Database maintenance (formerly cycle prep) is the regular and ongoing process of ensuring that all Slate-based operations will remain effective during the next admissions cycle, term, or business year.

The Database Stewardship tool in Home Slate lets you review and complete database maintenance tasks in one place.

To access the Database Maintenance tool:

1. In your production database, hover over the Slate logo (top left).

2. Select Home Slate.

3. From the list at left, select Database Stewardship.

The Database Stewardship tool has four tabs. The default tab is Dashboard, which gives you a distilled list of high-importance tasks from each of the following tabs:

Maintenance 🛠️

Focused on cyclical tasks that refresh your database at meaningful intervals.

When preparing and planning for database maintenance, you should review the action items under the Maintenance tab. These are the tasks, formerly known as cycle prep, that are best to review between terms or on a pre-established consistent basis.

Many schools choose summer, winter, or both. These required updates include any work that needs to be done in the database to allow current business operations to continue effectively.

A key part of this tab includes functionality to mark the progress and status of each task.

Optimization 🧩

If you’re wondering, “What should I do next?” look no further: Optimization identifies the ways you can use more of Slate for your processes.

Institutions that have established the functionality necessary to carry out essential operations in Slate should be also considering the Optimization recommendations from Technolutions about your database.

Optimization provides custom recommendations for migrating current Slate practices to modern functionality and encourages you to take advantage of all of the features in Slate.

Health 📈

An overview of factors that can impact database performance. Includes tasks to ensure your database is configured as efficiently and sustainably as possible.

📖 For more recommendations, check out Proactive Maintenance for Database Health.

Database Maintenance checklist

While the Database Stewardship tool allows you to manage your Cycle Prep items within the tool itself, some organizations have developed processes that use tracking platforms outside of Slate.

While less interactive, the checklist spreadsheet lets you complete items as you work through your annual cycle:

• 📁 Download the checklist for Admissions as a spreadsheet

• 📁 Download this checklist for Student Success as a spreadsheet

Scheduling database maintenance

Many institutions find that the summer months are the best time to work on annual maintenance for your database and Slate optimization, as this is their time between previous and upcoming cycles.

However, many schools work on their database maintenance on a bi-annual or rolling basis. There is nothing that confines this planning and maintenance to the Summer months.

Once you have a plan in place, you can work on these tasks or projects whenever you have the time and resources available; the completion of these tasks are more important than when they are completed.

New projects

New projects generally fall into one of three different categories:

• A problem in your current process that you hope to address and improve.

• Implementing a completely new process. For example, you wish to begin a scholarship process in Slate.

• Keeping your Slate database up to date with new functionality.

No matter which category your new projects fall into, the steps to completing your project will be similar:

1. Prioritization: You are never going to be able to accomplish every goal immediately, so developing a process that allows you to evaluate and stage new development is crucial. This is an essential function of maintaining your database year-over-year.

2. Preparation: Before you get to work, make sure you are familiar with the essential functionality in Slate and any recommended best practices. The Community Forum is a great place to start your preparations, but you will also need to leverage the Knowledge Base, Learning Lab, and non-Production environments like Test and Showcase to get ready.

3. Building: Once you begin creating a new process or new functionality in Slate, don't forget all the support resources that are available to help you overcome any unforeseen obstacles.

4. Testing: Once you think you have finished building, don't forget to test!

5. Activation: Activating new functionality will vary depending on the tool or process. It may mean publicizing the URL for a form, or it may mean sending an email.

6. Monitoring: It is always important to monitor any new process to track any possible issues or identify potential improvements. Monitoring can involve internally auditing within Slate, or checking in directly with the staff or students who are interacting with your new process.

Team building and governance

Team building will most likely take place all year long, but the natural end of your cycle is a great time to take stock of your internal resources. Team building should not be ignored while establishing a strategy for good database management.

Factors like staff turnover and role changes can disrupt your operations, especially if you are overly reliant on just one person. Additionally, it is vitally important to recognize that Slate-based operations will inevitably grow beyond your initial expectations and usually beyond the your office itself. It will be necessary to have the staff, processes, and investment in place to incorporate any new operations. Team building will help address both of these concerns.

Your Slate team will always include a Slate Administrators. Slate Admins are empowered operations staff who understand your business needs as well as Slate functionality. Slate Admins are essential when evaluating, prioritizing, and implementing any new processes.

The most successful Slate schools think beyond their operations team, establishing a Slate governance system.

A governance system includes both a steering committee and guidelines for developing new Slate-based processes. Good governance supports communication and discussion between interested groups or individuals, but it also clarifies decision-making authority.

Your Slate steering committee will absolutely include your Slate Admins, but also needs to include representation from the leadership level and other potential Slate stakeholders across campus.

📖 Further reading: Developing your Slate team