Overview

Background

At the moment there are limited options for finding out what seminars are taking place across the University, outside of one's own Institute or School. This project will replicate the functionality of the Cambridge University site (talks.cam) using the Edinburgh University infrastructure for Pilot use within SCE. Making use of Cambridge's web based system would enable greater engagement with staff and students with seminars scheduled across the University. 

Scope

Science and Engineering have proposed to replicate the functionality of the Cambridge Seminar site to the Universtity's infrastructure for pilot use. The scope of this phase of the project covers setting up an initial site based on the Cambridge Ruby on Rails application and amending the database structure for UoE Use. Along with the implementation of the basic site, the project will deliver additional user account features, create the technical documentation required for the service and undertake peer testing before release to the the System Owner for Testing. The project will support User testing by the system ownder and incorporate any remedial work before live release. The project will also support Live deployment to end users for a 2 week period immidiately following the launch into Live.

The project estimate excludes support arrangements for the system software after the 2 week period. One of the deliverables of the project will be to agree how this application will be supported over the pilot phase along with success criteria for review at the end of the pilot. Additional features and enhancements identified during the pilot will require a new project to be initiated and the availability of a Developer (with knowledge of the system) to undertake any future work is not guaranteed.

The creation of the system's help text is also assumed to be the responsibility of the System Owner and has not been included in the estimate.

The initial seeding of the system with data for lists (list of schools, venues, series etc) has been included in the estimate assuming this information is provided to Project Services.  The system will provide the ability for system administrators to key such data manually once Live deployment is complete and  the College will be responsible for daily adminstration of the site during the pilot.

The project scope will also exclude the following:

• Developing a method for linking to video recordings to support the event details.
• Developing a MyEd channel
• Modifying the search functionality from that implemented at Cambridge
• Enhancing the basic statistic reports implemented at Cambridge
• Integrate with EASE Friend 

Objectives 

1. Migrate and Upgrade Cambridge University Seminar site (talks.cam) to Edinburgh University infrastructure for Pilot use within SCE.
2. Provide resilience for any future enhancement/remedial work by creating corporate infrastructure to provide DEV, TEST and LIVE environments.
3. Develop minor enhancements for UoE Seminar Site to improve support for the system administration and to make the system suitable for mobile use (these are the enhancements already identififed through the planning stage eg, the levels of user access)

Deliverables 

1. Upgrade the software from the current unsupported version of Ruby on Rails and amend database structure for UoE use. 
2. Implement EASE login so that only authenticated users can create events 
3. Write Technical Documentation to describe the implemented service 
4. Initialise top level lists based on UoE specific data provided by System Owner 
5. Undertake Peer testing and remedial work before release to System Owner for testing 
6. Agreed Pilot Success Criteria and Pilot Support Arrangements agreed (it is anticipated that the pilot will run for 1 year)
7. Support User testing by System Owner and incorporate any remedial work before live release 

Benefits 

1. By using the corporate infrastructure to provide DEV, TEST and LIVE environments, this would provide resilience for any future enhancement/remedial work.
2. The site will be viewable on both PC and tablet formats
3. Some of the challenges with the current website can be re-written in the UoE version (eg a verification process for eliminating multiple entries for locations)
4. Creating this type of collaborative tool would enable greater engagement with staff and students across the University

Success Criteria

1. Delivery of a website which replicates the functionality of Talks.cam, where all users can view/ search for seminars and those with access can create seminars.
2. An Agreement on the support of the Seminar website during the pilot and success criteria for the Pilot
3. An agreement on how future enhancements will be raised and delivered