Kuali Foundation Newsletter September 2008

  1. From the Executive Director
  2. Kuali Coeus Release 1.0 Delivered July 2008
  3. Kuali Days VII – Make your plans now!
  4. New Investing Partner in Kuali
  5. New Release Date for Kuali Financial System 3.0 (KFS)
  6. Kuali Welcomes a new Commercial Affiliate
  7. Kuali Events at EDUCAUSE 2008 in Orlando in October
  8. New Web Site for www.kuali.org Coming Soon!
  9. Evolution of Kuali Rice Project
  10. Feature Article on Commercial Affiliate: rSmart
  11. Kuali Job Openings: Quality Assurance Director and Member Liaison
  12. Kuali Boot Camp to be held at UC Davis in October 2008
  13. Welcome Two New Kuali Foundation Members
  14. Upcoming Events
  15. Unsubscribe from this Newsletter


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1. From the Executive Director

Greetings to the Kuali Community:

This is our second quarterly newsletter for the Kuali community.  I have had the opportunity to update you on a regular basis about events and activities that have been occurring since our June issue, but this is a more formal opportunity to communicate with you about progress made over the past quarter and about other important issues for Kuali and the projects.  As we have said before, the summer is not a down time for the Kuali Teams!  Much has happened and I’m pleased to be able to keep you updated. 

I have had some feedback regarding the distribution of this newsletter, and I will continue to find ways to make this easier to distribute and use.  Your contributions are also welcome, so please feel free to send me articles and information for future communications.

If you are interested in keeping up to date on what’s happening on a regular basis, visit www.kuali.org, and also see my Kuali Executive Director blog at http://kualied.blogspot.com/

Best regards,

Jennifer Foutty
Executive Director, Kuali Foundation
jfoutty@kuali.org
812-345-3948
www.kuali.org

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2.  Kuali Coeus Release 1.0 Delivered July 2008

The first release of Kuali Coeus 1.0 for Research Administration was delivered on schedule in July 2008.  This module includes proposal and budget development along with the ability to submit proposals to grants.gov.  The Kuali Coeus project has built on the model used successfully by the Kuali Financial System where the system is based on a proven existing design.  In this case, Kuali Coeus is based on an update of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s proven Coeus system, one of the first cradle-to-grave award management systems in the nation.  The partners developing this system are:  Colorado State University, Cornell University and the Weill College of Medicine, Indiana University, MIT, Michigan State University, University of California Davis, University of Arizona, and the Coeus Consortium. 

Future modules for Kuali Coeus for Research Administration include Awards, IRB, and Conflict of Interest.  See the web site for further details about all the modules and the current timeline. There is still time for new investing partners to join in the development of this project!

 

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3. Kuali Days VII – Make your plans now!

Planning for Kuali Days is in full force!  We’re looking forward to a great fall getaway in Newport Beach California, and it is just over 2 months away.

Registration is open, so please go to http://www.kuali.org/events/KDVII/index.shtml to register and also to get information about travel arrangements.

The sessions and tracks are also now in place.  You may access the conference schedule at the web site.  Please note that we have tracks for:  Kuali Financial System, Kuali Coeus for Research Administration, Kuali Student, Kuali Technical, and Kuali Commercial Affiliates.  The content is quite rich and varied.  Because of excellent feedback about our pre-conference session at previous Kuali Days events, we have added a pre-conference workshop focusing on the technical side of the Kuali Financial System.

Our keynote speaker will be Diana Oblinger, the President and CEO of EDUCAUSE.    Diana is internationally known for her expertise in information technology and higher education, and has authored and edited numerous books and articles.  She is a popular keynote speaker, and we are pleased that she will join us at Kuali Days in November.  Diana served as VP for information resources and CIO for the 16-campus University of North Carolina system, and was a faculty member at Michigan State University and a faculty member and academic administrator at the University of Missouri-Columbia.  She has been the recipient of both outstanding teaching and research awards. 

The Newport Beach location should be an exciting venue.  We have some terrific early evening events planned, but we also have left plenty of time later in the evenings to explore the area and its shops, restaurants, and nightlife.  There are many activities within walking distance of our hotel.

If you haven’t registered yet for Kuali Days VII, please do so.  The registration and hotel are starting to fill up.

See you in Southern California in November!


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4.  New Investing Partner in Kuali

The University of California-San Diego has joined the Kuali Foundation as an investing partner in the Kuali Rice Project. The Kuali Foundation is a non-profit organization that coordinates the efforts of colleges and universities to sustain and evolve a comprehensive suite of administrative software that meets the needs of all Carnegie Class institutions.

