Welcome all to our latest newsletter.

It has been a hectic couple of months here at SMSS; it is hard to believe that the festive season is just around the corner. The major focus for us has been the build up to release 9.06.00 with 10 users joining us at the offices on 2 and 3 September for user testing.

You will all be aware of the challenging times we have experienced in Wellington recently with the earthquakes affecting us all in some way or another. Thankfully the ground seems to be co-operating now and SMSS offices have been cleared as structurally sound and safe. The positive side of the quake is we were able to put into practice our recently reviewed Business Continuity Plan. Thanks to some great flexibility from our staff this ran like clockwork. I have full confidence that if we were to suffer from a natural disaster or event there would be minimal impact to business, which is a great positive to come out of a non ideal situation.

We are delighted to announce that The Catholic Institute of Aotearoa and Carey Baptist College have gone live with Artena over the last few months, more importantly both executed their SDR successfully with Artena, I am sure much to their relief. The smooth transition from their old student management system to Artena is without a doubt due to the excellent planning and guidance of the SMSS team. Our third new client this year, Taruna College, is moving into ‘Go Live’ testing over the next few weeks.

During the period since our last newsletter we have had some staffing changes. For those of you who have not come across the new team members yet, Samantha Stanley recently joined us as our Technical Business Analyst replacing Vincent and Rhian Nicholls is our new Client Support Administrator replacing Lynne. You will find more information about both our new staff members later in the staff biographies section of the newsletter.

As always if you have any questions or comments around the above, or anything for that matter, please give me a call.

Cheryl Horo
Client Relationship Manager

We are nearing completion of user testing of 9.06.00; the release will be available for downloading in the first week of October.

Some of the new features of this release are:

• Artena now checks the format of emails and mobile phone numbers
• A change to the way classes can be associated with offerings
• New ways to search for students using the admissions dashboard
• A number of small fixes have also been addressed throughout Artena

The clients who joined us at the offices to test this release took advantage of the opportunity to share experiences and question the technical team. We also had the honour of helping Judy Thompson from NorthTec celebrate her birthday.

Sam our new Technical Business Analyst cut her teeth in the telecommunications industry, working in Australia, London and Singapore. After her big OE, Sam returned to Australia to work at the University of Ballarat where she implemented the Syllabus Plus timetabling system. She made the big move to New Zealand in 2008, and after working for the Asia Pacific distributer of Syllabus Plus as a consultant, Massey University and the NZ Defence College as an analyst, she landed at SMSS in July. Sam feels her experience in the education industry as a user, consultant and business analyst makes her a valuable addition to our team.

Sam is driven to create the best solution possible to satisfy your requirements, while ensuring the Artena suite of products is robust and modelled on best practice methodology. You might think that she asks a lot of questions, but she’s just making sure she’s got all her ducks in a row before she proposes the solution to you. Sam always has the long term goal in mind, so don’t be surprised if she comes up with ideas that surprise you and make you think not just about how you use the software now, but how you will be using it far into the future.

Sam lives in Palmerston North with her husband and a blended family comprising four children, a cheeky corgi and a mad black cat. She loves travelling in NZ and beyond, experiencing new places and foods whenever the opportunity arises. Weekends see Sam ensuring her vegetable garden is growing madly, then harvesting and cooking the produce and baking fabulous bread. A pizza oven is the next home improvement project on the cards.

Rhian is our Client Support Administrator; he has been with us since late June. Rhian is the face behind that very welcoming greeting you receive when you call the SMSS office. This role now supports the SMSS Help Desk so don’t be surprised if Rhian answers your call sometimes rather than Lian.

Prior to joining SMSS he held a position as SME on the service desk at Unisys supporting the Vodafone and McDonalds (Australia and NZ) accounts.

The thing Rhian likes best about working at SMSS is the great small team environment and the varied work load. The variety of tasks completed on a daily basis keep life very interesting and constantly busy

When Rhian is not at work you will find him either on the ocean with a rod in his hand or in the backcountry chasing game. Having come from a rural background he relishes any opportunity to get out and about and explore our beautiful country. He really looks forward to the opportunity to meet you all and working with the team here to provide the best possible service to you all.

Do you need an overview of the SDR fields?

SDR overview documents are located in the logged in pages of the website, under FAQ. These give a summary of the fields included in the SDR files.

Need to copy the StudyLink ID or Invoice Number?

Double click the underlined number which will copy it to the clipboard, and you can then paste it where you want it.

You are a vital part of the Artena development and we welcome your thoughts, suggestions, criticisms, and feedback.