paychecks with the Web service. Faculty members can check their class lists.

CMS also took the initiative to post links to the most popular university Web sites, including OrangeMail, although students will still have to log in to access their e-mail.

Nosky is quick to point out that MySlice is still a work in progress. CMS intends to make more content available with the Web service in the future, including, Nosky said, e-mail, Blackboard and MySU, which gives students access to the school directory and bursar information.

‘Right now so many things that you have to do are located in numerous places across the Internet,’ Nosky said. ‘So for things where you have to do business-type activities or enter data where we need to know that it’s just you, we’re going to try to bring those things under this MySlice umbrella.’

In response to concerns that MySlice will not work because of reported failures at other universities on the part of developer PeopleSoft, Nosky said that CMS has used S.C.O.R.E. and PeopleSoft for six years and has modified PeopleSoft programs in the past to ensure functionality.

‘PeopleSoft wrote MySlice, we just customized it so it looked very much like Syracuse University,’ Nosky said. ‘We have done numerous customizations and fixes at Syracuse to get the software to work.’

Several of the universities with problems, such as Cleveland State, which took PeopleSoft to court in January, had a brand-new PeopleSoft put in, while CMS’s was just an upgrade, Nosky said. CMS waited until a significant number of schools and colleges upgraded successfully to upgrade their online registration program from S.C.O.R.E. to MySlice.

‘You don’t want to find yourself upgrading to something that doesn’t work,’ Nosky said.

CMS has been working on MySlice for more than two years now, with more than 140 people from across the campus.

So far, MySlice is receiving good reviews from some students.

‘I like it,’ said Eli Mekhlin, a sophomore majoring in chemistry. ‘I think it’s easy to navigate and the Web site’s very aesthetically pleasing, and as long as it works when it’s time to register, I think it’s fine.’

Published on September 29, 2004 at 12:00 pm