"The importance of a common technology framework for higher education and, particularly, for the University of California campuses was critical to our decision to invest in Kuali Rice. This will enable us to develop new UC-wide and campus applications using the same framework, as well as position us for using Kuali Application software if and when we decide to do so," said Elazar Harel, assistant vice chancellor for Administrative Computing & Telecommunications at UC San Diego. "UCSD has developed a sophisticated state-of-the-art framework over the past few years and we are happy to contribute our knowledge and code to the Kuali Rice initiative."

"We are excited to become a member of the Kuali Rice Project and our team is eager to begin contributing to and benefiting from the efforts of the entire Kuali community," Harel said.

"UC San Diego is an ideal partner for the Kuali Rice work," said Brad Wheeler, chairman of the Kuali Foundation and Vice President for Information Technology at Indiana University. "Every college and university is now sorting its plans for enterprise integration no matter what systems they currently use. UC San Diego's investment to create the software future that they need in concert with other universities is exemplary of this century's approach to enterprise systems."

Nestled along the Pacific Ocean on 1,200 acres of coastal woodland, UC San Diego is a powerful magnet for those seeking a fresh, next-generation approach to education and research. Since its founding almost five decades ago, UC San Diego-one of 10 campuses in the world-renowned University of California system-has rapidly achieved the status as one of the top institutions in the nation for higher education and research

We welcome UC San Diego to the Kuali community as an investing partner!

For other universities who wish to become partners in one or more of the projects, please contact Jennifer Foutty, Executive Director, at jfoutty@kuali.org.  There are opportunities now for schools to become partners and to have influence in the future direction of these projects.

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5.  New Release Date for Kuali Financial System 3.0 (KFS)

The Kuali Foundation will be releasing version 3.0 of the Kuali Financial System in March of 2009. This KFS release includes the modules for Accounts Receivable, Budget Construction, Capital Assets, Identity Management, and Effort Reporting. It also includes some significant enhancements -- such as Receiving for Purchasing. Many of the partner institutions are using this release as the basis for their implementations. They include Colorado State University, the University of Arizona, Indiana University, Cornell University, Michigan State University, San Joaquin Delta Community College, University of Southern California, University of Hawaii, and University of California at Irvine, at Davis, and at Santa Barbara.

You may recall that KFS was originally intended for release in December 2008.  We've decided to delay this important release by a few months to ensure it is a complete release, that it meets the high quality standards we've set, and to add identity management functionality.  As a community we are committed to the success of the partner schools in their delivery of KFS to their institutions. Some of the earliest adopters will be working with the development teams in the later stages of QA to overlap with early implementation work. We believe this experience will drive higher quality software and will complement the implementation teams with developers and QA resources. Early QA releases will provide partner institutions with the KFS data structures and basic transactions for implementers to do their own analysis and testing. As these institutions use the QA releases in the early implementation phases the community QA process will benefit from real data sets from a variety of schools. Additionally, issues discovered will be resolved by the Kuali contributed developers, thus lessening the burden on early implementers.

Version 3.0 is truly a milestone release for our community and for all of education. It is the first release that will run in production at major institutions in North America and will likely be the proof on which many of you will base future adoption decisions.

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6.  Kuali Welcomes a New Commercial Affiliate

We are pleased to announce that Sciquest, Inc. has become a Kuali Commercial Affiliate. For many Kuali members, eprocurement is considered an important component of their financial system. Sciquest is a leader in eprocurement strategies. Both the Kuali Community and Sciquest believe that this partnership will help all Kuali institutions leverage the ability to automate various aspects of eprocurement, and linkages between the Kuali Financial System (KFS) and eprocurement will be core to many Kuali partners.

“There is a growing realization that eprocurement provides the missing link that enables organizations to get the most out of their investments in ERP and financial management systems,” said Jamie Duke, SciQuest’s chief operating officer. “SciQuest offers one of the few eprocurement platforms that can seamlessly integrate procurement capabilities and comprehensive supplier enablement with a wide range of available ERP and finance systems, making it easier than ever for organizations to realize the savings and efficiencies that modern eprocurement solutions are meant to deliver.”

Kathleen McNeely, who is the Chair of the Functional Council for the Kuali Financial System, stated:  “Sciquest is a welcome addition to our Commercial Affiliates in the Kuali Community.  They bring specialized knowledge in eprocurement solutions for higher education, and we have found them to be an excellent partner to many of the Kuali Community members.  We are excited about working with them to provide added value to the Kuali Financial System and to work with the Kuali community in ensuring successful implementations over the next few months.”

We welcome Sciquest to the Kuali Community as a Kuali Commercial Affiliate!

