The University of Sheffield
Corporate Information and Computing Services

Projects and Developments

With News for July 2013 (covering June)

Business Activity Projects

My Sustainable Print

  • MSE, Infection & Immunity, Psychology. Have now moved to the new Proof of Service service as well as the Schools of Management and Languages and Culture as well as Human Resources and it is proving very popular.
  • Consultations to decide how the future service will work locally have now closed.
  • The next step is to procure a Framework Agreement that will determine the University’s printer fleet for the duration of the service.
  • Implementation will take place commencing 16th September 2013 and lasting 4 months. As with all our projects we will avoid disruption during busy times, e.g. Registration

Print Submission Software

  • Student system now live
  • Staff pilot coming soon

Other Developments

  • Xerox are to refund support charges for Web Services due to long standing issues with the system going live
  • NWUPC Cut paper and specialist print paper contract has been awarded to 8 suppliers
  • Alumni Office will continue with their Tender for the Alumni Magazine but will build into the specification that design agencies seek a quotation from Print & Design Solutions
  • Managed Windows 7 desktop and MSP project: As an interim solution users can install own driver for print/scan/web cams etc. but will be removed on implementation of MSP
  • Fire Alarm System to be upgraded in the Drama Studio
  • Meetings this month include the results of the Mobile printing software ‘everyone print’ test with the student group; the Closer Collaboration Project for Conferences & Room Bookings; and the Closer Collaboration Project for Merchandising

Communication and Collaboration Projects

Replacement MUSE

  • The intensive period of development of Phase 1 (Access to services) is coming to a close.
  • Preparations are being made to start work on Phase 2 (Personalised Home Page, Student Profile)

Text Messaging System

  • Functionality to make it possible for authorized staff to text students will shortly be added to CIES.
  • It is now possible to enter your personal mobile number in MyJob, so you can be kept informed of major incidents affecting your work at the University. Staff who have work-provided mobile phones will have their numbers added by default.

uSpace Closure

  • July will see the start of the gradual limitation of usage of uSpace, and communications to space and group owners of alternative facilities.
  • There has been good progress on the closure of MUSE groups.

Other Developments

  • MUSE phase 1 going live in the immediate future.
  • Most old MUSE groups have agreed closure process
  • Core voice upgrade successful
  • Unified comms pilot being planned
  • cPanel to be reviewed
  • Google search appliance possibilities being investigated
  • Student account closure process being clarified
  • Google Steering Group to meet shortly

Corporate Information Projects

Admissions Auto Email

  • The functional requirements of the system are being refined.

Incident Contacts

  • The project is restarting with the emphasis on providing contact details for use by departments in the event of an incident. This information will be searchable and extend to external contacts such as contractors. A Project Board meeting is arranged.

Student eFile

  • Work continuing on initial set of documents nearly complete

Student Systems Review

  • The final project report, with recommendations, has been drafted and will be finalised shortly.

Other Developments

  • Corporate Information Strategy for 2012-2015 approved
  • CI SAG recommends Service Criticality should be measured in working days rather than hours
  • Old admissions data has been deleted
  • The International Faculty want to use CIS for their student record system and will require training on the system from September 2014. They also want to take advantage of the HEAR
  • The Institutional Database Project has been awarded to Introspective, who will deliver functionality surrounding study abroad, Erasmus, summer schools and staff working on Erasmus in September/October
  • There is now a registration issues log to prompt discussion and offer solutions to any outstanding issues we have in preparation for Pre-registration and Intro week
  • A Steering Group is to be set up to take forward PCI DSS Compliance
  • Prioritising SAP work for the coming year has begun and it has been agreed that e-Recruitment is the University’s current top priority, along with increasing SAP resilience
  • MOLE may be used as the solution for replacing Docent LMS
  • Information Security training plan for Student Services will begin this month
  • Security Incident Policy and Procedure has been updated and circulated to CiCS staff http://www.shef.ac.uk/cics/policies/securityincident
  • information security work has identified a few at-risk departmental business/research systems

Help and Support Projects

Other Developments

  • The Service Advisory Group would like to ensure that criticality of services is linked to business continuity when carrying out any judgement calls for changes that could go wrong
  • HipChat is still being piloted and currently there are 50 user licences. Discussions are to take place on whether to adopt it formally
  • The out of hours incident procedure has now been incorporated into the draft incident management procedure: Incident Management Policy Document - DRAFT June 2013. It nows needs to be agreed
  • A small team has been established to demonstrate the capabilities of Supportworks in relation to Incident, Problem and Change Management
  • Operational Liaison Meetings have taken place with each of the Faculties
  • uCard access to new and refurbished buildings has been discussed with Estates as swipe access needs to be replaced in the next three years

Infrastructure Projects

Replacement Desktop 2

  • Work continues on the rollout of the Windows 7 Managed Service to staff within Professional Services and Academic Departments.

