Overview

Data migration is one of the biggest and most complex tasks in the SIS implementation. While the migration is performed at the greatest possible effort, the result/outcome of the migration may not be necessary 100% on point. 

As you/we are dealing with different legacy systems, it is quite impossible to capture and understand all possible logics that the system has when presenting the data to the user from the user interface perspective.

The migration usually does not cover this as it mainly involves raw data exported from the legacy system databases.

For example, the raw "outcome" table indicates that the student achieved a letter grade "W" and credits attempted "3".

But, in the user interface, the student actually achieved the letter grade "W" with credits attempted "0".

So, during the migration, the data is imported as-is, where the student result is imported with the letter grade of "W" and credits attempted of "3", instead of "0" (based on the raw data).

As it is not possible to check every single migrated data, the chances of students finding any migration anomalies will be there. To avoid any unnecessary panic, we have a recommendation that you can adopt.

Recommendation

The plan is to communicate with Students (at an appropriate time) in the process to ask them to self-check their results that were migrated and ask them to inform you/us of any anomalies.

The language that we use in that communication can be custom for each situation, but would be along the lines of:

Dear XXX (Student name),

As you may know, we have been working on implementing a new Student Record Management system to help streamline your experience with us.

As part of that process, we have migrated your student records from XXXX (legacy system or System of record).

We have automated the migration process, and spot-checked many records, but as you can imagine, we cannot check every record, so we are seeking your assistance to please check your academic records to ensure that:

• Your Credit transfers are showing correctly.
• Your completed Courses and grades are correct.
• Your GPA is correct.

If you see anything that is not correct, please email us at XXX@YYY and we will have your records updated accordingly.

While every effort was made to bring data across into the new system, we acknowledge that there can be anomalies, especially for students who may have substituted courses, etc.

We have records of the data in the previous system to match, so be assured that your data is safe, and we will work quickly to get any anomalies resolved as quickly as possible.

Many thanks,

YYYY (Student Services)