MUNCIE, Ind. - Ball State employees needing quick access to student, employee and university statistical data can quickly get the information in one, easy-to-find location.

This month, University Computing Services launched the university’s intranet known as "BSU@Work," located at www.bsu.edu/bsuatwork.

"We wanted to give faculty and staff a central source for carrying out their Ball State business on the Web," said Junior King, coordinator of Internet applications.

Included on the site are student and employee emergency contact information, student schedules and grades, Web Gradebook, downloadable forms such as state and federal tax forms, purchase requests, absence reports, electronic forms, historical data and much more.

All of the information available on the site has been available to employees for some time, but not in one location. Some of this information was available on the IBM mainframe, but during Y2K upgrading were moved to Web-accessible applications.

While some of the information on BSU@Work is open to anyone with Web access, portions that include sensitive data, such as student information, is controlled by password access only after approval has been granted.

"Access is based on a ‘need-to-know’ basis," said King. "If you have the need to know in order to perform your duties as a Ball State employee you will most certainly be granted access."

To request access, employees need only to go to the BSU@Work site and fill out an online form.

A company or organization’s intranet typically includes proprietary information and/or information of use mainly to employees. Web-based intranets are becoming commonplace in the private sector, but Ball State may have a jump on most universities in its intranet development.

"I know there are a lot of institutions that have parts of intranet-related components, such as employee searches and downloadable forms," said King. "Few institutions have the electronic forms capabilities of Formblaster and the amount of student and employee information in the BSU@Work site. These have come about from the commitment of the university and the vision of ASAP (the Ball State IBM mainframe system known as Administrative Shared Access Project) 15 years ago."

By Nancy Prater, Web Editor

(NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information, contact King by e-mail at jking@bsu.edu or by phone at (765) 285-1478.)