ctcLink Goes Live for Clover Park, Columbia Basin, and Walla Walla
The second set of Deployment Group 6 colleges (DG6-B)—Clover Park Technical College, Columbia Basin College, and Walla Walla Community College—went live on ctcLink PeopleSoft this morning, Monday, April 25, 2022.
Welcome to the ctcLink family, now 32 members strong with 31 colleges and the SBCTC agency.
A recurring theme heard during last night’s go-live meeting was how uneventful and anticlimactic the four-hour Sunday validation session was.
Thanks to their outstanding local organization, Legacy data cleanup, and advance preparation, the Clover Park, Columbia Basin, and Walla Walla teams set a record, achieving a near perfect enrollment conversion. In Student Financials, the Legacy-to-Peoplesoft balance match was 100% for all three colleges.
Our stress-relieving Tyrannosaurus Rex punching bag didn’t get hit even once today! ~ Lisa Wolcott, CPTC ctcLink executive sponsor
Navigating an ever-shifting landscape
With the unsettled landscape of the current remote/hybrid operations and loss of personnel, the DG6-B deployment group colleges, SBCTC Support, and ctcLink Project implementation teams were presented one daunting task after another these last many months, all while running a complex go-live process.
What’s next?
College employees will log on to their new ctcLink PeopleSoft accounts for the first time, checking their data and basic settings in Human Capital Management (HCM), Finance (FIN) and Campus Solutions (CS).
Clover Park, Columbia Basin, and Walla Walla subject matter experts (SMEs) will take advantage of a two-week, Post Go-Live Support Activities series dedicated to immediate response needs, troubleshooting, and reporting issues. These sessions provide focused support to walk college SMEs through critical business transactions such as processing payroll, check disbursement, financial aid awards, and refunds, to name just a few.
After college staff have had some time to acclimate to the system and conduct any post-conversion clean-up, students will begin to see their new ctcLink interface beginning varying dates per college: Clover Park (May 3), Columbia Basin (May 10), and Walla Walla (May 4).
Lead-Up to Go-Live
Conversion process
Beginning Thursday night, April 21, through Sunday, April 24, teams worked around the clock for three days straight leading the multiple layers of conversion and validation. Legacy Customer Support, ctcLink Project technical and functional teams — SBCTC Application Services, Data & Infrastructure Services, the ctcLink Support organization, and Burgundy Managed Services (Amazon Web Services service provider) — all worked together to convert the colleges’ data from the HP Legacy system to ctcLink PeopleSoft.
SBCTC Application Services, led by Sandy Main, successfully brought everyone back online for business by 9 p.m. on Sunday night.
We had ‘girded our loins for battle’ and were prepared for a tough day. But it was very smooth with few issues. ~ Jeff Angus, CBC PM
Checking and re-checking before Go-Live
On Sunday, college SMEs—supported by the ctcLink Project team, as well as Dani Bundy and the ctcLink Customer Support team—conducted a go-live check to validate the system.
SMEs and pillar leads representing student services, financial aid, payroll, accounting, purchasing, human resources, and grants management (to name just a few) spent several hours Sunday afternoon validating the conversion and walking through the system to check for issues, not to mention the countless hours they have spent validating and testing the data in several cycles over the last many months.
DG6-B project managers — Brian Lee, Clover Park; Jeff Angus, Columbia Basin; and Dr. Lisa Chamberlin, Walla Walla — helped guide their SMEs through the day’s validation activities. As issues were found during the validation period, they were either addressed by the ctcLink/SBCTC teams or noted as issues to be resolved in the days ahead.
The "Go or No-Go" decision process
During the Go/No-Go briefing on Sunday evening, college and SBCTC PMs and leadership were presented a review of the full conversion weekend, including outcomes and issues.
Data validation findings—including any issues encountered, how they were corrected and those still outstanding—were presented by Tara Keen, ctcLink Project Director and Solutions Architect; PeopleSoft pillar PMs and leads (Rebecca Clayton, Campus Solutions; Sanjiv Bhagat, Human Capital Management; Christyanna Dawson, Finance; Charles Velasquez, Student Financials; and Stephanie Casino, Financial Aid), with technical conversion feedback from Bhuvana Samraj, technical lead. A few minor issues were noted, with plans in place to correct any findings over the next few days.
The highest praise I can give is that today was uneventful. Anticlimactic, even. ~ Dr. Chad Hickox, WWCC president
It’s a Go!
Jan Yoshiwara, SBCTC Executive Director, acknowledged the colleges for their excellent work and for getting to this day successfully. “I am delighted to congratulate all of you,” she said. “The amount of hard work over many, many months has really paid off and it shows today with all the smiles. We are really excited for you to flip the switch to ctcLink.”
Grant Rodeheaver, SBCTC Deputy Executive Director for Information Technology and ctcLink Project Sponsor, expressed gratitude to ctcLink Project technical and functional implementation team, SBCTC agency teams (Customer Support, Legacy, Application Services, Data Services and Infrastructure Services) for providing exceptional support and coordination to keep the project moving forward and guide college SMEs to the finish line. “Kudos to the college teams and SMEs that worked so hard to get here,” Rodeheaver said. “The partnership with the colleges has been outstanding and every deployment has gotten better and better.”
Christy Campbell, SBCTC Chief Technology Officer-ctcLink Program, thanked the ctcLink team, Clover Park, Columbia Basin, and Walla Walla colleges for the months and months (and years) of hard work and partnership.
“Congratulations to DG6-B colleges! We are very excited for all of you. It’s been a long, many months for everyone and a very long weekend for the Project team,” Campbell said. “The extremely minimal go-live findings and issues translate to ‘clean data from Legacy,’ all thanks to the colleges’ outstanding work.”