 

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7.  Kuali Events at EDUCAUSE 2008 in Orlando in October

The following Kuali events will be held at EDUCAUSE in October.  If you will be at the EDUCAUSE conference, we hope to see you at these events and sessions.

A Community Source Reception will be hosted by Kuali along with Sakai, JA-SIG, Fedora, and DSpace, on Wednesday evening from 6:15-8:00pm. Everyone is invited and welcome to attend this reception.  Come meet your colleagues and learn more about the community!

An "innovative showcase" session featuring community source Executive Directors, will be held on Wednesday from 10:30am-12:30pm.  Abstract:  Over the past few years, we have been hearing more from open source and community source projects and partner institutions about how this approach to software development will affect our institutions. This session will focus on addressing key issues and challenges facing campus decision makers about the role of open source and community source applications at academic institutions. Executive directors from five higher education open source and community source communities will respond to questions posed by the moderator and members of the audience.

Brad Wheeler, Chairman of the Kuali Foundation Board will be doing a session on "The Community Source Model: Promise or Peril for Higher Ed?" with Adrian Sannier on Wednesday from 3:50-4:40pm. Abstract: This session will compare and contrast the community source model with the commercial software model in higher education. Two presenters with expertise on both sides of the issue will discuss the relative merits of each model as the basis for implementing the enterprise systems (financial, student information, contract and grant, and teaching and learning) that underlie the essential operations of most higher education institutions.

Richard Spencer will be doing a session on "Community Source Development: Adding Value and Lowering Costs, or Increasing Risk and Wasting Resources?" on Thursday from 2:20-3:10pm.  Abstract:  Supporters say community source development produces software tailored to the needs of higher education, at a lower cost than vendor products. Skeptics say it increases risk and requires scarce resources to build software that is readily available from vendors. Join us to discuss and debate these and other points with your colleagues.

Leo Fernig and William Johnson will be doing a session on “SOA Built on Open Source Web Service Technologies” on Thursday at 3:55 p.m.-4:45 p.m.  Abstract:  Although SOA has become the dominant paradigm of enterprise computing, there is a lack of studies available on open source web service technologies. Learn how a consortium of universities completed an investigation of web standards and open source implementations to create an open source infrastructure for SOA.

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8. New Web Site for www.kuali.org Coming Soon!

There is a new look for the Kuali web site coming soon!  We plan on having a fresh new design and a more user-friendly interface, so you can find the information you need more quickly and easily.  The site should be up this month, and your comments and feedback about the new site are very welcome.

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9. Evolution of the Rice Project

We are pleased to announce that the Rice Project is evolving, and we have new investing partners who will be devoting resources specifically to Rice.  In the next 3-6 months, please watch for more announcements on the web site and in Newsletters as we begin making the transition to a new Board and committee structure for Rice.  And, for those institutions who aren’t yet investing partners in Rice, if you are interested in this, please contact Jennifer Foutty at jfoutty@kuali.org for more information.

 

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10. Feature Article on Commercial Affiliate:  rSmart


By Mike Zackrison, VP For Marketing

rSmart – A model for the Kuali commercial ecosystem
Many of you know rSmart as one of Kuali’s founders and as the company that helped Strathmore University become the first institution ever to go live with Kuali Financial System (KFS) in 2007. rSmart was founded to help open source business applications thrive in education. The company has a unique model of community source engagement that includes community activism, market outreach, and commercial services. rSmart’s goal is to make Kuali applications the best software for colleges and universities and to make the products of the Kuali community readily “consumable” whether you’re the University of Arizona, or St. Lawrence University. This article describes the array of activities rSmart is pursuing to further the success of Kuali.

KFS evaluations
rSmart recently won new contracts to help several universities evaluate KFS with rSmart’s “Kualifier” program—a package of software, hosting, and consulting services that enable institutions to fully understand KFS and see how it can meet their financial management needs. Today the Kualifier program is allowing Boston University and the Navel Post-Graduate School, among others, to assess KFS functionality, institutional fit, and compatibility with legacy data. To date, rSmart has engaged with nearly 20 institutions to do similar evaluations. Some of these have already led to new direct investments in the Kuali Foundation!

KFS implementations
After conducting Kuali evaluations, several institutions selected rSmart to assist with their KFS implementation projects. San Joaquin Delta College (SJDC) engaged rSmart to play a lead role in its Kuali implementation project, which entails providing project management and planning services as well as staff augmentation and support throughout the implementation. Colorado State and University of Hawaii also chose rSmart to augment their staff as they implement KFS. After ensuring that these institutions meet their implementation goals, the company intends to provide ongoing support and maintenance services for these KFS installations, just as it has for its Sakai customers for more than three years.

