Completion Report

Project Summary:

Background

This project was to provide a selection of documents electronically through Student self-service in EUCLID. Previously, students and alumni requested printed copies of documents from Academic Registry through a webform. These were printed manually by Academic Registry staff and sent by mail to the requestor.  Students could also request printed documents 'over the counter' in Academic Registry. Academic Registry staff would produce the documents using BOXI.  Charges were made for some documents.

The benefits of the project were anticpated to be: 

• Provision of the HEAR and other documents will be free for Students and Graduates. 
• Students and Graduates would have instant access to documents at anytime. They would control the distribution which, in the case of electronic versions, would be instant.   They will no longer have to wait for documents to be printed and distributed.  
• Distance Learners will benefit particularly from electronic documentation.
• Recipients of a HEAR or other document will be able to assure its authenticity via Registry website
• Eliminates Academic Registry’s payment management system and will vastly reduce printing and mailing within the Academic Registry. This represents significant cost savings.
• Designated staff (e.g. Student Information Points) could easily provide documents to students
• Students will be able to view and understand their HEAR and what could be achieved to enhance it, from day 1 of their programe
• Alumni Services will benefit from a raised awareness of Alumni activities achieved through increase of new visits this generates to their portal
• Reduction in Academic Registry staff engaged in document production

Out the outset of the project, the proposed method of delivery was not known, nor the level of acceptance by 3rd parties of electronic documentation.  It was hoped that the project would  use of StuTalk webservices to deliver content via the Alumni MyEd portal (laying foundations for future use of this StuTalk).

Were the project goals met? Yes, largely.

The main aim of the project was to give student access to secure electronic documents relating to their study.  This was achieved.

From implementation (12 August 2014) To 13 January 2015 students had requested 6350 electronic documents. There have been very few errors reported, and no issues with 3rd parties not accepting the documents.

Were the project deliverables fully or partially accomplished? Partially

Access to documents by Alumni via a StuTalk service was not delivered.  A simple portlet in the Alumni MyEd giving access to documents in EUCLID will be deployed by Alumni and Development in the early part of 2015.

The following deliverables were achieved (from the project brief)

• Secure method of providing secure electronic documents via self-service 
• ​Provide students/alumni (as applicable) with a robust mechanism to request an electronic copy, print a hard copy locally of documents currently provided in hard copy by the Academic Registry:
  • HEAR
  • Certificate of Matriculation
  • Council Tax Exemption
  • Academic Statement
• Student Information Point staff can produce electronic and hard copy documents in response to ad-hoc 'over the counter' requests from student
• Provide students with access to their HEAR throughout their study. 
• The implemented mechanism should be such that further documents could be added easily at a later date.

The following were not described in the brief but were also delivered

n/a

Not Delivered

• The project sponsor decided that we should not deliver a new mechanism for requesting printed versions of the documents provided electronically. The rationale for this was that the electronic version is the default, preferrred version printed copies should only be needed in exceptional circumstances. Printed copies can still be requested via the Student Administration website.
• HEARs for Intercalated programmes 
• Delivery from electronic documents via the Alumni Myed portal. (Alumni team preferred to deploy as part of a package of enhancements in early 2015).

Did the project deliver a solution to the problems being address?  

Yes

Does the Project Sponsor agree that this project can be closed at this time

Yes, on the understanding that the outstanding issues documented below resolved by mid-March.

Note that Student Systems Operations (Training, Support and BI)  resource was also used on the project but not recorded.

• The Staff Usage figures below combines IS Apps and Students Systems BPE, but excludes Student Systems Operations effort.

Analysis of Resource Usage:

Staff Usage Estimate: 235 days

Staff Usage Actual: 259 days

Staff Usage Variance: 10%

Other Resource Estimate: 1 days

Other Resource Actual: 1 days

Other Resource Variance: 0%

Explanation for variance:

It should be noted that although the variance was +10% the use of StuTalk was not delivered as part of the project (though significant resource was spent trying to install the StuTalk product).

IS Apps (SSP)

• IS SSP resource was available before the project was ready to progress. The decision was made to use this resource to develop the HEAR in SITS (previously a BOXI report).  Some rework was required and increased testing as a result of this decision
• It took longer than anticipated to decide on the method of delivery of the electronic document, and this changed during the project. (The first approach was to use signed pdfs but the final delivery uses a single sign-on sent to 3rd parties in an automatically generated email). 
• StuTalk was not installed on our environments and this took time and effort to resolve.  It had been anticipated that this would have been a very short and easy task. (Although StuTalk was not used, it is now available for use in future projects as a result of the work in this project) 
• The lead developer was moved onto a higher priority project during the development (SAC028 upload of Awards).  This left a grade 3 industrial placement student on the project with the lead developer unable to provide the level of direction and support that was required. The placement student accounted for 52 days of the 145 SSP IS days on the project. 
• SAC028 (upload of Awards) impacted the project as changes had to be made to the HEAR to differentiate published and unpublished awards on the system.

Key Learning Points:

What went well?

• Development team were open minded when establishing the best way of distributing the electronic documents : this resulted in a robust, simple and secure method of distribution
• Good handover meeting with IS Apps
• There have been very few queries directed to the Student Information Points from students and volume of requests for document verification from 3rd parties have not 
• Post go-live issues quickly resolved by working closely with Student Administration team

What didn’t go so well?

• The project was severely hampered by competing project priorities (the analyst and lead developer were both moved onto SAC028 Upload of Awards which was a high priority project with very tight deadlines). 
• The Grade 3 developer was working 3 days a week. This part-time approach wasn't a success as time time was spent each week for him to get back up to speed.
• User acceptance testing was squeezed, due to the delayed implementation and annual leave.
• Some record counts wrong in implementation document  slightly delaying one release
• Location of support documentation was not clear to IS Apps Man 

If you had a project like this again, what would you improve?

• We should have paused the project when it was clear that the lead developer could not provide the support required for the inexperienced developer
• Because the project was delivered later than originally planned the project sponsor had competing priorities -...... 

Outstanding issues:

It has been agreed that the outstanding issues below will be picked up by SSP under SAC039-I27.

SAC025-185: HEAR formatting issue

SAC025-178 Make HEAR available for Vets (BVMS award) and other intercalated degrees (some investigation required to asess feasibility).

SAC025-198 Academic statement formatting to be tidied up

SAC025- Council Tax exemption letter address wrapping issue (formatting)

SAC025-119, SAC025-202 : non-standard characters not handled correctly in some cases

SAC025-184 SIP contact details to be output as footer on documents

In addition, SSP will develop 2 new documents (which were not in the scope of this project as continuous enhancements): 

SAC039-I26 - Visiting Student transcript and Bank Letter.