A girl called Jack

On the BBC morning news there was an interview with a food writer on how to prepare family meals for under £1.  I googled her site and recommend it.  There is a massive difference between having a choice about cooking a £1 meal for your family and it being a necessity.

IT Services Newsletter #43

Small Successes

At the start of our monthly IT Board we begin by sharing small successes over the last month. At today’s meeting:

• There were no service interruptions to report (hurrah!)
• The IT “at risk” period was successful with a number of important changes taking place. The upgrade to the Novell ZEN infrastructure, which directly affects all of the student PC cluster provision, was a particular success.
• A high priority request to re-write Board of Examiners reports for the new assessment rules was completed.
• The Student Union sabbatical elections were a great success in terms of student engagement – the largest turnout ever – and supported by an electronic voting system.
• There were lots of other small successes that weren’t reported!

Project News

At IT Board we reported on the latest rolling plan for IT Services. A reminder that this document and others (like our organisation chart, account management documents, lessons learned and plans etc) are all published here. The overall scorecard of projects is largely the same but it makes a change to report that we had no new “panic projects”. There are 72 items we are tracking on the plan (down from 78 last time) and 35 of these are live activity (versus suspended or waiting for approvals etc). There were 3 items that were reported as completed and/or now business as usual since the last meeting.

 Windows 7/Office 2010 roll-out continues

The migration of the Hub back office to PC’s/Win 7/Office 2010 has now commenced and the IT Support team is aiming to complete this by the end of April. Preparations are now being made for School of Life Sciences rollout (email already gone out to all School staff) to commence in June and to be completed by the beginning of 13/14 academic year.

Upgrade to the Solidus Contact Centre Service

An upgrade to the Solidus system went ahead as planned in late February. The IT Support team can now begin to look into additional functionality such as SMS, chat and social media feeds – Twitter and Facebook. We will be pursuing that with the supplier (Telent).

XCRi Project concluded

This JISC-funded project has allowed us to undertake a thorough analysis phase with many stakeholders and create a full specification of what a new Module/Course Approval system needs to do. Such a system would essentially replace ModCat and a series of largely manual processes. The XCRi Project Board now has a series of options for how progress a new system (ie. buy, build, defer).

SAINT Review

The Project Board for the SAINT/SITS Review was presented with a series of options and took the decision to keep the SITS system, and invest in a development programme to fix current issues and also enhance the usability and usefulness of the system. Next stage is to consider a series of costed options which would lead to formation of the development plan. Tribal have now presented a costed plan and this will be considered at the next Project Board.

Attendance Monitoring

The Attendance Monitoring solution has had its initial software load onto the servers, there is much IT and Estates work to complete between now and student arrival in September. The first fifteen power/network installations were successfully completed over the Easter vacation period.

Upgrade to HR/Payroll Systems

The HR/Payroll system Resource Link was upgraded to allow Tax Year-End processing. It's associated web view, called MyView has also been upgraded, though is currently running slow. There is a plan in place to address this in the short term and a longer term proposal on future support from Northgate (our supplier) at the end of April.

Mobile Apps

The first phase of the Prospectus profile on the About UoB mobile app has been completed. Please take the time to have a look at the app and provide any feedback that you have. If you haven’t already downloaded the App and you have a “smartphone” then why not give it a go?

When the University is closed

A self-subscribe SMS group has been set up for staff and students that want to receive notices about the University closing. Almost 500 people have subscribed so far. The Details are:

To Subscribe, txt “closed” to +447950080705

To unsubscribe at any time, txt “no.closed” to the same number. The full stop is important.

Okay so this happens extremely infrequently, but when it does folk can be inconvenienced with un-necessary travel etc. The service can be used for other things maybe. Something to think about perhaps. Who knows when Spring will begin!

New IT Services Website

We are planning to launch the new IT Services website in August and would be grateful if you could spare some time to have a look at it and let us know what you think.

Please could Jacqui Cuthbert have all responses back by the end of May, to allow for enough time for amendments etc. You can either complete the attached form electronically and attach it in an email to Jacqui (j.cuthbert1@bradford.ac.uk), or print it and return it in the internal mail.

