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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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