Campbell acknowledged the extraordinary leadership of the DG6-B project managers (Brian Lee, Clover Park; Jeff Angus, Columbia Basin; Dr. Lisa Chamberlin, Walla Walla) and the hard work and resiliency of their ctcLink teams.
The ongoing leadership and support of executive sponsors and campus leaders—Lisa Wolcott, Clover Park Executive Director of Budget & Finance and ctcLink executive sponsor; Dr. Joyce Loveday, Clover Park Technical College president; Dr. Rebekah Woods, Columbia Basin president and ctcLink executive sponsor; and Dr. Chad Hickox, Walla Walla Community College president and ctcLink executive sponsor—played a vital leadership role supporting their college PMs and acting as ctcLink Project champions.
Tara Keen, ctcLink Project Director and Solutions Architect, praised DG6-B colleges for the quality of their class builds (i.e. define elements for class sections including fees, meeting patterns, capacity, prerequisites, textbooks, and more) which led to a successful go-live conversion. “It was an excellent conversion execution overall and a nearly flawless go-live term conversion,” Keen said. “Today’s very quiet conversion validation activities demonstrate the quality of work done by the colleges and this team.”
College Roll Call to Go-Live
Following the review and input from SBCTC/ctcLink and college leadership, the official “Go” status was determined for DG6-B.
Clover Park Technical College
Brian Lee, CPTC ctcLink Project Manager, said he was pleased with the validation results and is very proud of Clover Park’s SMEs for all their hard work. “Our data quality was high, most issues were ‘known issues,’ and we have a pathway to success. Overall, the SMEs felt confident,” he said. “So it’s with great pleasure I can say that I, our pillar leads, SMEs, and leadership are all in agreement that we are ready!”
Lisa Wolcott, Clover Park Executive Director of Budget and Finance and ctcLink executive sponsor, noted it was quiet during the validation. “Our stress-relieving Tyrannosaurus Rex punching bag didn’t get hit even once today,” she laughed. “Staff are excited and ready to get in the system. It’s a go!”
Dr. Joyce Loveday, Clover Park president, said it was a great day, noting how quickly the Project team responded for any questions or issues. “Clover Park staff felt very good about today’s activities and working in ctcLink moving forward. We are feeling confident,” Loveday said. “I support Brian and Lisa’s recommendation to go live.”
Columbia Basin College
Jeff Angus, CBC ctcLink Project Manager, said the CBC college team was diligent and did beautiful work. He said he lucked into a very talented team that has been working hard on ctcLink since CBC was a Wave 1 college (originally set for an August 2015 go-live, before the Project was paused, re-planned and relaunched).
“We had ‘girded our loins for battle’ and were prepared for a tough day,” Angus said. “But it was very smooth with few issues! A quick staff poll found the SMEs’ experience was better than expected.”
In fact, there were so few issues, CBC’s local post-validation meeting only lasted 30 of the 60 minutes planned. CBC had only two surprises and they were both only individual security settings which were quickly righted.
“We see ourselves going live tomorrow and are thrilled,” Angus said.
Dr. Rebekah Woods, Columbia Basin College president and ctcLink Executive Sponsor, said today was a great success and acknowledged their team for reaching this huge milestone.
“Today was a great success, due to amazing hard work of our team and all who put in countless hours,” Woods said, expressing thanks to the SBCTC team for its support along the way. “We look forward to pulling trigger for going live tomorrow. It’s been a long time coming!”
Walla Walla Community College
Dr. Lisa Chamberlin, WWCC ctcLink Project Manager, said they had very few issues and the SMEs are confident in how to fix those issues. She appreciated the mock conversion and dry run which got them ready for Sunday.
“Our two LSAs were battle-ready for today, but there was no battle!” Chamberlin said. “The hard-working Walla Walla team feels confident and we are ready to go!”
“The highest praise I can give is that today was uneventful. Anticlimactic, even,” Dr. Chad Hickox, Walla Walla Community College president and ctcLink executive sponsor, said. “It went extraordinarily well. Thanks to our incredible Walla Walla team and everyone at SBCTC that made it happen.”
Who’s Next?
Bates, South Puget, and Yakima Valley (DG6-C) step to the plate
The final ctcLink deployment group is only two weeks away.
DG6-C colleges — Bates Technical College, South Puget Sound Community College, and Yakima Valley College — will be live in ctcLink PeopleSoft, closing out the multi-year ctcLink implementation project on Monday, May 9, 2022.
ctcLink Offline During DG6-C Conversion Activities
This notice is for all users of ctcLink, DG2 to DG6. Remember, you can always check for upcoming maintenance and downtime dates of Planned Service Outages at the ctcLink Support page.
Bio-Demo Conversion
- DG6-C: Thursday, May 5, 2022, 9 p.m. – Friday, May 6, 2022, 4 a.m.
While SBCTC performs Bio-Demo Conversion activities in support of DG6:
- The Campus Solutions and Human Capital Management pillars will be unavailable.
- Admissions (OAAP) and HighPoint Mobile HCX pages will be unavailable.
- Integration between CampusCE and ctcLink will be unavailable.
- The Portal and Finance pillars will not be impacted.
- Canvas will not be impacted.
Weekend DG6-C Conversion
- DG6-C: Friday, May 6, 2022, 3 p.m. – Monday, May 9, 2022, 7 a.m.
While SBCTC performs Weekend Conversion activities in support of DG6:
- The entire ctcLink environment will remain offline during the Weekend Conversion dates.
- A Portal message will be added the week of the maintenance period.
- Users who attempt to log in will be redirected to an outage notification page.
- Admissions (OAAP) and HighPoint Mobile HCX pages will be unavailable.
- Integration between CampusCE and ctcLink will be unavailable.
- Canvas will not be impacted.
