Good news about Starfish!

Hello Shoreline Faculty & Staff, 

 We are excited to share some unexpected good news regarding the Starfish restoration effort!  

Working with EAB (the company that owns Starfish) we have found a workaround to update a limited set of information in Starfish. While we cannot restore the nightly data imports until the college server is back online, we will be sending a partial “snapshot” of certain data that will make working with students in Starfish easier while ongoing restoration efforts continue. 

What will update? 

• Students who are enrolled in classes as of July 28th will have full Starfish profiles. This includes students enrolled for Fall quarter. These students will be able to log in and book appointments in Starfish, and college staff will no longer need to create prospective student profiles for these students. The Starfish administrator will manually merge the prospective student records with the new records this coming weekend. 
• Any students who have been assigned to an advisor in ctcLink since the ransomware attack will now be connected to that advisor in Starfish. 
• Students’ class enrollments as of 7/28/2023 will be reflected in Starfish. Please note that no subsequent add/drop activity will be reflected until the system is fully restored. 
• Instructors will be able to see their current students as of 7/28 in Starfish. 
• Staff who were hired by the college between March 20 and July 13, 20237/28 will potentially be able to receive Starfish permissions as relevant for their work. If your area is already using Starfish and has hired new staff in this period, please contact Caitlin to have their permissions updated. 

What will not update? 

• Students who have applied to the college since the ransomware incident but have NOT enrolled will not gain access, as they lack network IDs. Only students enrolled in classes as of 7/28/23 will be in Starfish. 
• Student attributes and organizations will not update – information seen on the overview and info tab will still be incomplete or out of date. Please refer to ctcLink rather than Starfish for this information, and do not attempt to use the filter function in Starfish until full restoration is complete. 
• Staff who have demographic or organization-specific relationships with students in Starfish may still not be connected to all of the students they work with. This includes groups like Veteran and Military Student Services, Transitional Studies, and Workforce Funding. Impacted students will include both those new to the college since March 20^th and any students who have been recoded into impacted groups since that date. 
• Information will not update in real time – changes made after July 28 will not be reflected in Starfish. 

When will I see the updates? 

• The Starfish team is working with EAB now to ensure that the update can be done smoothly. We are in the testing phase right now, so all timelines are tentative. 
• If all goes well, though, the update should go into effect late this week or early next week. 
• The announcement banner in Starfish will be updated once the update goes through with the most current status.  

Can we do this regularly until the server is back? 

• This manual upload is a very complex process for both the college and EAB, so it isn’t something we can do often.   
• However, we have negotiated two manual updates: the first now, and the second near the end of Summer term, allowing us to bring in as many new Fall students as possible. 

I will reach out to areas using Starfish to discuss how the restoration timeline impacts you, and help identify workflows that will make your work as smooth as possible during this time of transition. 

As always, if you have any questions about this or anything else Starfish related, please feel free to reach out to me!  

Caitlin Jacques, PhD  
 Business Analyst – Starfish  
 Guided Pathways