Art Work Changes

The artwork that was previously displayed in the corridors and foyer on Level 01 JBP Building has been taken down in order for a new piece of work to be displayed. The new work has recently been on display in the Richmond Atrium and is called “Leap Year”. It will hopefully make you smile. You may spot a number of people and places in and around Bradford in the work. We have also put some work on display in the foyer area (by Bradford students) and will be displaying some photographic pieces that were previously on display in the Richmond Refectory area. My thanks to our Fellow in Arts for making this happen.

This is just a quick snapshot of some of the projects and activity which might be of interest. There is, as always, lots of other activity happening, so apologies if your work wasn’t included – please let me know for the next newsletter. 
Until next time

Rutherford and Son

This production is by Northern Broadsides and its artistic director Barrie Rutter at the Viaduct in Dean Clough.  We went on Febrruary 14th and were welcomed by members of the cast as we went into the venue and afterwards they were in the bar chatting to the audience.  It seemed appropriate for this play to be staged in Dean Clough itself, and for the messages to be as relevant in 2013 as they were a hundred years ago when the play was written.  Highly recommended whenever they perform, and yet another triumph for Halifax.

IT Services Newsletter #42

The first newsletter of 2013 (belatedly published) with plenty to report since the start of the New Year. There does appear to be lots happening across the University, and Prof. Shirley Congdon’s briefing to all staff illustrates the scale of some of those changes and the significant number of these activities which are technology-enabled. Thank you to everyone who is continuing to work hard and to juggle a number of competing demands to the best of our abilities.

Small Successes
At the start of our monthly IT Board we begin by sharing small successes over the last month. Among other things, we found out that:

• A facility called “Groups” is now operating to collect information on IT accounts which use Open Athens to access learning and research materials. This has been made possible by recent changes and upgrades to authentication systems and will mean that we can collect and report on better management information into the future.
• The Christmas and New Year period passed without incident or service interruption. It was the first extended break where there has not been a “call out” for some reason or other (although not always related to technology!). Our thanks to those who participated in monitoring the services over this period.
• We reported that a service improvement to the email server had been successful during the IT “at risk” period – this was at the third attempt – plenty of perseverance demonstrated on that one.
• We reported successful changes to the Secure Global Desktop service and the consolidation of SAINT “S drives” during the IT “at risk” period. The subsequent snow day in mid January demonstrated how even when the University is shut the IT Services remain open for business. On that day the statistics show that we have had over 200 people use the SGD system. There have been almost 1500 accesses to the SGD service since the beginning of January 2013.
• The order was placed for new call recording software which will enable specific calls/phone extensions to be recorded “for monitoring and training purposes” etc. The first roll out of this system will be in the Hub and our own ICT Servicedesk with a target for launch in the Spring.

Project News
At IT Board we reported on the latest rolling plan for IT Services. This document and others (like our org chart, account management documents, lessons learned and plans etc) are all published here. There are 78 items we are tracking on the plan (up from 67 last time) and 36 of these are live activity (versus suspended or waiting for approvals etc). There were 6 items that were reported as completed and/or now business as usual since the last meeting.

New Mobile Phone Framework
A small team led by IT Services has sorted out the new purchasing framework for our corporate mobile phone supply and service. We are remaining with Vodafone under improved terms and conditions resulting from adoption of the Public Sector Networks (PSN) Framework. Based on the previous tariffs etc and assuming similar levels of business we expect a saving to the University users across campus.

IT Services “on tour”
Following in the footsteps of Library colleagues in LSS who have “been on tour”, we undertook the first IT Services event where we camped out in Richmond Building K Floor for most of the day on January 16th. The event was well publicised in the School of Life Sciences who were the target audience. It was a quiet day overall, which could be interpreted in various different ways – either positive spin or otherwise. We thought it was a good enough idea to give it another go, and therefore the next “victims” of the IT Support team’s enthusiasm will be LSS! The date is February 22nd and the location is JBP Building Group Study Room One at the entrance to the building. All welcome with your IT questions and issues – including those of us in IT Services who sometimes suffer from “cobblers shoes”.

