InformSU Program Updates

InformSU User Survey Update

04/23/2021

From March 26th until April 9th, the InformSU team asked our campus partners with PowerBI report access to respond to a brief user survey. Over 200 of you responded – a 28% rate of response. Your responses provide an important barometer of the needs of our campus partners. The InformSU team would like to thank all of you who participated! 

We found out that the majority of people with PowerBI access utilize our reports (about 70%). Of these users, over a third use reports frequently (either every day or every week). A larger group (over 40%) look at reports a few times a month, and a small group of users look at reports very infrequently. The majority of respondents, even frequent users, indicated that they would like training on either the PowerBI platform or on specific reports. Addressing this need will be the first in a number of InformSU team actions resulting from your survey responses. We will be placing and updating virtual in-person training sign ups and schedules (training links forthcoming in the next week). We will also highlight our growing library of video report trainings as well as our basic PowerBI introduction materials. We will be following up with those of you who opted into communications with the team on training opportunities. As always, we love to hear from you, so please don’t hesitate to contact the InformSU team (click here).

Admission Funnel New Version Release

04/23/2021

The InformSU team will be publishing a new version of the Admission Funnel report around the 10th of May. Additional features include:

  • YTD Funnel Page that includes all of the relevant rates (and not just absolute numbers) for every stage in the admission process;
  • The addition of a visualization of the YTD Funnel page;
  • The addition of an Active Admit Funnel page, looking at a simplified view of admits without declined or confirmed students;
  • The removal of the Grad Summary page, since we have a Graduate Funnel report that focuses on the graduate student population;

All users with access to the Admission Funnel Report will get access to the Preview Version of the new report before it is officially published. Please look out for an email from the InformSU team with a new report link. If you have concerns or questions about these changes, please let us know (click here).

Report Release Notes

Data Warehouse Explained

Current Operational InformSU is in the process of being updated in order to expand reporting abilities and improve overall functionality. This need is being driven partially by the fact that our previous reporting tool, SUDDS, is no longer supported. However, the predominate driver is the ability to provide cost effective and easily consumable data directly to stakeholders to meet the dynamic needs across Seattle University.

In order to fill this need, InformSU is moving to a cloud based data warehouse service through Amazon Web Services (AWS), called Amazon Redshift. A data warehouse is a central repository of information that can be analyzed to make better informed decisions.

Data flows regularly into a data warehouse from SU systems. The current Operational InformSU only includes Colleague and retired SUDDS, but under Amazon Redshift InformSU will have the ability to expand to other SU systems, such as Canvas, Slate, etc. Amazon Redshift will act as a database in the Cloud, linking Seattle University system’s data.

An infographic of Amazon Redshift

InformSU will have enhanced access to data through Amazon Redshift. In order to provide self-service reporting, users have access to InformSU through a business intelligence tool, Microsoft’s Power BI. Power BI acts as a self-service analytics and reporting tool. Power BI enables users to create reports and analytics, schedule reports to run automatically, send reports and have dashboards with responsive designs.

InformSU MicrosoftBI Infographic