Many, if not most, MIS2000 states now have some kind of import functionality where data is brought into MIS2000 from some other system in the state. We started doing this many years ago for assessment data and quite a few states now have an import for course history data as well. There are serious timeliness issues to be considered, but imports can make MSIX data much less of a data entry burden. But we only have a handful of states who import enrollment data. Both Maine and Alaska have been doing enrollment imports for years, and we've just recently put a system for importing enrollments into production in Kansas. There may be others that I've forgotten, but all three of these states have taken considerably different approaches to the basic problem. I think Alaska collects information from their districts and builds the import file more or less by hand using Excel before handing it to MIS2000. Maine produces their file from state-level enrollment data and runs the import in MIS2000 manually. The Kansas system is fully automated and picks off enrollment information at the state level nightly as it comes in from districts around the state.

I wish I had some neat pictures to show you, but imports are just not very visual. They can sure reduce workload, though. Bear in mind that these imports require quite a bit of custom development and are one of the few things that we don't include in our standard free enhancements. I think the states that have invested in them would agree, though, that they're well worth the cost.

Let us know if you'd like to look into enrollment imports for your state.