After spring break, SRU students logged in to a newly redesigned MySRU, as the site was relaunched on the evening of March 9 with intent to make a faster and more mobile-friendly portal.
Henry Magusiak, director of enterprise applications and manager of the project, Bob Bibler, application support manager, Tony Demarsh, senior database administrator, Salehin Ghani, systems administrator, Joel Protivnak, application developer and Nancy Ejzack, enrollment management, are the team who worked on the new update.
Magusiak said that one of the main goals with the update was to make the platform more mobile friendly, so students can access the platform on any device with ease.
“The old platform didn’t work so well on mobile phones,” he said.
One of the biggest changes was moving to a rebranded portal. The Liferay Portal, Magusiak said, is used by millions of people. By switching to this portal, Magusiak said that not only will MySRU accommodate better to mobile devices, but also will be faster.
“Testing has shown that [the portal] is extremely fast during registration,” he said.
Bibler, the application support manager, explained that the market is moving to be more mobile-friendly, and the majority of students are using their smart devices to access information. Bibler also said that they had plans for developing a mobile app in the future, as well as continuing to get student input.
The architecture of the portal allows us to be agile with development,” he said.
He also said the design is more organized and logical, and that they got a lot of input from students as to the features and organization of the site. One new feature that was suggested by students is the graduation countdown.
Bibler said he planned on meeting with students on a regular basis to get their take on the website.
As for why the portal was launched during spring break, the developers planned on launching it around that time because of a deadline. Orientation also played a factor, and they wanted incoming students to be familiar with it before coming into the university in August.
As for why the portal was launched during spring break, the developers planned on launching it around that time because of a deadline. Orientation also played a factor, and they wanted incoming students to be familiar with it before coming into the university in August.
Future developments will include a single sign-on system, which is 80 to 90 percent complete. A single sign-on system will only require students to sign in once to access MySRU, Desire to Learn and their SRU email.
