What is oasisSIS version 5.0?

Administrative Note
Knowledge Base 2.0 article 590

What is oasisSIS version 5.0?

A software upgrade is written to introduce new features, improve performance, enhance security, fix bugs, and generally maintain compatibility with newer technologies, ultimately (hopefully) providing a better user experience and addressing issues present in older versions of the software.

A software upgrade is not something that a company chooses to do unless there is some very specific reason to do so. It is an expensive endeavor, takes a significant amount of human labor and comes with a risk of alienating existing users.

In early 2023, following the ABHE annual meeting, and with the support of several of our larger schools, OASIS Technologies engaged a 3rd party cyber security company to conduct an internal audit of our systems with the express intention to find ways to improve on our systems and start the process of our next step in software development.

These discussions included the potential uses of artificial intelligence (AI) by 3rh party hostile parties as well as the potential use of AI within our software platform that could possibly support our schools. We asked our selves this question: "Is version 4 positioned to take us into the next 5-10 years or, if not, what do we need to do to ready ourselves for the future?" It was our conclusion, that to best serve our schools going forward, we would need to consider several factors prior to initiating an upgrade to a new version (5.0) ... one of which was a considerable financial investment on our part.

In February 2024, at the 2024 ABHE Annual Meeting, we announced the release of our first version 5 sub-modules (Search User, Custom Forms, Custom Letters, Custom Reports, Custom Contact) all of which are available through the version 4 platform. Since that time we have steadily released additional system modules as they have become available: Admissions, Finance, Financial Aid, Registrar, Student and Faculty are all currently released. We still have several more to go.


BUT WHY? Why did OASIS Technologies chose to release version 5.0?
We did this for a number of significant reasons that are outlined below:

New Features: As programming languages mature, new features, functionalities or capabilities (libraries) are often added.  Thus, allowing us to enhance the software's usefulness.  The version 5.0 upgrade has been re-written to take advantage of many of the language updates available to us bringing in opportunities for future development.

System Security: No internet based software service is 100% guaranteed to be secure. There are literally countries out there with thousands of bad actors on their payroll doing what they can to cause whatever damage they can. As a software provider, OASIS Technologies does have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that our system is reasonably kept current to the latest security standards.

Security Patches: To address security vulnerabilities and protect our systems from possible cyber threats that might be present in older software versions and with the growing threats due to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). The version 5.0 upgrade has been re-written to incorporate a number of security updates including end to end URL encryption.

Hardware Improvements: Computers, laptops and mobile devices are steadily improving and as they improve the capacity of the various web browsers available on those systems get updated to take advantage of those hardware upgrades.

Compatibility Updates:  The version 5.0 upgrade has been released to ensure the software works seamlessly with newer operating systems, hardware, 3rd party applications (APIs) and the various latest upgrades to HTML Standards.

Planning for the Future: Since 2018, HTML5/CCS3 standard has been the root of everything Software as a Service (SaaS), but something much bigger is about to be released in the coming few years and OASIS Technologies is positioning itself to ensure that we are ready for these upcoming areas of change.

Future Development: The version 5.0 upgrade has been released to incorporate the potential growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).  We have initiated the transition of our back-end systems to utilize a larger scope of microservices (small, independent services that communicate with each other via APIs, allowing for greater flexibility, scalability, and easier maintenance.) 

In plain speak: we’re positioning to realize how AI and ML might be incorporated into our platform to serve our institutions.

User Experience Enhancements: To refine the user interface, making it more intuitive and user-friendly utilizing the newest commonly accepted security protocols, graphic interfaces (UI and UX) and hardware.  The version 5.0 has a better UI and UX, is run on faster, more secure systems.

.  

TIMELINES

Version 4.0 and Version 5.0 reside on completely different server clusters and they do NOT share a common code base (ie. web-servers, backend applications) but they do share a common database.

Because both versions utilize the same database, there is currently no “End of Service” date for version 4.0.  OASIS Technologies will not be “forcing” any of our schools to move from version 4 to version 5 and the transition can be made on a schedule of the schools planning.

1. There are some significant feature updates in version 5 that do not exist in version 4. This is especially noticed in both the FACULTY and STUDENT learning management system where we have significantly upgraded the oasis Learning Management System (LMS) platform.
   
   
2. All future development made to the code base will be done to version 5.  We will not be entertaining any “feature requests” for version 4.0
   
   

If you would like some additional training with the version 5 system please reach out to us through the help desk and schedule a zoom session for some 1:1 training.

Lucian