Sunapsis Progress Status Minutes

April 19, 2017 11 am - noon

Attendees:  Nazy Galoyan, Sherri Mines, Lark Cratty, Mahmood Hasan, Jerrick Woo, Katia Rostam Yazdi, Linda Koyama

1. A internal meeting was held with Foothill and De Anza's ISO offices and it was decided to put the project on hold until June.  
2. The focus of today's meeting is to brief Nazy about the project and where everything currently stands.
3. There are two modules to Sunapsis:  Immigrations module and Admissions module
   1. Immigration module:  Currently being used by both colleges everyday for over two years.  They are using 90% of the module; just started sending automated emails for students under 12 units.  Works well.
   2. Admissions module:  Not live; still in testing stage.  The challenge is that there are two different constituents that apply:  1)  Students that apply for themselves and 2) Students that apply through agencies.  Both have very different needs and wants.  No solution will satisfy both 100%.  (The only school that has a system that works for both is Santa Monica and it was a custom solution they built themselves).  The agents want their own portal.  The current population is 50-50; 50% students, 50% students via agents.
4. Current Sunapsis workflow
   1.  Intake form (create my account form) is filled out with passport info
   2.  The info is matched against Banner; if a record for that student exists, the CWID is retrieved; if not, a record is created along with the CWID which is passed to Sunapsis.
   3. Once a day, the info is fed into Sunapsis and the student will receive an automated email that gives them the login to Sunapsis.  The agent wants to control all aspects of the application and would prefer that the student not receive any info at all.  Banner requires a unique email address in order to create an ID.  Agents would prefer that all their students have the same agent's email.  In Sunapsis, you can only email the student.  You can add a secondary email but the student will receive all the emails.  The agents would like a portal where they can click and see all their students.  They'll need to manage an excel spreadsheet to manage all their students.  Agents would also like to upload all the documents in one PDF; Sunapsis requires to upload each document screen by screen.  Some documents are confidential and need to be secure.  There are over 150 agents and it is not practical to have two separate systems, one for students and one for agents.
5. University of Michigan, Flint, had built an agent module using Sunapsis' customization tool.  Sherri didn't think we could hire Sunapsis support to develop it for us.  They also built an insurance module.
6. San Mateo's system does not have an initial intake form, all the fields need to be completed up front; however, it does not have a document management system.  
7. Edmonds Community College is using Sunapsis; Victor Valley College just did an RFP that included Sunapsis; a community college in Tenessee is also using Sunapsis.  A lot more universities are using it.
8. Next conference is in October; they will have a training on the customization tools.  Katia is interested in attending.
9. Another multiuse software called Slate includes a CRM, communication management, and admissions piece which would cost $100,000 initally and $50,000 each subsequent year.  Cost based on the number of applications.
10. We're in year 3 of a 5 year Sunapsis contract for both module's license, $18,000/year.  After year 5, $10,000/year for maintenance.
11. Arthur extended his leave until July 2nd.
12. California is against agent commissions.  We pay a marketing fee instead of commission.  Washington state encourages it and pays twice as much.  There is competition among the California's community colleges with competitive fees.  Edmonds hired a dedicated person to enter agent applications into Sunapsis.
13. Sunapsis is working on moving to 4.0 to move off the JAVA platform.
14. Concerns
    1. 24 hour delay once the intake form is submitted.  Not sure how the student population will react.  Sunapsis only accepts data loads once a day.
    2. After going live, how will we provide 24/7 technical support?
    3. Will we lose students by going to a new application since the agents know our current application so well?
15. Takeaways
    1. Sherri will walk Nazy through the application process from the student and staff perspective.
    2. Once requirements are specified by Sherri and Katia, Nazy will touch base with Edunav to see if they could develop something (will include Chien and Joe in the conversation).
    3. Sherri will forward the conference link to Katia.
    4. The project will be on hold until July.