Office Moves and Changes
Now that most of the library books have left Floor 01 we are beginning to get space back which is gradually being re-purposed. There is an overall plan which is being overseen by a small “Tidy Up Group” post refurbishment project. Pat and team have done a great job and for example, 01.4 is now fully back in action again. The student PC Clinic is going to be re-located to Floor 01 in the foyer area - some people call this space the “old shop”. An office space (01.45) is also being prepared for occupation by people mainly working on projects and also a “hotdesk/shared desk”. This space also in the foyer area will be occupied during week commencing February 11th.

Upgrades to the Learn Higher Room
Completing a campus-wide upgrade to lecture/teaching facility, two new PCs have been installed in the Learn Higher Room running Windows 7/Office 10 etc. These have been tested and are working with the extensive AV equipment in that room. Thanks for assisting the AV Services team with the launch of that. We are now working on Summer plans to upgrade/refresh the AV capability and layout of the PC Cluster Room (01.58) and the AV facility in Richmond Building J Floor.

This is just a quick snapshot of some of the projects and activity which might be of interest. There is, as always, lots of other activity happening, so apologies if your work wasn’t included – please let me know for the next newsletter.

IT Services Newsletter #41

Welcome to the (belated publication of the) December edition, and also to our new members of the team in IT Support who were introduced in a separate staff announcement. A few of us were involved in last week’s degree congregations – in fact the Thursday ceremony included two processional marshals and the macebearer from IT Services! These are always fantastic events and although Imran Khan wasn’t available (he sent support messages), there were Honorary Degrees awarded to two more Khans: Dr. Mumtaz Khan (of Mumtaz restaurant fame) and Dr. James Khan (of Dragon’s Den). Excellent acceptance speeches from both of our new Doctors.


Recruitment News – project management framework
We have completed a tender for the project management of the Unified Communications Project. This project is going to have two phases – the first phase will be the migration of all our student email accounts from Outlook Live to Microsoft’s enhanced Office365 service. The second phase will be the migration of a number of staff services. There is no timetable yet for either of these activities, but we did secure Microsoft funding to complete the first stage by September 2013 latest (and much sooner is Microsoft’s preference!). We have appointed Jerry Niman to work on this project, and he will be joining us early in the New Year. Jerry has a significant amount of Higher Education and technical infrastructure experience as a previous Head of IT at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he was involved in several major email migration projects.

Reducing the number of reported IT incidents/service interruptions
At a recent IT Support Team meeting I mentioned some interesting management information from our servicedesk system (RMS). We are now into the second year of ITIL based coding which separates IT “incidents” from “requests for change” (we’re not yet recording “problems” separately). We can now compare the number of these things over the same period of time to see if service improvements and root cause analysis is actually making a difference. Of course, the devil is in the detail and the quality of the data recorded. However, in terms of overall direction in the months of October and November there was a 35% reduction (September) and 50% reduction (October) in the total number of incidents reported year-on-year. The number of requests for change was the same. Dave Ewen has been working on a proof of concept (using a product called Elkview) for “dashboard” reporting from RMS and demonstrated that last week. If you are interested in this sort of thing, then Dave can provide a really interesting overview.