Other Developments

  • Oracle/Solaris blade chassis: Solaris 11 training received and aiming for some service on hardware by end August
  • VMware: Two Dell chassis ordered and aiming to have some service on this new hardware by end of July
  • It is hoped new student intake will be on OES Linux and not on Netware
  • The tender process for Application Control Engines (Load Balancers) has been awarded to Riverbed
  • Red Hat open source licences have been renewed
  • Netware replacement issues ongoing. Exploring use of CIFS on filers directly where appropriate. As part of the requirement for multi-protocol access, we are exploring options for browser based access to filestore (ie functionality currently provided by Netstorage and more)
  • Data outlets are being rationalised in the Information Commons, and Arts Tower and recovered switches are being deployed in other areas
  • Movement of ducts around Durham Road/Jessops area to facilitate new builds/refurbs

Learning and Teaching Projects

Online Programme Management System

  • Accreditation system (project phase 1) development work and user testing has been completed.

Programme Regulations Online Management System

  • There has been good progress on the course finder, a facility to view published regulations
  • The next area of work is workflow - which is the main piece where academic departments and LeTS will interact with the system.

SHIP (Sheffield HEAR Implementation Project)

  • A searchable HEARable activities web page was launched in April 13.
  • The batch upload of students to the activities they have completed went live at the beginning of June 13.
  • HEAR as a formative document will be delivered via MUSE to current 1st year UG students at 2pm on the 5 July 13.
  • Interim HEARs will be available, via the Digitary system, so that students can provide third parties (especially employers) with access to this document before graduation,
  • Exit HEARs will be produced for UG students on 2 year programmes in July 14
  • A HEAR website has been set up at www.sheffield.ac.uk/hear. This has been revamped into a staff-facing website; a second student-facing site has been created as part of SSiD’s web review project.

Other Developments

  • The team has successfully bid for HEA consultancy to do a piece of scoping work on 'Mainstreaming Technology Enhanced feedback at the University of Sheffield'. The final report has been prepared and will be sent to the HEA this month. This dovetails neatly with a University wide successful JISC bid for a larger piece of work on feedback that we will be involved in during the coming months.
  • We successfully facilitated around 10 on-line exams during this exam period. Although technical problems with MOLE2 delayed one of the exams we were able to work with the department and the exams office to ensure that all students were able to take the exam on the allocated day.
  • Major works to replace all of the electrics in the IC have started and will be continuing throughout the summer. This will provide a much more robust neater solution to providing power to each study space. At the same time all of the PCs are being replaced in the IC. We will be offering students an even better more reliable service in the next academic year.
  • New better quality graduation DVDs will be on offer to students this year. The team will be filming graduation and offering full length DVDs as well as a video clip of an individual student receiving his or her diplomas. These video clips are Facebook friendly and were very successfully piloted earlier in the year. We expect them to be very popular.
  • The team have done a major training exercise on the use of Turnitin for on-line submission. Uptake of Turnitin has increased enormously and we're hoping to ensure that all academic colleagues can benefit from the system.
  • The teaching timetable for 2013/2014 was created from scratch this year rather than rolling forward as it has done for the previous several years. The team have worked with each academic department individually to better understand their requirements and help them think through their timetabling strategy. Although this was not initially a universally popular decision departments have found it very helpful to take the opportunity to look in some detail at their timetables. There are approximately 10% fewer timetabled events this year compared to last year and we will be doing some analysis to see how much impact creating the timetable from scratch has had on this.

Research Projects

Other Developments

  • The iceberg storage refresh will be implemented by mounting filesystems off the new general purpose storage system. Also experimenting with linux talking to storage delivered by Windows server 2012
  • Upgrade planned for SGD to deal with residual applications problems
  • Reviewing usage metrics for iceberg to give better assessment of both load and impact
  • Additional free Ansys licences have been obtained via an agreement between Insigneo and Ansys
  • Final meeting with RDM Rose Project has taken place
  • Local monitoring of N8 resource usage has been set up using Splunk