JAIMIE FRANKLIN
Staff Writer
PepXpress disappears from the Web Sept. 30th and students and faculty are being introduced to WaveNet as part of a multi-million dollar school-wide effort to upgrade aging portal technology.
A Web portal is a starting point and gateway for members of a particular community to access commonly used information and services. WaveNet connects students to a personal e-mail account, provides quick access to BlackBoard, offers a new “Collaborative Groups” feature that links students and faculty more efficiently, and has an updated search feature.
“The one feature I believe will impress students greatly is the new e-mail gateway Outlook Web Access,” university portal manager Candace Jones said in an e-mail. “This new e-mail access is a vast improvement over all former web-based e-mail here at Pepperdine. Now your contacts, calendars and folders are just a click away.”
Hung Le, associate vice president and university registrar also agrees, “I think it [WaveNet] is a lot better in that it allows for more access in a single sign-on. From the students’ perspective the best new feature is e-mail.”
However, some students have been more confused by the change than impressed. “I still haven’t quite figured it out yet,” said sophomore Adam Cargioli. “I have a Mac and when I try to view my e-mail it tells me to open Microsoft Outlook.”
Convenience may also be an issue for some. “It’s not as convenient as PepXpress because you can’t see your e-mail when you come in. [WaveNet] has the same features but it’s frustrating because there are less shortcuts,” said sophomore Jessica Barnes.
Other students welcome the change. One student was able to use the new portal to make changes that were unavailable on PepXpress, “It’s easier to use than the last one and I’ve figured out how to change my password which I wasn’t able to do before,” said freshman Amy Walecka.
The decision to move to WaveNet came with a school-wide upgrade of all administrative application software to the PeopleSoft Enterprise suite. This decision was made about two years ago by Pepperdine University management teams, including the Board of Regents, University Management Committee, Executive Vice Presidents, as well as President Andrew K. Benton.
“I am not sure I would characterize the decision to move to WaveNet being made as a result of problems rather I think Pepperdine had outgrown the PepXpress technology,” said Jones. “PepXpress was built on an older software version, and as we all know, technology changes.”
More changes are on the horizon. In a few weeks Automatic Account Creation will allow prospective students and parents as well as Pepperdine alumni to create their own Pepperdine e-mail account through WaveNet in order to receive information and newsletters from the university.
Interactive pages for weather, sports, external news sources and more will be added to the portal, as well as an instant messaging program that will better connect students and faculty.
08-28-2006
