Prepare for Colleague/Self-Service/Informer outage from Mar. 14 to 18, & attend training to learn about Informer 5

Colleague, Self-Service, and Informer software will be unavailable for several days in mid-March so the College can complete an important step in Information Technology modernization— Cincinnati State’s Colleague database will be converted to a modern Microsoft SQL Server database.

Also, the Informer data analytics tool— the primary method for retrieving data from Colleague and creating a variety of reports that are used regularly by individuals and by College departments– will be upgraded to Informer 5.

The three systems will be offline starting at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 14, and continuing until 6 a.m. on Monday, March 18.

• Cincinnati State’s Spring Break is from March 13-17, so classes will not be affected.
• Student and faculty use of Blackboard will not be affected.
• The Registrar’s Office, the Financial Aid Office, and the Cashier’s Office will be closed on Friday, March 15, since they will not have access to the tools used when assisting students. These offices plan to use the day for training and team-building activities.

Chief Information Officer Frankie Baker said Informer 5 is significantly different from the current version of Informer used at the College, so several training sessions are scheduled.

All employees who use Informer currently, or plan to use it in the future, are encouraged to attend an Informer 5 training session. Two levels of training are available, “Getting Started” and “Advanced.”

“Getting Started with Informer 5” topics include:

• Signing in and Overview of Home
• Executing existing reports
• Exporting data
• Introduction to Informer 5 datasets
• Sharing reports
• Introduction to creating reports from scratch

“Getting Started” training is offered:

• Monday, Feb. 26 – 10 to 11 a.m. (Session #1) – Click to join the Teams meeting
• Monday. Feb. 26 – 2 to 3 p.m. (Session #2) – Click to join the Teams meeting
• Tuesday, Feb. 27 – 3 to 4 p.m. (Session #3) – Click to join the Teams meeting
• Wednesday, Feb. 28 – 8 to 9 a.m. (Session #4) – Click to join the Teams meeting
• Friday, March 1 – 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. (Session #5) – Click to join the Teams meeting
• Friday, March 1 – 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. (Session #6) – Click to join the Teams meeting

“Advanced Informer 5” topics include:

• Scheduling reports
• Emailing reports
• A deeper dive into creating new reports from scratch
• Why to use datasets vs. reports vs. ad hoc queries

“Advanced” training is offered:

• Wednesday, Feb. 28 – 1 to 2 p.m. (Session #1) – Click to join the Teams meeting
• Friday, March 1 – 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. (Session #2) – Click to join the Teams meeting

Questions? Contact Frankie Baker (frankie.baker@cincinnatistate.edu).