Achieving accurate university wide computer lab information

Karen Taylor [HREF1], Web Services Coordinator, Information Technology Services [HREF2] , Monash University [HREF3], Victoria, 3800. Karen.Taylor@its.monash.edu.au

Abstract

Computer lab information should be up-to-date, accurate and easy to find. Students and staff shouldn't need to know who owns a lab in order to work out which website would contain the labs opening hours. Our challenge: to put in place a mechanism that would keep the universities computer lab information accurate, easy to find and ensure it will be easily maintained by various administrators from across the university.

Introduction

Monash University has over 180 computer labs spread over its 6 Australian and 2 international campuses.

For many years information about these computer labs was spread inconsistently across the university website. Information Technology Services (ITS) along with a number of faculties published information about their computer labs, while other faculties did not. To complicate the situation further the IT support structure of the university provided customers with the impression that information regarding all computer labs (ITS and faculty labs) could be found on the ITS website. As a result, a consolidated list of computer labs from across the university was placed onto the ITS website. This process brought about its own issues. Who would be responsible for the updating of information? How could we keep the information accurate?

A solution needed to be found which would remove the repetitive, tedious and time consuming tasks associated with trying to keep the university computer lab information accurate and up to date.

The way forward

During a redesign of the ITS website it was decided that we needed to take a new approach to the computer lab information. A business case was developed with following requirements.

• Information to be centrally located.
• Ability to handle numerous computer labs, all with the possibility of having different faculty owners.
• Maintained by faculty representatives via a web interface
• Administered by ITS – access granted to faculty representatives through a suitable account management tool
• Labs to be updated by faculty representatives only. Other users should not see labs they don't have rights for.
• Be configurable for information expiry
• Notify content maintainers (faculty representatives) when expiries are imminent
• Utilize the university’s LDAP server for user authentication
• Utilize the university’s LDAP server for administrator authentication
• Improved search capabilities for computer lab location and configuration

What was delivered?

The first stage of the implementation provided the following:

• The ITS webmaster can add and remove users from the system easily, and assign access rights with the use of an administration tool.
• Lab managers / faculty representatives from across the university have access to update their faculty lab information. Updating, creating and deleting labs is conducted through a series of web forms – thus no web knowledge is required
• Lab masters role is created for the ITS webmaster within the system. This enables access to update any computer labs if required.
• A web based search engine can filter lab information based upon search criteria and filters – campus, faculty / department.
• The system was established on the university’s web server which enabled it to be available to anyone with the appropriate access and be accessible via any university approved web browser.
• Users can now view accurate computer lab information
• Responsibility of lab information accuracy has been returned to the lab managers and faculty representatives,

How was this accomplished?

ITS and a number of faculties at Monash University use the Frontrange HEAT product for Incident management. The decision was made to draw upon the skills ITS had with this product and with the product’s ability to handle a number of the business requirements.

Construction of the system is based upon the layout in figure1.

• Lab administration tool.
  Using the standard HEAT client, the ITS webmaster can manage the accounts and access rights used by the faculty representatives in maintaining computer lab information.
• Labs administration web page
  These web pages are used by the faculty representatives to:
  • create new labs specifically for their faculty. This includes, lab location, type of computers, number of computers, peripherals (e.g. printer, wireless), opening hours and any lab restrictions in place (e.g. swipe card access, one faculty only)
  • Edit existing lab information for their faculty
  • Delete a computer lab for their faculty
  • Copy a computer lab – this is usefully when trying to enter a number of labs with the same features
• ITS website - Computer labs information
  On the ITS website, the computer labs web page presents students and staff with computer lab information based upon search criteria and filters - campus and faculty/department

Future enhancements

Focus is now shifting to the second stage of the implementation. The second stage will include the following enhancements;

• Automatic content expiry
• Notification to webmaster and faculty representative on upcoming content expiries – Notification will require integration with the university incident management system
• Xml interface to enable computer lab information to be accessed from multiple websites (ITS website, faculty websites)
• Integration into the my.monash portal system
• Last updated details captured.

Hypertext References

HREF1

http://www-personal.monash.edu.au/~ktaylor/

HREF2

http://www.its.monash.edu.au/

HREF3

http://www.monash.edu.au/

Copyright