Etrieve Training Enlightens Ahead of Rollout

Overview

When Pepperdine's IT department led the university's changeover to a new content management system this spring, the move came after multiple rounds of discovery meetings with university departments beginning in 2016.  Etrieve emerged as the best fit, and the new software training sessions began in June with the Registrar, Seaver College Enrollment, and the Financial Aid department.

"I thought the training went really well," said Pepperdine Financial Assistance Loan Officer Rachel Hasselbring.  "I really liked that we all had our own machines and could work with our documents so that we could contextualize the work in a test environment."

Built for Education

The workflow was great, and having the Softdocs team here on the day we launched really made a difference," Hasselbring continued.  "We were able to go in and fix some things right on the spot because we had their team here with our IT staff.

"I love that you can save your searches: that's huge.  It's the same effect as having custom reports run, because people who do the same processes often like to do them in a different way," Hasselbring noted.  "We've been able to say 'this is not working' and they have gone in and built a solution for us three hours later.  I like that it's not 'one size fits all."  This product is customized for education, so they understand why we're asking for things like the need for redaction, authentication, and why we have to comply with FERPA (The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act).

Departments train together in two four-hour sessions to accommodate each team's unique needs. That means that the Financial Aid department trains on financial aid materials, and the Human Resources department trains on HR issues, and so on.

Customizable and Intuitive

"We've been working in the new environment for a few weeks now," said Hasselbring, "and there have been very few hiccups.  It's very user friendly and intuitive, and as we continue working we are still in the discovery phase and making minor adjustments.  Rather than waiting until a problem comes up, their team is working with our team to solve problems before they become problems.

"Etrieve is a lot more user friendly than Nolij," Hasselbring said, regarding the outgoing content management system. "And one of the things that I really like about it is that you can customize items within the system. We can give people access to select items in a file based on different security levels, instead of constantly printing everything. That will be really helpful for the General Counsel's Office, Student Affairs, Housing and Residential Life and more.

"If you go through the training, you will probably understand Etrieve pretty quickly," Hasselbring concluded.  "There are just so many great features like the ability to link forms or to be able to see a file's complete history that will save time and make our jobs easier. I really feel like it's working."

The Etrieve rollout is scheduled to continue through the summer and into the fall of 2018.

"Our next goal is to have Human Resources, the graduate schools, and the Office of Accessibility complete by October 1," said Senior Lead Developer, App Dev Operations Dustin Luck.  "We will schedule all remaining departments for 2019 and beyond."