With respect to your recent OneStart upgrade editorial, we offer a clarification. It’s easy to confuse OneStart itself with the services it provides; however, OneStart, like enterprise portals at most universities, is a delivery mechanism that the UITS staff created as a means to aggregate services to make their navigation and use easier. The PeopleSoft (now Oracle) student services, such as the registration system, are presented within OneStart much like CBS news is presented by a cable or satellite TV provider.\nThe advantages of aggregating services in a portal framework such as OneStart are not only convenience and single sign-on, but also so that UITS, for example, can customize service delivery that would otherwise not be available – such as combining Drop/Add services provided by PeopleSoft with the approval workflow capabilities provided by OneStart.\nWe will continue to strive to make OneStart better, as evidenced by our plans to release a new version in September. We will also continue to address the quality of user experience with the services delivered within the portal, and we especially welcome student feedback along the way.
John F. (Barry) Walsh\nAssociate Vice President for Enterprise Software
