Heather Pierre the new Associate Director of Web Communications at Gettysburg COllege was kind enough to guest blog a session yesterday by Jim Cunningham, Pennsylvania College of Technology.
Campus Portals Take Two Moving Forward with Online Collaboration and Social Networking
Employees formerly used shared drives to access forms/policies/procedures, moved to web-browser employee information system (EIS)
“Intranet” ideology
Used active directory to assign permission to data
Solution: Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007
· Enhance workgroup and project team communication beyond file-sharing
· Website for each workgroup/project team, self-maintained through content mgt tools
· Campus yearbool/facebook social networking (corporate social networking)
Challenges
· No staff experience (sharepoint or web)
· Short timeline
Approach
· Identify clear Phase 1 goals
· Partner w/ academic affairs to access technical writer
· Design overall information architecture
· Built prototype, test, refined design, built working model
· Consultant for advanced training and review of prototype
· Freeze development and start migrating content
Plan – the content
· No campus announcements via email – in portal
· Department sites
· Policy and procedure
· Forms
· myEIS
· myWorkgroups
· my site – social networking
“Original” plan – the technology
· Utilize sharepoint portal 100% out-of-the-box, no custom graphics, no branding
Plan – the People
· Project director: PM
· Director of network services and server administrator: sharepoint portal server farm and software deployment
· Technical support staff (3): testers and dept content trainers and tech support
· Technical writer: overall design and information architecture
· Dept content contacts: transition existing docs and update basic dept information
One Year Later…myPCT.pct.edu
One Year After that…semi customized pages
Announcements tab drives ‘digest’ type information
· Can be posted by anyone
· Can be targeted to specific groups
· No work flow process…content is not approved…only members logged in are able to post and view (outside world wouldn’t see)
· Listserv functionality
· RSS feed
Plan to convert forms to ‘Infopath???’ Microsoft web forms which will incorporate work flow
Announcements sent out monthly to ‘please review your public web content’
Policies and procedures reside side-by-side and are keyword indexed
MyWorkgroup collaboration
· Announcements
· Microsoft live communicator – online/availability indicators, initiate emails, etc.
· Document folders
· Web pages (CM)
· Presence
· Lists
· Calendars
· Tasks – assign to outlook and group can see status and completion info
· Wikis
· Surveys
· Discussion boards
My Site – Social networking/personal web site
· Campus yearbook (facebook) – has privacy settings
· Organizational chart
· Colleagues
· Documents
· Same content management tools as main portal
· Blogs
