Supporting Open Source Software for Education
September 27, 2011
March 23, 2011
Work is well under way on a new module for the Kuali Financial System—the Travel and Entertainment Module (TEM). Six members of the Kuali community are investing in the project, and they have partnered with rSmart to develop the module.
At many institutions, travel and entertainment expenses are handled through time-consuming paper processes and ad hoc legacy systems. This module provides a streamlined electronic system for authorizing and tracking travel and entertainment expenses. TEM will be integrated with Financial System e-docs, which will route authorization, disbursement, and reimbursement requests and also capture required data.
March 23, 2011
We’re pleased to announce that the University of Arkansas is partnering with rSmart to implement Kuali Coeus (KC), the open source solution for research administration.
The University of Arkansas is a public research institution with more than 20,000 students. Like many schools, it has struggled with a cumbersome paper trail for its award process. U of A leaders decided to adopt Kuali Coeus and move to an electronic system for the routing and submission of proposals.
March 23, 2011
At your institution, you may have costs associated with a contract or grant that the sponsoring agency requires be paid from other university accounts. In the Financial System, you can track these costs in special cost share sub-accounts:
February 28, 2011
In "The Bygone Decade of Definition, Distance"--a recent Viewpoint piece for Campus Technology magazine--rSmart Chairman and founder John Robinson examines how higher ed has been responding to the changing demands of the digital age.
Starting with a look at the relatively slow progress of the past decade, he then focuses on the importance of open collaboration between institutions as a way to increase innovation and realize new goals. To read the full article, click here.
January 31, 2011
In a pair of recent blog posts, rSmart CEO Chris Coppola explores the ways in which organizations can be successful in adopting open source solutions. You’ll find both posts on the rSmart web site:
January 31, 2011
Our central mission at rSmart is providing the best possible experience for our clients. In order to improve that experience, we recently conducted a thorough evaluation of our subscription services. Now we’ve begun implementing some wide-ranging changes, as we reorganize and expand the rSmart subscription services system. Three teams will now work together to provide our clients with comprehensive support:
December 17, 2010
In the Kuali Financial System, you can manage budgets in several different ways. Accounts in the Financial System have two fields for budgets:
December 16, 2010
Kuali Days 2010 marked a new stage of growth and success for the Kuali community. The event attracted close to 700 participants—record-breaking attendance for Kuali Days—from more than 100 organizations around the globe. Perhaps just as importantly, many of these participants came from institutions new to Kuali.
December 16, 2010
At Kuali Days 2010, one cause for celebration was the recent release of Kuali Coeus 3. The release marks another important milestone for Kuali Coeus, further expanding the functionality of this open source solution for research administration.
With this release, Kuali Coeus now provides research compliance functionality, with the addition of the new Institutional Review Board (IRB)/Human Participants module. This module helps institutions:
December 16, 2010
We’re pleased to announce the community release of Kuali Financial System 4.0. The release provides more than 300 bug fixes and includes the following major improvements:
November 1, 2010
Scottsdale, AZ., November 1, 2010 — Stevens Institute of Technology announced today that it has selected a Software as a Services (SaaS) implementation of the community-source Kuali Financial System to manage financial operations across the University. This move to a new financial system is driven by an institutional investment strategy to enhance the effectiveness of services and better serve the students and the community. The selection of a SaaS implementation of the Kuali Financial System will allow Stevens to speed the pace of service enhancements at a total cost that is significantly lower than any other options identified.
September 26, 2010
We hope you’ll be attending Kuali Days 2010, being held November 8-10 in San Diego, California. As the title of this year’s event—“From Theory to Practice”—suggests, the Kuali community is reaching a new level of maturity. A year has passed since several institutions successfully adopted the current version of the Kuali Financial System, and there are more implementations underway. The next release of the Financial System, slated for the end of November, promises even more functionality and performance.
September 26, 2010
We're pleased to report that the Kuali Financial System 4.0 is slated for release at the end of November. In addition to bug fixes and infrastructure improvements, the release will expand the scope of the Financial System in several important ways.
Kuali Endowment Management
Version 4.0 will include a major new module, Kuali Endowment Management (KEM), that helps institutions meet the unique compliance and reporting demands of endowment management:
September 24, 2010
In the Kuali Financial System, you can easily delegate actions typically handled by the fiscal officer, by using the Account Delegate electronic document (e-doc).
Actions for a delegate may include approval for transactions in a workflow, and you may define the delegate’s level of authorization. The authorization can be for all documents and transactions, for example, or it can be limited to specific documents. Keep in mind that the delegation is only for documents at the account routing level and does not apply to documents that route to the fiscal officer as part of the Org Review routing.
Using the Account Delegate e-doc, you may establish two types of delegation:
September 13, 2010
Learn more about rSmart and our work with Kuali and Sakai.
The Client Services team provides professional consulting services to implement, integrate, and customize rSmart’s enterprise applications for individual clients. The Project Manager plays a key role in delivering these services by leading teams of functional and technical experts from point of sale to handoff to subscription support services. The Project Manager coordinates and manages rSmart, partner, consultant, and client resources devoted to these projects, and is responsible for completing them at or under budget, on time, and to specification. The incumbent also serves as primary customer contact and manages overall company customer interface relationships for defined scope(s) of work to ensure responsiveness to customer needs and effective professional conduct. This individual is responsible for setting and managing client expectations and increasing customer satisfaction through continuous improvement and delivery of quality products and services.
September 13, 2010
Learn more about rSmart and our work with Kuali and Sakai.
The Support Analyst plays a key role on the Subscription Support team by working directly with clients to ensure the long-term success of rSmart products at the client’s institutions. This individual provides support to clients by assessing functional and technical issues and assisting in their resolution, answering questions and advising customers of best practices. In addition, this individual contributes articles to the company’s knowledge base and may contribute expert advice in the development of add-on service opportunities for existing clients This individual’s expected interaction with other members of the “community” at institutions all over the world as part of a global community collaborations will be key to their success. This individual will provide support for open source applications within a customer-focused global environment, working closely with customers and delivery teams to maintain world class operational systems provided directly by the Professional Service team or external third parties.
May 26, 2010
This month, the Kuali Coeus project reached an important milestone with the release of Kuali Coeus 2.0. The release adds considerable functionality to Kuali Coeus, a comprehensive open source solution for research administration.
At many schools, the awards process can often be cumbersome and inefficient, involving ad hoc combinations of manual entries, paper trails, and various third-party software applications. Kuali Coeus now represents a viable and cost-effective alternative.
May 26, 2010
With the 2.0 release, Kuali Coeus (KC) now offers a flexible, integrated system that can support all aspects of research administration. But you may be concerned about how to evaluate this open source system. Given the unique complexities of research administration processes at your institution, how can you be sure that Kuali Coeus is the best fit—and that you fully understand the migration challenges that will be involved?
To help institutions considering Kuali Coeus, we’ve developed the rSmart Kuali Coeus Proof of Concept (POC). With this powerful resource, your institution’s stakeholders can evaluate Kuali Coeus—with your own data and business processes in a hosted environment—before committing to implementation.
May 26, 2010
Kuali Rice is a very powerful middleware resource. It helps developers integrate a broad array of applications and services, allowing them to build enterprise-level systems with common workflows and customizable user interfaces. But the deep capabilities of Kuali Rice present a challenge: How can developers best learn to tap into its full potential?