In November 2014 the remaining end user vestiges of the legacy school database service originating in 1996 were migrated into Theon. The areas and workflows that were transitioned at this time were:
- Staff Records
- Visitor Records
- Post Application Visit Day handling for UG students
- Taught PG student admissions handling
The School InfHR team were moved across onto Theon in November to manage the Staff and Visitor records. The PAVD and PGT handling processes have started being used in earnest this week by the ITO, although there is some remedial work remaining.
The PAVD/PGT move was the final nail in the coffin for the old terminal based menu reporting system used by the ITO called “genrep” and this and its host server will shortly be completely decommissioned.
The Staff/Visitor move was a significant shift for InfHR as it saw the primary source of data for both being shifted to upstream IS services, rather than being locally re-keyed. In the case of Staff records the central IS HR/Oracle system is now the golden copy and in the case of Visitor records the central IS VRS system is the golden copy. Due to limitations in the HR/Oracle dataset we supplement this data with a feed from the central IS IDMS service. This is also used to correct data in the VRS dataset which has some IS acknowledged issues. This transition aligns InfHR and our Staff/Visitor records with the ITO/IGS which have been using central golden copy data sources (EUCLID/EUGEX) since the introduction of Theon in late 2010.
With all the legacy data now migrated (or replaced) in Theon the process of purging and archiving the data from the old database system (continuing to comply with University retention periods and data protection regulations) and decommissioning has begun.