In Other News

• There were a number of successful submissions to the most recent performance recognition process. Congratulations to all those who received an award – Sara has already sent a separate message. I am also very pleased to confirm two successful and well deserved re-grading submissions in our IT Infrastructure Team.
• John Fairhall has been doing some work with Jim Boyne over in the School of Life Sciences. There is a short video clip available here. This was launched at a recent Norcroft conference event and it was very well received. Both Jim and Jon Dermo in the Centre for Educational Development are keen to take it further. This might lead to more development work for the mobile app, but it looks very promising.
• The University student system (SAINT) was successfully upgraded over the weekend of December 8th and 9th in a “double upgrade”. A lot of planning went into this and a number of people were on call out and/or working over the weekend. These upgrades are relatively rare events happening twice a year, and they have a big impact on IT Services. Many thanks to all the team involved in making this happen.
• The Cloud Wi-Fi service is now using the JANET network. As well as enabling us to use more bandwidth, the service will benefit from the resilience of the University’s connection to JANET. Some of you will be aware that we had service interruptions on this over the Summer. The users will not notice any difference, the login process is still the same. With thanks to the Infrastructure Team for making this happen.
• We recently supported the Bradathon activity which aims to raise awareness and funding from alumni for student activity and investment. Bradenton commenced on Sunday 11th November 2012 and ran every weekday (6.00pm to 9.30 pm) and on Saturday 17th November 2012 to 2nd December 2012 (2.45pm to 8.00 pm). This was happening in F42 Sunray Cluster. Thanks to all those involved in supporting this activity in the run up to the 50th anniversary celebrations.
• There have been a number of Wi-Fi updates on campus. During November we reported that the remaining wireless base stations installed to bump up coverage levels in the extension part of JBPB floors 1 and 2 were operational. This brings to a conclusion a process which started in May to give good wireless coverage to all General Teaching Areas but has also included JBP Building floors 0-2 (with some extras on 01 and 02), and for academic departments parts of the ICT Building, Horton A floor 3 and some of Richmond M floor. In all there have been 30 new base stations installed, taking our total overall to 168 base stations.
• Work has been progressing on attendance monitoring solutions and a tender has now been issued for return before the end of December – although no-one will be looking at it until the New Year! The Project Board were especially grateful to the IT team for our contributions to the tender (a 60+ page document).

This is just a quick snapshot of some of the projects and activity which might be of interest. There is, as always, lots of other activity happening, so apologies if your work wasn’t included – please let me know for the next newsletter.

IT Services Newsletter #40

We have dealt with the start of a new academic year with some success and a number of new and updated services have been launched which are mentioned below.  Thank you for making that happen – it is rarely anything other than a team effort.  They say that change is a constant, and with the announcement of the Vice-Chancellor’s departure I guess we can expect further turbulence ahead as the process to appoint a successor begins.  Closer to home, I am sure that you will join me in wishing Priscilla Preston well in her new role at Leeds Metropolitan.  We have had a lot of change over the Summer and it’s  good to see new folk settling in and getting a warm welcome.

Recruitment News – our team

There have been a significant number of staff changes since the last newsletter. These have been announced in separate staff announcements.  Since September, we have recruited five new people for the IT Systems Team to support investment plan projects and for the IT Support Team we have two colleagues in new roles.  We have also shortlisted external candidates for the vacant Grade 4 role in IT Support and have interview dates set for late November.

Recruitment News – project management framework

Over the last few months a cross-functional team has been working on a procurement framework for project management resource.  This process has led to a framework agreement for the next three years.  It will provide services which include management of IT projects, business process change projects, change management projects and general (non-technology) projects.  We provided a case study based on CRM (customer relationship management) to the candidates at shortlisting and the response provides a rich resource for any future activity in this area.

Launching the Annual Report 2011-12

We have completed the consultation on the content of the annual reports for last academic session.  This is now published on our usual web pages where reports for the last four years are available.  Once again, we have also provided a short student-focused summary of activity.  Please take a look a the document and at what we have achieved.  There are no plans to produce a “glossy” version for paper circulation.

IT Services web-site re-launch

This is an update on the project to migrate web content to the University content management system (CMS).  When this was first started, IT was at the “back of the queue” as our web presence was in pretty good shape and others took priority.  This Summer there was a major launch of the Library web presence which appears to have been very successful.  We are now commencing the process of auditing and moving the IT web site content to the CMS.  There is a timeline available which begins with benchmarking and gap analysis.  LSS Customer Services will be doing much of the redesign, content and training the new CMS contributors and moderators as this becomes devolved.  Obviously, throughout the whole process the team involved will be speaking to various staff in IT services. The aim is to launch by August 2013.

In Other News

·         The project to deliver on-line applications for student accommodation (e-apps) was successfully launched in late September.  New undergraduate and postgraduate students can now begin the process of applying for accommodation using the on-line service which is integrated with other University systems including SAINT and Room Service.  Congratulations to the team involved with this project.

