Tools4ever Relieves Murray of Unpleasant IT Pain
| Executive Summary | |
|---|---|
| Problem | Like many other school IT departments, Murray ISD is looking for avenues to get more done, with less funding, in a shorter amount of time. A significant portion of time is allocated to manually manage user accounts. |
| Solution | Automated creation of user accounts, both student and faculty/staff. |
| Products | UMRA - Auto Provisioning |
| Connectors | Active Directory, Infinite Campus |
| Result | Efficiency in daily jobs of IT department, tidy active directory and lower cost for licenses. |
Murray Independent School District, located in Kentucky USA, consists of four campuses with a central office located about a mile from them. Each school is less than 2 miles from each other. Like many other schools, Murray ISD is looking for ways maximize efficiency with less funding. Rusty Back, CIO for Murray Independent School District explains: “Before we used UMRA I was manually managing the creation and deletion of user accounts. These tasks took up most of my time, and besides that, the demands placed on IT were increasing. We needed processes that would relieve me to perform other IT duties. In addition to the high amount of manual work the lack of effective communication in the district kept me ‘in the dark’ as to when students would enroll/withdrawal from the district.” Rusty would only learn about a new student when a teacher would inquire about an account for the student.
Robust solution
The alternative to the hiring of additional staff to manage user accounts was to find an automated solution, which Rusty achieved with Tools4ever’s UMRA Automation. UMRA is used it to create user accounts for both students and faculty/staff automatically. This replaces the former process of a manual script execution that would create the accounts. UMRA Automation automatically synchronizes data between the Student Information System, Infinite Campus, and the Active Directory, which allowed Rusty to transition from completely involved in the user account creation/deletion process to only monitoring it. “Tools4ever has a good reputation within other school districts, so the choice was easily made”, says Rusty Back. “The consultants at Tools4ever were very helpful as their experience allowed them to offer suggestions for the project and make the solution more robust when compared to what I had originally conceptualized.”
Improved efficiency
The most important benefit of the implementation is efficiency. UMRA Automation allowed Murray’s IT staff to be more efficient in their daily job. Rusty stated, “No longer do I have to spend time doing those repetitive processes that are involved in user account management. I let UMRA do it for me.”
Account immediately created
As soon as a student enrolls and is entered into the Student Information System, the account is automatically created. This allows the student to begin class work on day one and not have to wait days before their account is created. Teachers appreciate this as they can begin instructing the student immediately. In addition, the process also deletes the account when the student withdraws; the active directory is no longer littered with accounts that are no longer needed. Since many applications the district utilizes are based on the number of user accounts, the Tools4ever solution helps prevent those costs from being inflated.
As Tools4ever continues to develop new processes and tools, Rusty will be looking to work further with them in the near future. He concludes: “It’s been a pleasure to work with everyone at Tools4ever from the sales staff to the project manager down to their technical staff. They understand your IT pain and will do anything to help you end it.”