- We launched a student technology survey led by Julie Wilson – over 300 students participated in the last few weeks of the session and a full report is now being prepared. Julie is now going to conduct a similar survey with academic staff.
- We have completed another well planned IT “at risk” period.
- A new self-service facility for students to change personal Library PIN numbers has been launched. This is now a “real time” update across a number of systems including e-Vision, Pharos and Millennium. The Library PIN is used for the borrower record on the catalogue, placing reservations, booking group study rooms on the catalogue, issuing books via the self-issue units, crediting money to Pharos via UPay and the Kiosks, and releasing print jobs at Print Release stations.
- You can now see your training record on MyView (have to scroll down “below the fold”).
- MyView performance has been improved and HR now promoting off campus access to MyView – with changes to email, website etc. One of our customers commented: “I just authorised someone's leave and it was really quick. This will make a huge difference to a lot of people - thank you!”
We were pleased to announce that the upgrade of student email from Outlook Live to Office 365 was completed on time, on budget and the conversion itself was finished ahead of schedule. The upgrade process has been relatively smooth with support calls and student comment still being followed up. Thanks go to everyone involved in making the transition happen. There are one or two loose ends that are being sorted out and the final project board will meet to review lessons learned for the next stage of the project. More information about the upgrade is available here.
This project is making good progress with academic schools maintaining a deadline of end of May for production of the initial timetable so that rooms can be allocated during June/July. There is a tremendous amount of work going on across the University to make this happen and there are going to be lots of benefits once the “one off” job of entering all the necessary data and parameters has been completed. Our team in IT Services has made an invaluable contribution so far, our thanks to all those involved.
New e-recruitment system successfully launched
This new service was “soft launched” in late April with the first jobs now working their way through the new system supplied by Stonefish. The new service aims to improve the applicant experience with a cleaner and more professional web front end to the application process. It also changes the way that the back-end process works for managers and HR staff, with an ambition to speed up the administrative aspect of the activity by moving to on-line processes.
During the IT “at risk” period, the e-mailing list management service Majordomo was retired after years of sterling service. It has been replaced with Sympa for a wide range of University mailing lists. With thanks to the IT Infrastructure Team for making this happen.
The Project Board made its recommendations to the Senior Management Team that a development and improvement program should be undertaken with the existing SAINT system. Various project work streams identified over 20 development areas which have been prioritised into essential and desirable. Development areas include work previously being considered by separate project activity (e.g. XCRi). The total investment is significant in excess of £2 Million total costs and this has now been submitted for approval by the University ASPC committee. The Project Board for this phase has now completed its work and will be handing over to an implementation team.
A project to implement a cashless card system for bursary students has now become an initial investigation into the various uses of smartcards and related interface systems. This piece of work will report the initial investigations shortly. In a separate development the plans for a bookshop retail outlet in the Richmond Atrium (to replace the Waterstones branch which closed down) are well under way and both short-listed companies have cashless card solutions.
Mobile Apps
The prospectus profile has now been developed and released into the AboutUoB mobile app. This is another targeted improvement to the application which will be showcased at the next Open Day event in early July, when IT Services will be joining the Library and other LSS teams to promote student support at Bradford to potential applicants.
Supporting Room 101
For a long time we have provided a facility management support service to the Student Union. With the transfer of certain functions from SLED to the Student Union, we also formally inherited the support of the facilities in room 101 Richmond Building. These facilities were due an upgrade and are particularly heavily used by our international students. The room has therefore been updated with latest kit and software. The team has been very pleased with the transformation: ”it is just great, such a difference, thank you, thank you to you and the guys who installed. Great job. This will make 101 even better so good times ahead.”
Customer Feedback
We do get lots of positive customer feedback which often includes useful and constructive feedback – we publish this on our web site and also feedback on “you said…we did” whenever appropriate. One recent email from the Dean’s office at the School of Management highlights the quality of our service desk team.
I have organised two one-hour briefing sessions this week and this is an open invitation to come along and contribute to the emerging technology development plan. There will be a presentation of the essential and desirable projects that have been identified through the process so far. The two sessions are on Wednesday June 12th 15:30-16:30 and on Thursday June 13th 16:00-17:00 both sessions will be held in the Learn Higher Room 01.58 and everyone is welcome.
As usual, 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. And don’t forget that the full IT rolling plan, account management information, organisation charts and other department information are all regularly updated on the IT Services web pages.
