Latest News

Accommodation System Enhancements

September 2011

e-arrivals

CIS worked with Occam to develop a Web Portal to allow Students to be led through the Arrivals and an optional Induction process before they actually arrive. This is known as the e-Arrivals system and was implemented in ASP.NET 2.0 and IIS as part of the e-Student Portal.

For Students who have accepted their offer and are due to arrive, e-Arrivals delivers airline style boarding passes to speed up the arrival process, reducing queues to pick up keys. The system also ensures that the Student has completed a series of induction pages to ensure compliance with any appropriate Induction processes.

The system allows the Student to schedule a date and time of arrival, picking from a range of dates and times that are configured. The system will automatically monitor arrival times by location and ensure that specified volumes are not exceeded, thus spreading arrivals throughout the day or weekend. The process can in addition be configured to produce parking permits too for defined slots
of time, making it easier to manage traffic and policing issues.

e-induction

CIS was also integrally involved in helping Occam to implement the e-Induction system which enables
the Premises department to put policies, codes and practices online as well as maintain the policies and code using web pages to update the information. It also allows them to design optional tests
(with images and video) to ensure that students understand these codes and practices. The results are recorded to measure and track students’ performance.

Premises also have the ability to tailor information for each hall; for instance specify contact details
or rubbish collection policies, so that only relevant information is presented to each student. Students start at the e-Induction welcome page, and then step through each of the policy topics. At the end they are directed to a knowledge test. This has replaced the externally supplied fire safety training.

Re-Launch of StudentNet Accepted Stage

July 2011

Background

The StudentNet Accepted portal has gone through several different incarnations prior to June 2011. Previous designs have offered functions such as ‘Welcome Message’ and ‘Top Questions’ as well as the primary ‘Essential Steps’.

Design, Build & Testing

Comprehensive usability testing was carried out by external specialists who drew attention to weak points in prototype designs.

The Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) carried out accessibility testing providing important feedback to the design team.

Volunteer Students were invited to take part in trials of early versions of the new product providing valuable input to the quality and ease-of-use of the finished product

The resulting redesign encompasses a new full-screen ‘widget’ providing complete focus upon the 3 steps required for registration. Ticks are displayed following each step giving a visual indication of successful completion.

E-mails are despatched following completion of the whole process providing reassurance, a warm
first-contact with the university and advice on the required next steps.

Following a phase of further improvement and final testing the new Accepted Stage product was launched on 1st August ready for the 2011 registration of new students.

Early signs indicate that the majority of students are able to complete the process without delay, without problem and without consultation with the i-Zone.

Update on the ISS project to improve the Sunrise call logging System

May 2011

Since our last update in December 2010 we have been improving Sunrise and Sunrise Lite
to make it easier to use, more powerful and to provide reporting capabilities to end users.

- All Sunrise and Sunrise Lite Screens have been re-designed to allow a seamless
user experience.

- Sunrise and Sunrise Lite have been updated to provide new functions including
   creating personal filters, generating reports, viewing a personalised dashboard etc.

- The time taken to Add, Assign or close a call has been drastically reduced.

- You no longer need to select a Reporting Category when logging a manual call or
   re-assigning a call to another team, this is now done automatically.

- You can now search for a student /associate using their date of birth and log a call
   for them.

- Improved parent/ child functionality is now available. This allows calls to be broken
down into several parts and assigned to different teams.

- The View Call Report function in Sunrise Lite that allows you to generate a one page
   summary of calls is now also available in the full version of Sunrise.

- Students and Associates can now be emailed using their personal Email address.

- You can now update a call, send an email and add a note in a single operation.

- When you update a call, Sunrise can now send out emails with your address, so that
   replies come straight to you.

- Associate contact and account details are now available within Sunrise.

- The owner of a call can be alerted by the system when the call is updated.

- Several new departmental specific fields have been added to Sunrise and Sunrise
   Lite to enable reporting and compliance.

Miscellaneous Payment Gateway

April 2011

CIS have recently assisted the Finance Department in implementing a new online portal for making miscellaneous payments to the University.

The site was styled by the CIS web team to fit in with the brand of the CCCU internet.

The portal has already been used to sell Graduation Tickets with Graduates being directed to the
Site which had been set up so that only a selected list of Students could purchase a maximum of
2 tickets.

Initial reaction is very positive and paying for tickets in this way reduced the administrative burden of taking payments for staff in the Finance office.

In future it is hoped to use this service to enable payment to be made for other University Services such as replacement smartcards which will help to streamline the payment process for CCCU services.