·    The University systems were updated to deal with the fee processing for the £9k student fee from September 2012.  On the 23^rd October the annual invoice run took place creating over 10k invoice lines with a total value of £50.4 Million.  This is a significant piece of systems integration which is effectively a  once a year exercise.  In future years, we may introduce further process improvements to the data transfers.

·    Eduroam – a new wireless service - was “soft launched” in September and is working well.  It is available to students and staff and also visitors (if they have eduroam at their home institution).  Eduroam is available in the same locations as RoamNet and has a number of benefits including automated connections to avoid multiple authorisations, added security and you can use eduroam at other institutions worldwide (if those institutions provide the eduroam service). There is more information here,  and thanks to the IT Infrastructure Team for making this happen.

·    The piece of work to provide all new students with a print credit on the Pharos printing system has now completed.  Every new student received  a £1.25 credit to their online print account.  Over £5k has been credited so far.  General speaking, the investment in new MFD devices throughout the LSS estate has gone well and devices are now distributed through the buildings and appear to be working effectively.  If you are set up to use the IT Services MFD why not try printing on other student enabled devices across the campus.

·    There have been a number of service interruptions reported through IT Board.  We are continuing to write up reports which get to the “root cause” of issues.  When appropriate, these are published on the service status page so look out for a number of updates coming through after the November IT Board meeting.

·    Projects are progressing on Unified Communications for students and staff with recent workshops on Microsoft Lync and a further event covering Sharepoint.  We have obtained a full set of legal documents from JANET for the migration to Office 365 technology and technical documentation from external partner Salford Software.

·    Work has been progressing on attendance monitoring solutions and a short-term fix has been developed rapidly which has been a  team effort-  involved with the production of tender documentation and also supporting external experts on a register production and scanning system.  For a full update on all the projects we are working on take a look at the IT Services rolling plan.

IT Services Newsletter #39

It’s nearly the end of the Summer, and it feels like it has been especially busy this year. There have been building works all around us in the JBP Building, demolition works for the Kirkstone and Bradford Halls, and the development of SEC and two new sport facilities on the doorstep. The campus has changed a lot this Summer and of course, so too have some of the virtual and physical technology services. Some of these are reported below. It has also been a very challenging year for student recruitment and intake from the perspective of bringing good quality high tariff students into our courses, as well as a couple of technology challenges! My understanding is that we are still some way off the recruitment targets for some Academic Schools. This may mean some re-calibration is needed in academic delivery and related administrative/support activity. It is therefore timely that the University is also beginning a review of all its professional services following the academic school reviews last session. Let’s hope for a relatively smooth start to the new year which is always a fantastic time to see the students back on campus again.

Recruitment News

 

We are continuing to recruit to a number of fixed term vacancies in the IT systems team (5 posts) which mainly relate to the University investment plan. We have shortlisted candidates and are now moving to interview stage. You may not be completely surprised to hear that we failed to find a replacement for Christine Thacker despite external and targeted advertising, so some interim arrangements are now being proposed, while we take stock. There are Request for Staff Appointment (RSA) forms in the system for a replacement for Hanif Sidat, which we hope to announce in due course.

Continual Improvement Update

 

The recommendations made by this team last year, have led to the creation of a co-ordinated University enrolment helpline which was established a week ago when the pre-enrolment portal (PEP) was launched for new students. There have been a number of process improvements to the online process which have involved a number of people in IT Services, LSS Customer Services and the Hub. The PEP was launched to plan with particular thanks to Richard Davis for making that happen. Within 12 hours of launching the system to the first batch of 1500 Home students, over half of those students (760) had logged on to the PEP and one third (479) had completed the process. Since then further students have been released into the system successfully. We also took the decision to separate the PEP processes from IT account registration – new IT accounts are all automatically processed when students change status on the admissions system. As at September 5th over 3,200 new IT accounts have been automatically created since the first days of clearing and over 2,500 students have already self-registered by setting up all their password details and shared secrets etc – which is almost 80%. That is really excellent and our thanks to Steve McCain and Jacqui Cuthbert in particular, for their efforts in simplifying and streamlining the process and also the support documentation.

