By Morgan Lloyd, news staff

The university launched a new online portal, myNortheastern, to replace the myNEU portal on Monday following months of development.

The new portal brought an updated design and interface to the website, but some students said they were unable to login or use it properly. Rajiv Shridhar, the director of Systems and Production Services for Northeastern’s Information Technology Services department, said this is just the first in a series of future upgrades for the portal.

“This is just the first step. It is a big step, but it is a first step on our journey with the new portal,” Shridhar said.

MyNortheastern has a completely different interface from myNEU, although most of the content of the two appears to have remained the same.

Shridhar said the idea for a new portal was proposed last year and formal development started in March.

“There has been active work to talk to students, to staff, to faculty to see what they use more, what they like about the environment they use now and what they would like to see in the future,” Shridhar said.

Some of the improvements Shridhar mentioned included easier searching capability, a more device-friendly interface and branding that is more in line with the university.

For first-year school psychology graduate student Nikki Caron, however, the updated portal brought new challenges.

“I was trying to do something related to a graduation requirement, and I had just been given directions from my department, and now the way to do it is totally different, so that was a little frustrating,” Caron said.

Taylor Meeks, a first-year student studying microbiology in the College of Professional Studies, also felt that adjusting to the new portal was somewhat difficult.

“I personally am not the biggest fan because I can’t navigate it very well,” Meeks said. “I can’t really figure it out very well, and I think I’m a pretty tech-savvy person.”

The portal is likely to adapt in the upcoming months. As Shridhar emphasized, this is only the initial release of myNortheastern.

“We were looking for a platform that would be flexible, that would allow us to do the things we need to do as we continually evolve the portal to serve our future needs,” Shridhar said.

Others, such Chen Xu, a fifth- year student majoring in civil engineering, faced technical problems while trying to use the new portal.

“I tried once, but I didn’t figure out how it worked,” Xu said. “I tried logging in to myNEU last night, but it just redirected me to another page. I was confused, so I just logged in directly on Blackboard.”

For Xu, however, the myNEU interface was also confusing, something he hoped myNortheastern would improve upon.

“Sometimes when I’m looking for something [on myNeu], like a term or a link, some of them are hard to find. It’s a little bit of an inconvenience,” Xu said.

Despite the criticism, however, Caron said the new portal was ultimately an improvement over myNEU.

“It’s easier to navigate, I think,” Caron said. “It was kind of overwhelming at first, but now it is kind of streamlined.”