MySail is Oakland University’s main online portal for students to access a variety of resources. From signing up for classes and checking schedules for the semester, to locating housing information and accessing applications such as Handshake, MySail has everything an OU student could need if you look hard enough.
To streamline the student experience further, Oakland University is launching a new and improved university portal for MySail to pass the torch off to. Todd Nucci, Director of Marketing and Digital/Web Services, explains the purpose of the new university portal.
“The purpose of this is to make it easier for students and staff to manage information related to their academic and professional lives,” Nucci said. “By bringing together a range of resources and tools in one central location, the university portal will help to streamline the administrative process, increase efficiency and improve the overall university experience.”
Nucci explains how the new portal aims to be more user-friendly and accessible for not just students, but faculty and alumni as well.
“Right now we don’t really have a spot for alumni to come to engage, but now that we have the ability for the alumni to engage past the point of them graduating,” Nucci said. “Now we have that path within the university portal for them to come and continue with their university experience, get information for events, and contribute to the university. For faculty, it’ll just streamline their efforts through courses, their ability with grades and making sure they have one central repository for all that information.”
One big change that will help students navigate the portal more efficiently is the addition of a customizable dashboard.
“There’s a really engaging dashboard with a lot of different widgets that are going to be useful for the student experience,” Nucci said. “They’ll be able to customize that to streamline for their success so different groups, things like that. Students will be able to move information right to the top, making sure that they’re getting that each and every time they log in.”
While the new university portal will not fully take over the MySail page just yet, some students have already experienced the new and improved page.
“A soft launch went out in May, and the portal is available right now, so you may have seen it already,” Nucci said. “Right now there is a landing page available on Oakland’s global navigation. If you go to the MySail link right now, that will take you to the landing page. On that landing page, we have links to both the old MySail and to the new portal, which, when we do cut over, we’ll just continue with the MySail legacy on that page.”
To accompany the new portal, an official mobile app is in production to streamline the mobile experience. The mobile app and the full switch to the new dashboard is set to release on October 8, 2024. Please check out oakland.pathify.com to view the new portal today.
