This is an HTML version of an attachment to the Freedom of Information request 'Minutes of Meetings - Student Lifecycle Project and MyCampus'.

Appendix 1g 
 
University of Glasgow 
 
Student Lifecycle Project Board 
 
Minute of the interim meeting held on Thursday 1 September at 1400 hours in the 
Henry Heaney Meeting Room, Level 12, Library 
 
Attendees:  

Carol Clugston, John Chapman, Frank Coton, Robert Fraser, Tom 
Guthrie, Neal Juster, Christine Lowther, Sandy Macdonald, David 
Newall (Convener) 
 
In attendance:
  
Pat Furze, Barbara Mueller, Janice McLellan, Lee McClure 
 
Attending 
Gordon Duckett, Pat Duncan, Nancy Donald, Lillias Robinson, 
Catherine Martin, Jenny Beattie, Valerie Stringfellow. 
 
Apologies:   
 
Stuart Ritchie, Dorothy Welch 
 
 

Minutes of meeting held on 1st August 2011 
 
The notes of the last Project Board held on 1 August 2011 were approved.  In addition, 
members noted the two minutes from the interim meetings held on 21 July and 16 
August 2011.  The notes from 21 July would be updated to ensure that Robert Fraser’s 
attendance was corrected. 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
2 Progress 
update 
 
 
David Newall welcomed college staff to the meeting to contribute to discussions.  The 
latest summary of the registration and enrolment stats and the progress update were 
tabled.   During the update, comments were sought from the Colleges in relation to 
registration and enrolment, any concerns they had and areas where the SLP team or the 
Board could provide additional help/support.     
 
Barbara Mueller reported on the registration and enrolment stats.  As at 1 September 
over 19,000 Account Access Notifications (AANs) had been sent to new and 
continuing students.  PGR students would receive their AANs by the end of the w/c 29 
August.  Students were coping with registration but enrolment was causing confusion 
and this was reflected in the number of support calls being received. 
 
 Support 
Calls 
Support calls were consuming more time than expected which was hampering the 
Project Team’s ability to focus on release of further functionality.   Response times had 
slipped despite the best efforts to meet the SLAs. The nature of calls related to process 
and course/class selection as opposed to system issues.  While a considerable 
proportion of calls had been resolved, over 1,600 were still open - half of these over 
three days old and c.200 up to 10 days old. The Team would be looking into these in 
more detail.  
 
Additional resource had been brought in to help with the calls but the Team recognised 
the need to increase this further. Enrolment support calls were being routed to College 
Support Teams placing an additional burden on College staff.  Financial queries were 
being routed to SSET who were also receiving a number of general enquiries via 
email/phone and struggling with timely responses. 
  1

Appendix 1g 
 
The Science and Engineering College Support Team had seen a large increase in the 
number of support calls in comparison with the pilot.  Due to a considerable number of 
students on hold in the system and queries from continuing students on what to do, 
there was a substantial amount of records that required manual intervention.  In 
addition there was a fear that there was not enough staff to progress students' records 
and answer support calls at the same time. 
 
Arts were aware that numerous support calls were circumventing the system, with 
many finding their way into personal email accounts and to Chief Advisors.  As more 
students found themselves with difficulties, College Teams would struggle and normal 
preparation work for the start of term would be impacted.   
 
Sandy Macdonald undertook to look into third party commercial helpdesks to help deal 
with the volume of calls which could put in teams at short notice.  Board agreed that it 
would be sensible to investigate. 
Action:  SM 
 
The Colleges and the Board agreed that a message should go to students to encourage 
them to enrol week commencing 5 September and that providing a cluster option, with 
assisted registration, was a sensible option.  David Newall asked Christine Lowther to 
bring forward the set up of the support cluster being arranged for the Round Reading 
Room.   
Action:  CRL   
 
Colleges were asked to think about how best to resource their clusters. 
 
 System 
Performance/Issues 
The system had been performing at expected levels. The infrastructure team continued 
to monitor queues on a daily basis to ensure performance remained consistent whilst 
continuing to pursue a longer term solution.  A COBOL processing issue had emerged 
that impacted on both staff and students.  An Oracle internal cursor limit had been 
reached on the database causing failure of Academic Advising and certain financial 
reports, leading students unable to financially register as their tuition could not be 
calculated and they could not sign up for Direct Debit.  The production database had 
been restarted which reset the limit temporarily.  A severity 1 support request had been 
raised with Oracle. The Team would continue to monitor to avoid any future 
occurrences. 
 
 Plan 
Rules 
Plan builders continued to check and amend plans.  To date very few support calls had 
been raised with respect to plans. 
 
