Great! You are ready to kick start the discovery phase. Our MVP approach suggests at least 9 Discovery Sessions to cover all the focus areas. Take a look at each session below to understand who should attend and what you need to prepare.

Discovery Session 1 - Master Data/Program/Term Management

Who: IT Team, Registrar Team.

What: In this session, we will cover the foundation setup of RIO and how your institution's data will look in RIO. For example, this is a standard Master Data Setup using our fictional RIO University as an example.

Preparation (Before): 

1. Take a look at this Program Administration video to have an idea on how to structure your Program/Course data.
2. Please send us any Program/Course Guide you have. You can pick the most popular Program as an example.

Homework (After):

1. List Faculty/Users.

Discovery Session 2 - Admission/Application

Who: IT Team, Admission team, Registrar Team.

What: In this session, we are going to walkthrough your current admissions process for both domestic and international applicants.

Preparation (Before): 

Homework (After):

1. Sample LOO file.
2. Sample COE (if any).
3. Sample Student ID format.
4. Sample Student Email format.

Discovery Session 3 - Student Management/Student Community

Who: IT Team, Registrar Team, Student Service Team.

What: In this session, we will cover the Student Experience from the RIO Education Portal and also the internal console view for Student Management.

Preparation (Before): 

1. Take a look at this video on Student Experience to refresh your memory on how a Student will interact with the system.
2. Take a look at this video on Student Management to understand how the Registrar team can manage Students Enrollment in the system.
3. Take a look at this video on 360 Student View to get an idea of a comprehensive view of all data related to a Student in the system.

Homework (After):

1. Any custom student forms or experience that is required and is not standard.

Discovery Session 4 - Fees/Bursaries/Billing and Finance

Who: IT Team, Finance team, Registrar Team.

What: In this session, we will follow the money trail. We will cover all the billing events and how we interact with Students.

Preparation (Before): 

1. Identify your current Accounting System.
2. Share a copy of any student statement that you share with your students. (E.g.: Student Invoice PDF)
3. Prepare information on how scholarships and bursaries are determined and distributed to students:
   • Including how these are currently recorded in your finance system.

Homework (After):

1. Sample Student Invoice (Optional. Only if this is generated from RIO Education).
2. Sample Tax Receipt (Optional. Only if it is applicable. This is region specific).

Discovery Session 5 - Session Management/Appointment Scheduling/ Attendance Management

Who: IT Team, Registrar Team.

What: In this session, we will take a look at how to schedule Sessions in RIO Education. In the process, we will also assign an available/suitable facility/faculty member for the Session. Apart from that, we will cover how faculty can mark students attendance via the community portal.

Preparation (Before): 

1. Understand the relationship between Term, Course Offering and Session.
2. Take a look at this video to get a good idea of Session Scheduler feature in RIO Education.
3. Take a look at this video on Faculty Community to get an idea what faculty can do in the portal.

Homework (After):

1. Qualified faculty (Optional. Only if we want RIO Education to alert you if a Faculty Member is not qualified to teach certain Courses).
2. Sample Course Offering for the last Term. For example, what Courses are available for last Term.
3. Faculty member/facility availability for appointment (Optional).

Discovery Session 6 - Assessment/Grade Management

Who: IT Team, Assessment Team (LMS), Registrar.

What: In this session, we will cover the assessment and completion of the Courses. Any LMS integration should be discussed here too.

Preparation (Before): 

1. Please send us your latest grade book.
2. For LMS Moodle/Canvas Integration, please take a look at RIO Education documentation.
3. If not using Moodle or Canvas, please identify the LMS in use, release version, on-premise or cloud based.
4. Please provide a sample Course Assessment with weightage. For example, BUS101 has 20% assignment + 80% exam.

Homework (After):

1. Sample Transcript.
2. Certification/Testamur (Optional. Only if it is applicable).
3. LMS admin login (both production and sandbox).

Discovery Session 7 - Reporting

Who: IT Team,  Admissions team, Registrar team, Finance team.

What: In this session, we will review the overall reporting requirements, including:

1. Understanding the RIO Reporting Engine functionality and how it differs from the available Salesforce reporting functionality.
2. Identifying and documenting the reporting requirements for each of the stakeholders.
3. Identifying any statutory and compliance reporting requirements:
   • The timeline required for compliance reporting availability.
4. Identifying the stakeholders that will take on the role of reporting champions in the future.

Preparation (Before): 

1. Identify all current internal and compliance reporting mechanisms and the due date for reports with time sensitive requirements.
2. Be prepared to provide examples of existing reports.

Discovery Session 8 - Data Migration

Who: IT Team,  Registrar team, Finance team.

What: In this session, we will analyze the data that is required to be imported into RIO Education.  We will review and document the following:

1. Data sources.
2. Format of extracted data from each data source.
3. If there are multiple data sources, what is the unique identifier to ensure duplication does not occur.
4. Quality of existing data, data cleanliness and duplicates.
5. What is missing from the available data, i.e. is the current student progression status available to be exported.
6. Identify and document the Master Data and the Transactional Data.
7. Identify and document who will export the data and when.
8. Timing for the loading of data:
   • Time required to extract data from each data source.
   • Time required to load all data sources in the future.
9. Are all data extracts full or can delta data extracts be provided.
10. A sample of data is analysed for a test import into the RIO Education data model.
11. Any custom fields or objects are identified and documented.

Preparation (Before): 

1. Identify all our data sources.
2. Research available mechanisms to export data.

Homework (After):

1. Provide sample data.
2. Review sample data load.

Discovery Session 9 - Integration to third party systems

Who: IT Team.

What: In this session, we will analyse the integration points required in addition to any LMS integration.  We will look at the typical integration points:

1. Finance systems.
2. Scheduling.
3. Digital transcripts.
4. Credential management.
5. Recruitment.

Preparation (Before): 

1. Identify all desired integrations.
2. Provide details on:
   • Application name
   • Is application on-premise or cloud based.
   • What is the release version.
   • Is there a sandbox equivalent for the application to enable integration testing.
   • Who in your organisation owns the relationship with the vendor that owns this application.
   • What are your expectations for the type of integration, i.e. direct and the timing of synchronisation of data, i.e. on-demand, daily, weekly