 

Clearing 2012

 

Following on from the recent recruitment update from the Vice Chancellor to all staff, I would like to add my own thanks and appreciation to everyone involved in making the results day, clearing and confirmation processes as relatively smooth as we could make them, in all the circumstances. We’ve obviously been dealing with a recurrent SAINT service interruption (now “fixed”) but that did not affect any business operations in a critical way. We have also been dealing with a very specific voice related issue which only affected a few extensions but they happened to be partly in the Admissions Office in Richmond Building. Typical! It is only because we have people who know what they are all doing, and know the University systems inside out, that we continue to manage this and deal with problems when they do arise in a calm and professional manner. Although I’m not sure it felt quite like that at 4pm on Bank Holiday Friday! Students are still applying and being recruited albeit in much smaller numbers now and the final numbers are hard to predict accurately – but see above for creation of 3,200 new IT accounts so far for a performance indicator!

 

Multi-Function Devices (MFD) for Printing and Copying

 

If you have wandered around the Library Building you will have noticed the arrival of lots of shiny new Hewlett Packard MFD’s for the re-launch of this important student service at the start of a new academic session. There are about 20 new devices being commissioned to replace a mixture of printers, copiers and previous generation Ricoh MFDs. All the devices that are being replaced are completely “worn out” after years of good service and were struggling to provide a great student experience towards the end. This new fleet should make a real difference to the service. You will have also noted that we are “taking our own medicine” and have launched a shared staff print service on the IT Services MFD. This uses the pharos account system to “pull” printing securely when you go and fetch your print output. All appears to be working well and thanks to Dougie McHattie for setting all that up, providing the instructions and managing the “change control” process.

 

In Other News

 

• The Key Information Sets (KIS) return was submitted to the deadline at the end of August. Most of the work has taken place around data collection and verification processes, however, it has also used a brand new module in the SAINT student system for this purpose. My thanks to those involved in putting the system “live” and putting the various upgrades to it, as we went along, and to some very tight timescales. This is now an ongoing piece of work and will be routinely submitted for comparison by students and potential students with other Institutions.

 

• For students at the start of the new term, we have moved the PC cluster from Chesham to Student Central permanently – to enable major refurbishment of Chesham for EDT and provide open access PCs in the Learning Mall. We intend to close the elderly JBP small cluster rooms on level 01 – kit will be relocated to the refurbished spaces on floors 1 and 2 of the new Library refurbished space – with light, air, and space! The flagship PC cluster room (JBP 01.53) has new paint, new flooring, (some) new chairs and also brand new state of the art computers. We have launched a brand new scanner service to replace the old facility on Floor 0.

 

• For academic staff, we have replaced and upgraded all the lecture theatre (GTA) computers to a standard high spec for Windows 7, we have set up an auto start and auto update procedure for out of hours updates to things like virus software/windows, and we have re-implemented the power saving on these computers.

 

• We held a second “IT and Estates Working Together Event” last Friday. It was a half day event covering a wide agenda from wiring closets, new builds, managing contractors through potential for shared servicedesk systems/operations. The event also included a presentation by Margaret Ekpo who has been working in Estates as graduate intern on reducing business travel with a particular focus on evaluating and making recommendations on “virtual meetings”. This was really helpful, including a set of specific recommendation and was followed up with a presentation to all interested University staff at a lunchtime briefing today. We will discuss the recommendations at the September IT Board.

 

• We are preparing for the BASE conference which happens on Tuesday September 11th. As it is a one-day event there is a lot less involvement than with the British Science Festival, however we are making various support arrangements including supporting the exhibition to be held in the Richmond Atrium, and also the provision of wi-fi for up to 600 campus visitors. The event has been advertised on the University home page where you may have spotted Ken Livingstone, who is one of the keynote speakers.

 

• The professional service reviews are beginning. IT Services has been invited to participate as a panel member for each of the reviews that are planned over the next 6 months. The panel will also include external membership. We look forward to making a constructive contribution to these activities, with a particular interest in technology and how we future proof the University in respect of its current and future requirements.

This is just a quick snapshot of some of the projects and activity that are crossing my desk and which might be of interest. There is, as always, lots of other activity happening, so apologies if your work wasn’t included – please let me know for a future newsletter.