MyUSF, OASIS issues continue to plague students
USF Information Technology (IT) is working to solve two separate problems with new software, one associated with OASIS and the other with the new MyUSF portal.
Associate Vice President of IT George Ellis said the problems with OASIS are due to high-traffic from students who are registering for classes. He said the issue is the result of a software update on the website that was made in September.
“The biggest issue for the last couple of days, particularly on Monday and then at 12:35 p.m. (on Wednesday), has been the OASIS access for registration,” he said. “The portal itself is OK. It’s the access to OASIS where we’re having problems.”
Ellis said the problems stem from the software provided by SunGard Higher Education, the maker of OASIS.
Though IT made some technical fixes Monday, they also spoke to representatives of the company late Wednesday for help diagnosing the problem. Both sides are looking at the problems carefully and are running tests, Ellis said.
The online fee assessment section of OASIS has been the biggest problem, Ellis said, so IT has taken that feature out until this morning, temporarily allowing the website to run properly.
Ian Stone, a senior majoring in criminology, found the OASIS problems frustrating.
“I submitted my registration, and it took a really long time to reload,” Stone said. “After a while, my registration had gone through, but it didn’t notify me. It’s annoying.”
Similarly, Gerrad Carson, a junior majoring in criminology and mass communications, said he was concerned about the problems.
“It was working fine before, but once the time for the first registration came it got really slow,” he said. “It took me 25 to 30 minutes to register for three classes.”
Ellis said it is not unusual to have difficulties with new systems.
“We understand the critical nature of the problem,” Ellis said. “Nothing is more important to us than getting this fixed.”
In addition to the problem with OASIS, students have also encountered problems with MyUSF.
“The issue some students may be seeing is that, if they are in a session and the session timeout expires, then when they try to get back in there is a ‘looping’ problem,” Ellis said.
He said the looping problem occurs when a user accesses MyUSF, closes the page without logging out and tries to return to it, preventing it from loading properly. Anyone experiencing the problem can solve it by closing their browser and re-opening it.
Ellis said Microsoft, which allowed USF to use it’s software to create the site, considers finding a permanent fix for the problem a top priority, and IT expects both programs to run smoothly soon.