Customer Spotlight - Georgia College & State University
Celebrating 20 years with ACEWare
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| Front row (L to R): Stephanie Westmoreland and Courtney Bentley Back row (L to R): Candice Griffeth and Cassie Napier |
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We value and appreciate every customer using our software for their programs. When we have big partnership anniversaries (20 years!) we want to share the story with everyone. ACEware talked with Stephanie Westmoreland, who serves as the Assistant Director of Continuing Education at Georgia College & State University. We asked her about their continuing education journey over the past 20 years and how ACEware has supported them along the way. We appreciate the time they took to share with us!
Changes seen in the past 20 years
"In the late 1990s, Georgia College was serving between 3,000 and 4,000 noncredit students each year. Today, Continuing Education registers more than 10,000 students annually - which is quite impressive for a college in a town with a population of less than 25,000."
When discussing target markets, Stephanie shared, "we try to be diverse enough so that if one area is in a recession, another area can carry us through. At this time the most successful programs are travel programs, children's programs (summer camps especially) and conference/registration services."
Stephanie and her team stay diverse in their marketing strategies as well. Their printed catalog is expected and anticipated by their community members and continues to be beneficial. Marketing through Social Media channels boosted registrations for their summer camps.
How does ACEware software support your day-to-day work and future programming decisions?
"It is interesting to see how ACEware is used so differently between our staff members. Our positions and responsibilities vary greatly therefore asking the software to provide in different ways."
"I've used other registration software and
to have software that is specific to the needs of the continuing education world is invaluable. Specifically, having the ability to pull reports that allow us to sort through our data in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. If we have questions, Student Manager data has the answers. It assists in our marketing decisions, course creation and approval process, and the list goes on and on."
What is/are the most valuable feature/s of Student Manager and ACEweb to your business?
"Mass printing rosters, pocket ledger, pay grabber, the new ability
to search, the waitlist option, running customized reports, membership courses, demographics, email attachments, online instructor access to course information..."
"Lindsey has been with us through thick and thin this year and we appreciate her work so much. We have a treasured video from an ACEware conference that shows Lindsey explaining how to eat crab legs. We love how she takes you step- by- step through the process of how to eat a crab leg. It closely resembles how she explains each step when assisting with Student Manager."
Stay tuned for more customer anniversary spotlights in future newsletters.
Contributed by
Sharon Brookshire
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ACEware.com Gets a Makeover
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We are starting September with a new, improved, and responsive
website. Frequently used resources such as the online reference guide, webinar archives, Student Manager/ACEweb resources, and so on, can be found when selecting the Customer link at the top of the page.
New to our site is a page with our
features list. Take a look at that page! You may find features you had forgotten or that you didn't know about. (We're always glad to tell you about these features!) If you see that we overlooked a feature, let us know that, too. If you have a professional colleague who is searching for new software, direct them to this page and our demos page or even better, right to Chuck!
And last but certainly not least, let's all give Cheryl a round of applause for her great work on our new website!
Contributed by Sharon Brookshire
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A little routine housekeeping goes a long way in keeping your database running efficiently. We provide you great tools in Student Manager to do your data cleanup on a mass level.
Data cleanup does not need to happen daily or weekly, but it should be a part of your software maintenance routine. When data is old, drop-downs have items that aren't used anymore. If you have a drop-down menu filled with items that you aren't using any more, then you should do the following:
Go to Tools | Data Cleanup and pick an area that you want to work with. Locations, Course Names and Fees is one most commonly used. You choose an option, hit refresh and it will populate with all entries in that particular area. You can combine numerous items into one. To do so, click on one item, hold your CTRL key to click other items or SHIFT+click to choose items in between. Helpful hint: If you want to combine a number of items into one, and the one you want is already there, choose it last. What you choose last will be what is in the renamed area, but, of course, you can change that as well. When you Replace or Combine, it goes throughout the database and reassigns what you chose to all the ones you want replaced. You can also delete items on a mass level.
It is highly recommended that you do a backup first. If you have multiple departments running the same Student Manager, we recommend that you check with the other departments before deleting any codes, since they may be using them.
You can find more on our Data Cleanup on our Online Help Guide. Just search for Cleanup, or click here.
Contributed by Mike Lowry
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Mass Change/Update/Delete Now Has Custom Condition
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I know what you are thinking: dang it, Matthew has made changes to Module > Courses > Mass Change/Update/Delete,
*again*
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Personally, I think this change is the best one, yet.
In Student Manager 8.0.043 released August on 22nd, the Custom Match Condition that you see on many screens (F2 Quick List Enrollment, F5 Find Name, F7 Pay Grabber, etc.) has made it to the Mass Change/Update/Delete routine. Now you have more control over which courses you are deactivating, changing the web publish/register status on, archiving, and the other things you can do this screen.
For example: Maybe you want to add a special coupon only to your new courses. Set the custom match condition to "conew" (without the quotes) and then do your normal routine of creating a coupon. It's that easy.
Better yet, the custom match condition uses any of the fields in the course and the course UDFs tables (or combinations thereof with "and" joins). This will give you even more power to get the proper courses updated.
As always, ask your tech if you need any assistance with this, and make a backup before running any mass procedure. Have fun with this new tool!
Contributed by Matthew Olson
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Calculating your Support and Maintenance Agreement (SMA) for your Fiscal Year 18 Budget
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Many of you are, or soon will be, preparing your Fiscal Year 18 budgets. To plan for your SMA, follow these two steps:
First, total the current retail value of your software package (Student Manager + ACEweb + any optional modules* you may have.). For current prices, visit our web site here or view your customer price sheet that comes with your renewal packet.
Second, multiply that total by 0.16 (or 16%). Now you have the number to use for your SMA budget!
If you need an official quote for your budget officer, if you'd just rather we do the math for you, or if you have a question, email [email protected]. We're glad to help!
*To confirm which modules you have, press Ctrl+E from your Student Manager home screen, and select the Show Optional Modules button on the screen that pops up. The Student Manager Module Reporter then displays your optional modules:
And remember to budget for the annual users' conference. This year our conference is in Scottsdale, Arizona, from June 20-23, 2017. If you have a current SMA, you have scholarship funds to use to help with the registration fees. We're glad to help you with budget figures for conference as well!
Contributed by Sharon Brookshire
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Report of the Month: Last Login
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Last Login Report.
As you add users to the system over a number of years, you can end up with so many users that it is difficult sometimes to remember just who has been assigned which access levels, and whether they can edit their preferences, and whether they can process refunds, etc. You also might just want to know when they last logged into the system.
You could go through password maintenance one record at a time and check each item or you could simply run a report.
Last login report will give you all the information you need.
Run this report from Reports>Accounting>Special 1 Reg/1 Line (deadbeat). Choose additional report. The query you use doesn't matter - you can use any query. From the additional report area choose "Last Login" report.
You can see an example of this report on our website:
Adding the Report to your System
*Download the report files from our website:
An instruction sheet to import/run the report is included in the zip file.
*You will need the current Customer password to download the zip file. If you don't have that password, please contact your ACEware technician.
Contributed by AJ Giliberto
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Here's to your continued success!
Your ACEware team,
- Chuck, Sharon, AJ, Cheryl, Jason, Lauri, Lindsey, Matthew, Mike, and Stein
Aceware Systems
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Catch up on the ones you missed
New help videos for Student Manager
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Phone
Voice: 800.925.2493
Fax: 785.537.6811
eMail
Mail
ACEware Systems, Inc.
7480 Dyer Road
Manhattan, KS 66502
We appreciate hearing from you! If you have questions, comments, or suggestions about this newsletter, please contact [email protected]
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