NCCU EagleBlogs

You want the latest NCCU’s Sports scores sent to your phone, the very second they are updated? And, perhaps you just can’t wait for the very latest stories from our award-winning Campus Echo, but you’re too busy to stay anchored front of your computer, constantly hitting the web page Refresh key?

You do not need a fancy web-enabled smartphone to get it, as one of the benefits of the newly enhanced NCCU Mobile portal.  Of course, you can get all our newly added RSS-powered content from http://www.nccu.edu/m on any web device, now with minimal text formatting so that even the pickiest, most proprietary archaic mobile device can receive our content “out-of-the-box”… even if you’re using a bare-bones text-only phone. But there’s much more to it, than that, thanks to miraculous, ever-underutilized RSS feed.

Get RSS feeds sent to you as a text message (SMS) or even via e-mail. This includes the latest NCCU Athletics updates, our award-winning Campus Echo student paper, and the most up-to-date external campus news from our Office of Public Relations. Internal NCCU news is also available upon log-in.

Even if you’re just not up for costs of 24/7 mobile web services and/or the hardware, getting NCCU scores sent to you via text message (or if you prefer, as e-mail) is super-easy. The best way is to let Twitter do the work. Log in to your Twitter account, simply *Follow* the NCCU news source(s) of you choice from there, as http://twitter.com/nccuwebservices, http://twitter.com/nccuathletics, http://twitter.com/nccu, and http://twitter.com/campusecho already exist. Twitter provides you with the appropriate option to receive the updates you want via SMS message (AKA text message) to your cellphone number and/or e-mail address.

You can also get the same results without a Twitter account, using any number of free RSS-to-SMS and RSS-to-EMail services like Yahoo Alerts (http://alerts.yahoo.com/myalerts.php), from the UK, the very ornate txttools (http://www.txttools.co.uk/preloginjsp/txttools/index.jsp), Web-alerts.com, and Pingie.com. All you need is the URL of the RSS content you want (listed at the end of this article), and a phone number (or email address) to which the message will be sent.

Let us know what methods suit you best.

Disclaimer: Be sure to check with your cellular service provider regarding charges that you may incur as the recipient of text messages.

Recruitment is what it’s all about… Just like the Hokey-Pokey, from back in elementary school.

Make sure your department is handling Prospective Eagles as effectively as possible. How? Go to NCCU’s Prospective Student Portal (PSP) and create your own account [via http://www.nccu.edu/intranet/prospective/signup.cfm] with your off-campus e-mail address.  When filling out the short sign-up form, make sure to check your own department as an “Area of Interest”.  Then, see what happens. Let us know how to make it better.

Through your valuable input at our Application Demonstrations, we discovered that personal follow-up contact with those who have expressed interest in NCCU (through the PSP), is one factor that has significant and positive effect on our recruitment efforts. We knew we could improve our PSP to make that process better more inclusive, easier to do, thus more effective. So, we did, because recruitment, the process of turning Prospective Eagles into enrolled Eagles, really is what it’s all about.

Prospective Student Portal (PSP) Enhancements: 10/19/2009

A. We improved the way the PSP system notifies individuals within each department who would follow-up with Student Prospects. Now upon sign-up, individual departmental contacts are dynamically determined.

1) First, the PSP tries to e-mail the official Web Liaisons (if they exist within Web Services’ list), when a prospective student expresses an interest in the appropriate department.

2) The system now accommodates non-Liaison contacts (when the Liaison or Department head assigns a different person to follow-up with their student prospects).

3) If a departmental Web Liaison does *not* exist, the system contacts the Department Head, whenever prospective student expresses interests in the appropriate department.

The new myNavigation Pane via NCCU's Intranet Prospective Student Portal

B. NEW myIntrests Pane - Provides Prospective Students with instant details for each departments in which they have selected as an interest.

1) Contacts - Even if those Departmental Contact lists do NOT usually display in our Online Campus Directory [OCD]. Example: Try to find http://www.nccu.edu/directory/?department=Campus Echo. Then, find in the PSP, as a Prospective Student having expressed interest in the Portal.

2) Links to Scholarships and Curricula specific to users’ academic areas of interest.

3) Departmental Web sites - Now, it includes our Graduate-only programs, those those sites NOT within Web Services’ CMS, or even those outside of the nccu.edu domain (e.g., www.nccuslis.org)

Future Considerations and Enhancements:

• Implement the Business Practices for exiting faculty and staff employees that allow systems to automatically determine and contact the Department Head, as necessary (e.g., if the initial/Web Liaison message is not deliverable). Right now, Department Heads, Directors, Chairpersons, et. al., are administered manually within our database.

Log In to NCCU's Intranet Prospective Student Portal

What Is It:

A tool to facilitate more effective customer service for those interested in applying for NCCU enrollment providing assistance with any of our application-related

processes. This Portal is open-ended to serve as the framework for NCCU’s Customer Intranet throughout the student’s scholastic career (and beyond), in the same way

myEOL currently serves enrolled students and Faculty/Staff, using many of the same features and functions.

Usage:

• Go to the Log-In Page (https://www.nccu.edu/intranet/prospective/login.cfm)

• Click “Sign Up Now” and create an PSP account, with the typical user/contact info (particularly, a user-specified E-Mail and Password). It looks and acts just like the Intranet for Students, Faculty and Staff. It requires a seperate (non-AD) account to get specifically for Prospective Students.

• The PSP collects all user-provided info in a database, and authenticates users via the E-Mail and PW fields specified in the previous “Sign Up Now” process.

• Upon proper Log-In, the PSP displays

1) Targeted “To-Do List” tasks, based on users’ “Applicant Type” (e.g., Freshman, Transfer, Int’l, etc. from the “Sign Up Now” process)

2) Intranet Panes appropriate for the user’s level of access.

Future Considerations and Enhancements:

• Front-end enforcement of Password Strength requirements. Helpful later, when PSP Accounts are integrated into Banner and/or AD.

• Tighter Integration into Banner, with automated propagation of user data (coming from Banner, based on Business Practices which are now being formulated).

• Smooth migration into AD (based on the appropriate Business Practices to be clarified in the future).

Bug Fixes:

• Not Applicable

Known Issues:

• None