Kuali Rice development and support
In the development arena, rSmart is currently working on security enhancements with numerous other community members. Earlier this year, SJDC and rSmart jointly developed a timekeeping / timecard application using Kuali Rice. The new application will be in production at SJDC, with rSmart providing support and maintenance services. This joint effort is an excellent example of the “supported” open source model in action. It’s also a great example of how a school can get involved in Kuali with a low-risk, high-value project to demonstrate value to campus stakeholders.

Community activity
The rSmart team has focused considerable energy on furthering the mission of the Kuali community. Project Manager Keiko Takahashi served as lead editor of the KFS Documentation Team through two product releases and continues to work on the Kuali Functional Council. David Lyons, one of rSmart’s Kuali consultants, has served as NACUBO Liaison to Kuali and as the Chairperson of Kuali Days. The company’s CTO, Tony Potts, is stepping up his involvement in KFS development to help the community deliver KFS version 3, while rSmart president, Chris Coppola, provides leadership on two Kuali boards of directors. rSmart continues to work with Sun Microsystems to establish two Kuali Sun Centers of Excellence and has been helping Colorado State, University of Arizona, and the University of Hawaii build a sub-community of FRS (legacy financial system) users who are working together on the path to KFS. Finally, rSmart has had been engaged in conversations with a consortium of liberal arts colleges, an opera company in the Northwest, and a county government entity in Arizona in an effort to spread Kuali beyond its core university participants. 

An active partner for Kuali success
Because rSmart is a commercial affiliate, one might assume that the motivation for all this activity has been profit. While this assumption is partly correct, the main motivation is a wholehearted commitment to help open source applications succeed in the educational sphere. rSmart’s team believes in the power of community source to deliver great software at great value. By providing consulting services, product support, hosting, and other expert assistance, rSmart has paved the way for early KFS adopters and will continue to help colleges and universities of all types and sizes succeed with Kuali.   Their web site is: www.rsmart.com.

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11. Kuali Job Openings for Quality Assurance Director and Member Liaison

The following two positions are being posted throughout the nation.

KUALI QUALITY ASSURANCE DIRECTOR:

The Kuali Foundation is a non-profit organization that coordinates the efforts of colleges and universities to sustain and evolve a comprehensive suite of administrative software that meets the needs of all Carnegie Class institutions.  The Kuali Foundation began in 2004 as a cooperative effort among seven partners and a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop an open-source, community-owned financial system. Success with joint development of Kuali Financial System has led to three other pooled investment projects, including Kuali Coeus for Research Administration, Kuali Student and Kuali Rice, with coordination by the independent, not-for-profit Kuali Foundation Inc. The software of Kuali projects is freely available under the Educational Community License to anyone for any use or modification without fee.  For more information, see www.kuali.org.

Opportunity:
The goal of the Quality Assurance (QA) Director is to ensure that the Kuali software exceeds industry norms for accuracy, reliability and scalability. The QA Director is responsible for coordinating the quality assurance activities of the Kuali communities and projects. The QA Director oversees the setting of standards for processes, tools and methodologies used by the community. The QA Director will work directly with the project teams to ensure that all released software maintains the QA standards as well as traceability for documentation and release management.  The QA Director sets an example for the community by demonstrating through his or her work and serves as the Kuali Foundation’s main advocate for attention to Quality Assurance throughout the software development life cycle.

The ideal candidate for the QA Director position will have experience with testing methodologies and/or a strong familiarity with the Kuali application, and the ability to work as a team member as well as independently.

The QA Director reports to the Kuali Foundation Executive Director.

Additional skills and experience:

  • Experience testing enterprise Java applications is required.
  • Experience working with a distributed team is required.
  • Excellent communication skills, organization skills and collaboration skills are required.
  • Experience with the Jira issue tracking system is desirable.
  • Experience with open source testing tools is desirable.

Day-to-day responsibilities:

  • Engage project team members and community members to develop acceptable QA standards, tools, and procedures.
  • Implement standards, tools and procedures and monitor the community’s adherence to them.
  • Work with development teams to drive quality assurance methods into the earliest phases of the software development lifecycle.
  • Critically review functional and business requirements of software in development. Collaborate with the project teams to ensure that product requirements are sufficiently defined to allow the creation of test plans and scripts.
  • Establish templates, models and/or tools for test cases and scripts.
  • Establish systems and tools to report and track defects throughout the development life cycle. Regularly report these results to the community.
  • Create a mechanism for excellent traceability for testing, releases, documentation, and communications.