Enhancements to the client Management Interface (CMI)

April 2011

Following a process of consultation with users from the i-zone, Service Point and Computing
Services, CIS have recently implemented some enhancements to the Client Management Interface (CMI).

The CMI is the user interface for the Client Management Project (CMP) which automatically allocates services (such as access control to buildings) to Students, Staff and Associates based on their data.

As the CMP is rolled out to cover more services – eventually including the automatic allocation of
staff and student computing accounts (Associate computing accounts are already controlled by the CMP) it is important that the CMI presents client information in a manner that makes it easy to understand why a service has not been allocated to a particular client.

The CMI also includes the ability to grant a short period of temporary access to a service where the client’s data is wrong or a longer period of ad hoc access when they would not normally be entitled
to it.

The changes also involve displaying more relevant information on Services and clients.

There is also added functionality – such as the ability to curtail adhoc or temporary entitlement to a service.

More Users were trained in the use of the CMI prior to the upgrade and this is a step towards the eventual decommissioning of the legacy CliReg system.

This is an ongoing process and any further usability suggestions are welcome.

New Manage My Account service

March 2011

CIS have completed and released a new Manage My Account service for students, staff and associates. It aims to improve existing account management processes and to consolidate existing online applications into one. The new application will allow students, staff and associates to
complete the following functions:

-    Change my password
-    Reset my password
-    Unlock my account
-    Set or change my secret questions

An industry standard concept of secret questions and answers has been adopted by CIS to make
self service account management possible. This means that if users’ accounts are locked or users have forgotten their passwords, secret questions and answers can be used by users to unlock their accounts or reset their passwords. Therefore, all users need to set up their secret questions to enable them to make use of this new self service functionality.

As well as providing the functionality listed above, CIS have made improvements to existing account creation processes for students and associates. Overall, the online account creation applications
have been streamlined and improved following a usability review commissioned by CIS.

These new additions to the University’s online offering will greatly improve user experience and lower the burden on the University’s support teams who are currently required to complete many of the account management tasks for students, staff and associates.

Enhancements to Module Confirmation

January 2011

The Student Module confirmation application has recently been improved and is now integrated into StudentNet. The application is now implemented as a StudentNet Service and can be accessed through the “Me and my services” panel in StudentNET in common with other services.

The new integration in StudentNet ensures the following advantages:

The application is managed from a centralised location.
Access to the application is better controlled.
Modules are now presented within a Widget so the application style, colour scheme & window coordinates are controlled by students preference.
The widget automatically loads initial student biography and programme(s).
Module details are presented and Students may either confirm or report an error to registry giving details.

Students have just finished confirming their modules for this year and the response was very good. All 4476 students responded, 4168 confirmed their modules were correct and 308 students queried their modules with Registry.

This enhancement is delivered as part of a programme of continuous improvement of StudentNet being undertaken by the CIS team.

Update on the ISS project to improve the Sunrise call logging and Knowledgebase systems

December 2010

Since its implementation in January 2009, Sunrise, the University call logging system, has been used by the i-Zone, Corporate Information Services, Registry, Library, Computer Services, and Student Support and guidance to provide a first and second line support service. Knowledgebase is used to manage and publish help articles via 'Ask-the-iZone'.

In order to continue to facilitate the University’s Student First Strategy, Corporate Information Services has successfully completed two key tasks.

A major security re-design on the Sunrise application was successfully completed this week.

The re-design will allow Corporate Information Services to add an additional layer of security on the system, provide additional services on the Sunrise Platform, adapt the system to individual department’s needs, and deploy future upgrades & enhancement requests rapidly.

The process for providing feedback on knowledge articles published on the university knowledgebase has also been improved. When using 'Ask-the-iZone' and viewing knowledge articles users must now provide an answer to the question : 'Was this helpful ?' This response is used to improve the relevance of the knowledge articles searches and ensure that future queries on 'Ask-the-iZone' are provided with better article matches from the knowledgebase.

These enhancements are delivered as part of an on-going project for ISS. Further updates will be published as the project progresses.

Publication of External Examiner Reports

October 2010

Corporate Information Services has improved the process for approving External Examiner reports and publishing them on the university website.

The member of staff who formally approves a report can now do this electronically, instead of emailing the system administrator. Approved reports are now automatically published on a new external examiner reports website, which is accessible to staff via StaffNET (using the “StaffNET services” link), and to students via StudentNET (using the “Me and my services”) link.

The general usability of the external examiner reports system has also been improved, making it simpler and quicker for approvers, reviewers and the system administrator to use.

This work meets the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education requirement that every university has a clear process for sharing external examiner reports with students.