Class Scheduling/Room Allocation 
Class Scheduling was largely complete.  Schools had been advised that they had 
received confirmation of the allocation of rooms from Central Room Bookings (CRB) 
on 31 August and that this information should be entered into Campus Solutions.  It 
was noted that if Room Allocations were not validated on the system in time (by 17 
September), this could cause further problems.  Staff in College Support Teams were 
responsible for putting the information onto the system and Colleges asked whether it 
would be possible to identify other staff to input the details. Schools would be required 
to validate the details so centrally input information may not help.  Christine Lowther 
and Janice McLellan would look into this. 
Action:  CRL/JM 
 
  2

Appendix 1g 
 
 
 
CRM 
The pilot of CRM for Enquiry management went live on Wednesday 31 August.  To 
date over 1900 leads had been created in the system, of which nearly 50% had been 
resolved with no manual intervention. 
 
OBIEE 
The OBIEE team was focused on replicating student population reports that were 
available on WebSURF. Development of additional reports in OBIEE would 
commence once functional teams were in a position to complete the specifications. 
 
Change and Communications 
Readiness assessment meetings with each of the Colleges as well as US for the next 
tranche of functionality including Admissions were scheduled throughout September.  
As with previous meetings, they would cover a range of topics. 
 
Other 
Social Sciences asked if batches of students could be taken off hold rather than having 
to be done individually.  Christine Lowther confirmed that this could be done and each 
College was asked to let the Project Team know which programs and years were to be 
taken of hold.  Barbara Mueller would provide Colleges with a report of which students 
were on hold.  Lillias Robinson and Iain Forster were to be copied in for MVLS. 
Action:  Colleges/BM 
 
Jenny Beattie queried the timescale between a student being taken off hold and 
receiving their AAN.  Barbara Mueller stated that they should receive this within a day 
but would double check. 
Action:  BM 
 
Further circulation of job aids and a central location for ease of access was requested.  
Christine Lowther asked Colleges to let her know if there were specific processes that 
job aids were needed for and she would prioritise these.   
Action:  Colleges/CRL 
 
Timetabling clashes and the process of resolving these was causing confusion for 
students and the Colleges.  Barbara Mueller confirmed that the Team would look at 
providing guidance. Arts reported they had guidance on their enrolment pages which 
others may wish to look at. 
Action:  BM 
 
Tom Guthrie queried whether there was a way to progress visiting students quickly - at 
the moment this was a hugely difficult and time consuming task.  CRL wasn’t aware of 
any issues but it had been brought to her attention that approximately 500 students 
would be arriving on Monday who would also need additional support. International 
PGTs from the Business School arriving in Fresher’s week and trying to enrol could 
also bring about further issues. 
 
There was a need to recognise that staff would not be receptive to attending more 
training courses at this time as many were already under pressure.  This would have to 
be addressed sooner rather than later, particularly in relation to Admissions. 
 
The Board agreed that if overtime within the Colleges/ Schools would help then this 
should be approved. College Secretaries should collaborate to ensure a consistent 
approach was taken across the university. It was agreed that the Board and 
  3

Appendix 1g 
representatives from the Colleges should meet again towards the end of w/c 5 
September 2011. Nancy Donald asked if colleagues from RIO, Registry and SSET 
could attend the weekly meetings on Mondays. 
 
Action:  JM 
 
3 Communication 
 
 
Targeted communications continued to be sent to students, particularly when issues 
arose and information required clarification the team were routinely using the 
MyGlasgow landing page to highlight any updates.  A draft communication had been 
prepared for staff for the next edition of Campus News on 5 September 2011.  Frank 
Coton, John Chapman, Tom Guthrie and David Newall would discuss the draft text.  
David Newall undertook to contact Annie Vaz to let her know. 
Action:  FC/JC/TG/DN/CRL 
 
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Risks 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Members noted paper SLP11/01 and the updated risks.   
Probability and Impact had been reduced for R014 
Probability had been reduced for R004, R042 and R019.   
 
Risk 037: Revised plan not achievable in current project timescales. 
The areas identified below would have a potential impact on students if functionality 
was not delivered on time. 
  attendance and absence monitoring 
  recording of grades    
  additional research functionality 
  placements 
 
Risk R004: There is resistance to the project from University stakeholders, resulting 
in a lack of buy-in and participation
 
Whilst staff have participated in the release of the system adverse comments are  
surfacing. This risk should be reviewed in line with this feedback.  
 
Risk R018: System does not deliver the expected benefits 
John Chapman stated that the scoring should remain at its current level to allow 
familiarity with the additional functionality the system offers to be embedded.  
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
5 Budget 
 
 
 
 
The Board noted paper SLP11/02.  Sandy Macdonald reported that the budget 
remained on track to December 2011 with minimal room for manoeuvre.  
 

Next Meeting Date 
 
 
The next Board meeting was scheduled for 4 October at 0930 hours.  A further update 
meeting with the Colleges would be arranged for week commencing 5 September. 
 
Clerks note:  A meeting of the Board and the Colleges has been scheduled for 9 
September at 0930 hours. 
 
  4