Depending on the circumstances of the successful applicant, this position could be established in a number of ways, including:

  • an agreement to second the employee to the Kuali Foundation, if the candidate wishes to remain with his or her institution
  • as a personal consultancy directly to the Kuali Foundation
  • other arrangements will be considered

Please send cover letter and resume via e-mail to:
Jennifer Foutty, Executive Director, Kuali Foundation Inc.
jfoutty@kuali.org

 

KUALI MEMBER LIAISON:

The Kuali Foundation is a non-profit organization that coordinates the efforts of colleges and universities to sustain and evolve a comprehensive suite of administrative software that meets the needs of all Carnegie Class institutions.  The Kuali Foundation began in 2004 as a cooperative effort among seven partners and a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop an open-source, community-owned financial system. Success with joint development of Kuali Financial System has led to three other pooled investment projects, including Kuali Coeus for Research Administration, Kuali Student and Kuali Rice, with coordination by the independent, not-for-profit Kuali Foundation Inc. The software of Kuali projects is freely available under the Educational Community License to anyone for any use or modification without fee.  For more information, see www.kuali.org.

Opportunity:
The goal of the Member Liaison is to manage the communications with existing members and new members to ensure the community is well served by all communications, for project issues both functional and technical, and for community-wide issues.  The Member Liaison will create and monitor listservs as the Kuali project managers see fit, will ensure that current and new members have access to all communication mechanisms, will oversee the content of web sites to ensure they are up to date, and will work with the project teams and the Executive Director to oversee community lists and communications.  The Member Liaison will be available to answer questions about Kuali, the projects, and handle basic troubleshooting questions from members both inside and outside the community. 

The ideal candidate for the Member Liaison position will have experience with enterprise applications and a strong familiarity with the Kuali applications, and will have the ability to work as a team member as well as independently.

The Member Liaison reports to the Kuali Foundation Executive Director.

Additional skills and experience:

  • Experience working with a distributed team is required.
  • Knowledge of the Kuali enterprise applications is highly desirable.
  • Excellent communication skills, organization skills and collaboration skills are required.
  • Experience with Sakai, Confluence and Jira tools is desirable.
  • Experience in writing for various constituents, and facilitating meetings, is desirable.

Day-to-day responsibilities:

  • Engage the community in determining best practices for ongoing communications with all constituents.
  • Monitor listservs as the project teams and Executive Director see fit, and answer questions about Kuali and the projects posed by members and non-members.
  • Oversee the Sakai, Confluence and Jira groups access and groups to ensure members and non-members have appropriate access.
  • Provide assistance to project teams in communications with constituents.
  • Ensure all members have the appropriate MoU’s, CLAs, and CCLAs on file.  Work with the accountant to ensure proper invoicing.
  • Establish ongoing mechanisms for tracking of communications and effectiveness of those communications and report to the Executive Director.
  • Prepare materials for Kuali sessions for recruiting new members, and for sharing information about the community.
  • Facilitate project and team meetings.

Depending on the circumstances of the successful applicant, this position could be established in a number of ways, including:

  • an agreement to second the employee to the Kuali Foundation, if the candidate wishes to remain with his or her institution
  • as a personal consultancy directly to the Kuali Foundation
  • other arrangements will be considered

Please send cover letter and resume via e-mail to:
Jennifer Foutty, Executive Director, Kuali Foundation Inc.
jfoutty@kuali.org

 

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12. Kuali Boot Camp to be held at UC Davis in October 2008

Periodically the Kuali Foundation offers training for new developers assigned to Kuali development teams.  These “Kuali Boot Camps” are held when there are a number of new developers starting their assignments.  The next Boot Camp will be held in October at UC Davis. This Boot Camp is designed for Kuali Coeus and Kuali Rice attendees.

The boot camp is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the development processes for Kuali projects.  More information can be found on the web site at here.

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13. Welcome Two New Kuali Foundation Members

We welcome the Naval Postgraduate School and Research Foundation of The City University of New York as new members to the Kuali Foundation.  We are pleased to have them as members supporting the Kuali initiatives!

 

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14. Upcoming Events

EDUCAUSE 2008
Orlando, Florida
October 28–31, 2008
http://net.educause.edu/e08

Kuali Days VII
Newport Beach California Marriott Hotel & Spa
November 18-19,  2008
http://www.kuali.org

The Open Forum for Higher Education Executives hosted by Thanos Partners
Palm Springs, California
December 7-9, 2008
http://www.theopenforum2008.com/

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15. Unsubscribe from this Newsletter

If you would like to unsubscribe from this newsletter, please send a message to Jennifer Foutty at jfoutty@kuali.org and ask to be unsubscribed from the Kuali Newsletter listserv.