New System for Managing Associates

October 2010

A new system for managing Associates and the services they receive was launched in August 2010. An Associate is an individual who is affiliated to the University and through that affiliation is given and / or needs to use University services. The services currently supported are Computing, Blackboard and Library accounts.

Heads of Department who sponsor Associates (or their departmental administrators) can now create new associates or modify their details online. Initially this has been restricted to a small number of “pilot requestors”, and other requestors have to fill in a form and send it to Human Resources for data entry. Eventually, all sponsors will be able to create and modify associate records themselves.

Newly-created associates are automatically emailed with confirmation that their Computing or Blackboard accounts have been created, or that the library has been notified of their request for a library account.

The new system clarifies the definition of who should be an associate, improves the quality of the data held about associates and automates significant parts of the process.

More information can be found on the Associates web pages.

Thumbs up for StudentNET portal at IWMW2010

06/10/2010

Canterbury Christ Church University's student portal, StudentNET, was placed into the lime-light at this year's Institutional Web Management Workshop, hosted by UKOLN at the University of Sheffield in July.

The 20 minute presentation covered the vision of StudentNET, the technical implementation and a live demo of the portal to web managers from across UK Higher Education institutions. Overall, it was received very well with enthusiastic and positive feedback. One of the reasons why CIS were chosen to give this talk was to illustrate how to embrace and deliver innovation during difficult financial times and with limited resources.

Potential budget cuts was a theme for most institutions that attended the event and web managers wanted to explore ways of continuing to deliver first class online services. There were also very informative talks about improving the institutional web presence, justifying what the roles of a web developer are, as well as looking at the web in turbulent times.

Exploiting Web Services

09/07/2010

CIS have formed a consortium with three other Higher Education Institutions to participate in the Exploiting Web Services Project (EWES), a Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) funded investigation into the feasibility of using Unit4's Academic Database product as a hosted solution by using its web service layer.

Please see the following link for details:
www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/flexibleservicedelivery/ewes.aspx

CUMULUS

09/07/2010

CIS are participating in another Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) funded project, project CUMULUS, which intends to investigate the wider applicability of hosted solutions in the Higher Education Institution space.

For more information on JISC please visit: www.jisc.ac.uk

e-applications for Student Accommodation

05/07/2010

Since shortly after Easter, student applicants have been able to apply for accommodation on-line via the new StudentNET pre-registration portal which now integrates with the embedded e-application functionality of the University’s Room Management Software.

The application for accommodation is now automatically entered directly into the accommodation system, ready to be processed by accommodation office staff, a major improvement on the process employed in previous years when the data had to be manually entered, at a later date.

The implementation was achieved by staff from the Accommodation Office and CIS working together in partnership with the Software suppliers to configure the new website, with additional support from Computing Services providing the technical infrastructure.

The site can be accessed at https://secure.canterbury.ac.uk/studentnet/applicants/

Phase 2 of the project, enabling students to accept a formal offer of accommodation and arrange payment via the same website, will be delivered in July 2010. This will greatly speed up the process of allocating rooms.

Online photo upload tool for CCCU Staff

21/05/10

An online photo upload tool has been designed by Corporate Information Services(CIS) to enable all CCCU staff to upload their digital photo quickly and easily.

This easy to use tool offers staff the ability to resize and crop their photo, as well as preview how the photo will look on their new smartcard.

The smartcard also provides key benefits for staff.

These include:

Clear visual association with Canterbury Christ Church University.
Entry to Augustine House and Rochester House.
Access to all multifunctional devices - printers/copiers/scanners.
Will replace the staff association card in due course and enable the use of catering facilities.

All staff will be able to have a smartcard from 4th May 2010 once they have uploaded their photo.

Further details can be found at the smartcard website

New look StudentNET V2 (now live)

March 2010

StudentNET V2 is the CCCU student portal designed to offer our students a fully personalised and improved online student experience.

Corporate Information Services (CIS) has designed a completely customisable student portal that provides quick access to all the University's online services from one single web page.

Students will be able to change the appearance of the page by selecting a theme, choose what services they want to display and choose their own external feeds to add to the page – from the BBC news feed to their own personal photos on Flickr.

Why not try our demo on You Tube, for a step by step guide through all the services this latest development has to offer.

Manage My Account

February 2010

Manage My Account is a new service intended to allow students, staff and associates to perform basic operations to set-up and maintain their network accounts, using a standard web browser from on or off the campus.

It has been introduced to coincide with the implementation of the Secure Passwords policy. To use the new service, point your browser at www.canterbury.ac.uk/managemyaccount

StudentNET