For years, newly admitted students at Cal had to wait overnight to complete their onboarding tasks, such as creating their CalNet ID and passphrase. The delay was due to an overnight batch process in which new student data was migrated from Student Information Systems (SIS) to CalNet overnight, before a UID could be produced.
The UID is a Unique ID. Every campus user, whether student, staff, faculty, guest, or affiliate, has a UID. The presence of a UID allows a user to create a CalNet ID.
Students must wait no more.
A recent collaboration between SIS, CalNet and iHub (a platform service that facilitates enterprise solutions on campus) has resulted in a real-time integration that enables real-time UID provisioning for newly admitted students.
The onboarding process now only takes a couple hours from start to end, which is a great service to new students. The collaboration may also allow us to work towards a more real-time integration with the HR data system to provide real-time provisioning for new faculty and staff in the future.