IN LIGHT of enlistment issues in the second semester of AY 2022–2023, the Office of the Vice President for Digital Information and Technology Services (OVP-DITS) looks to enhance the Ateneo Integrated Student Information System (AISIS), starting with the shutdown of the AISIS online portal.

“The portal that we will be decommissioning is aisisonline.ateneo.edu. This is different from aisis.ateneo.edu,” IT Academic Solutions Head Christopher Glenn Año explained. 

AISIS will continue to serve the community until they find a fit replacement, according to Año.

Backing up the servers

Since the Intersession term of AY 2022–2023, Año and End User Group Head James Patrick Gregorio said that AISIS has been operating with a cloud-based revamp that improved overall system stability and regular data backup.

In preparation for the enlistment periods that followed, Gregorio and Año said that the Office of Management Information Systems, Information Technology Resource Management Office, and OVP-DITS also dealt with hardware and software resources.

Moreover, they explained that the OVP-DITS coordinated with different offices like the University Registrar, the Office of the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, the Office of the Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, the Cashier’s Office, the Accounting Office, the Office of International Relations, and the Office of Admission and Aid.

In spite of the offices’ coordination, Gregorio and Año said that delays still occurred during the registration process as they reached out to the concerned departments, which had varying availability in their staff.

However, Gregorio and Año assured that the LS administration has always reminded the offices to have the personnel present to directly address these issues and help students with registration.

“To go through this change, LS offices will have to also understand that existing registration rules and regulations will have to be adjusted as well. We will need to get the buy-in of all stakeholders to push through with this,” Gregorio and Año stated.

Additionally, Gregorio added that there has been an ongoing effort to update AISIS with an advanced and general student information system for all units.

“However, because of the University reorganization, it’s taking some time to implement because we have to look at the processes of the different units as well,” he further clarified.

Disruptive servers

Despite the background improvements, students still faced technical issues throughout the AY 2022–2023 enlistment periods, encountering missing class tags and pre-enlisted schedules. According to some students, such issues exacted a toll on the LS community.

For instance, despite being pre-enlisted for most of her subjects, Charm Matulac (1 BS LM) found the enlistment process frustrating. She explained that students could not see the class schedules beforehand, thus “blindly enlisting.”

Similarly, Etienne Cuvin (4 BS LM) noted that he and his fellow coursemates would be clueless with regard to the schedules of available electives until the night before their enlistment.

Furthermore, Cuvin believes that enlistment tags only served to make things more difficult for them. He and his peers waited several hours in the free-for-all period to enlist in subjects that supposedly had lifted their tags.

These confusions worsened with a tuition bug that increased some students’ total tuition fees for amounts upwards of Php 800,000. Although it would eventually be resolved, Matulac mentioned that it initially bothered her peers as the offices concerned were unresponsive for a period of time.

System improvements

When asked about improvements, Matulac asked for increased interface utility for the processes regarding enlistment. She suggests a redesign of AISIS that is aimed toward user-friendliness.

“I wish [AISIS were] more organized and that there would be better communication between the departments involved. The problem with it being [the way it is], is [the] miscommunication that happens, and we are the ones affected by it,” Matulac further emphasized.

Upon initially using AISIS, Matulac mentioned that there were times when AISIS would lag out and be unusable for some time. Similarly, Cuvin hoped that the website and system would be given a complete update, citing its confusing and outdated interface.

Cuvin also wished that hold orders would be sent as emails instead of being stored in AISIS as he was not aware of his erroneous debt to the Central Accounting Office prior to enlistment.

Upon receiving such complaints, Gregorio and Año mentioned that these are discussed within their IT group. With greater hopes for more efficient enlistment processes in the future, the administration urges LS community members to continue reporting both past and recurring troubles in detail.