Notes of CIS User Group Meeting held on 13th August 2004

 

1.     Present/Apologies

 

Tim Burton (TB) (Chair)

Lynn Dutton (LD)

Phil Blake (PB)

Lynne Hutchinson (LH)

Julie Bouazza-Marouf

Richard Lightowler (RL)

Siobhan Clarke (SC)

Sally Mason (SM)

Nick Cope (NC)

Jane Lupton (JL)

Jo Corlett (JC)

Dawn Fendell (DTF) – for item 4

Angela Crawford (AC)

 

 

Apologies were received from Chris Spendlove, Tim Baseley and Richard Newbold.

 

2.     Notes of the Last Meeting

 

The notes of the previous meeting were agreed to be an accurate record.  SM circulated an updated list of the membership, indicating which areas each member represented.

 

3.     Projects Update

 

SM gave an overview of some of the project work that CIS had undertaken in respect of CAA, Estates system technical implementation, Student Accommodation redevelopment, HRIS Stage 2, Oracle 9i environment upgrade, Oracle 9i systems upgrade and the Student System re-development (due to commence in September 2004). She circulated copies of the Project reports from the CIS web site for information. (available at http://www.lboro.ac.uk/cis/restricted/projects.htm). As the non-user support project work is outside the brief of the User Group, any comments on projects (except the Oracle 9i programme, which is managed within User Support) should be addressed with the Director of CIS.

 

SM indicated that, as part of the 9i environment upgrade, it was planned that the Oracle production database would be upgraded from version 8 to 9i over the period 10-12th September. The systems would be unavailable over this weekend and arrangements had been put in place to provide read-only copies of the database to Student Accommodation.

 

4.     User Support and Requests Update

 

SM circulated reports of requests completed, requests in progress and a report detailing all requests and their status. These reports had been generated from the new Oracle-based CIS requests system. The data had been imported from an Excel spreadsheet and work was in progress to both “clean up” and augment the data. Reports can be produced sorted by business/application area; users should request these from SAM if required. It is intended that a read-only version of the requests system will be made available to CIS users in due course.

 

SM highlighted some of the recent work undertaken (some of which is still in progress), including enhancements to the Finance and Student systems, development of a CIS requests system, HESA FDS work, change of university bankers, RACE-2 implementation, BACS-IP (due to go live on 24th September), research interests improvements for the Research Office and LUEL, Hercules implementation and major amendments to the HESA returns.

 

DF gave a brief overview of the work that she had undertaken in relation to student-related requests. Of the 71 requests that had been identified and prioritised for possible completion, 36 had now been completed, 5 dropped, 3  were in progress and 13 re-assigned (mainly to the Student system redevelopment project). 14 of these requests would be outstanding at the end of August when dedicated resource for these requests will cease. The outstanding requests will be reassigned either to the student system redevelopment project or to the general list of outstanding requests as appropriate.

 

LD commented that having resource dedicated to Student-related requests had helped to clear the backlog and had had a major positive impact on the related business processes. LD, J B-M and JC then illustrated some of the areas in which they had made efficiency savings. They wished it to be put on record how much they had valued working with Dawn.

 

The HRIS Stage 2 project was in the process of being wound up and HRIS work would be covered by CIS User Support with effect from September 1st.

 

SM highlighted that TB was currently preparing to tender for the supply of a Purchase Card service. The CIS request (currently estimated at 70 hours, but cannot be refined until the outcome of the tendering process is known) had now been moved from Val Blackett’s project list and would be handled, resources permitting, within CIS User Support. No commitment could be made at this stage about resources being available, although SM said that she would do her best to progress the request within the limited envelope of CIS User Support/request resource. It was felt by those present that this request should be afforded a high priority as successful implementation would result in large cost and efficiency savings throughout the organisation.

 

5.     Help Desk

 

SM circulated charts, taken from the CIS web site, detailing the numbers of Help Desk calls received and cleared over the past 12 months. LH noticed some errors in the “net change” figures which JL agreed to correct.                                       Action: JL

 

 

SM indicated that although Computing Services were now rolling out the XP version of the staff desktop, there were a number of issues relating to use of the CIS applications in this environment that members of the group should be aware of. (CIS had not been allowed sufficient time to test the service prior to roll-out). Programs that write to the c: drive no longer work (approximately 80 programs affected, including the widely-used data download program) and problems were being experienced with programs which selected printer trays. Computing Services and CIS were liaising to find a solution; modification of so much CIS software at such short notice is not feasible.

 

SM requested that she be made aware of any applications that had fallen out of use so that they could be removed from the menus and not included within the scope of planned conversion, redevelopment or enhancement work.   Action: All

 

JC commented that Oracle no longer crashed if the internet was accessed when CIS screens were open and she thanked CIS for resolving this issue. It was pointed out that this was an Oracle “feature” beyond CIS’ control. CIS were unaware that this feature had gone away, possibly as a result of recent operating system patches. It was suggested this fact should be verified and advertised. Action:  SM

 

6.     CIS Programmes/Projects/Services for September 2004 to August 2005 Inclusive

 

A document, extracted from the CIS web site, was circulated. This showed an overview of the areas of work to be undertaken in the next 12 months.

 

The Finance system programme will be subject to the request for staff resource being approved.

 

The Student system upgrade/re-build and enhance programme would be managed outside of the User Support area by Tricia Breen and Val Blackett. Members of the meeting felt it important the Project Steering Group consults closely with key student system users, including members of the CIS User Group. It was considered important that work continued on student-related requests so that the system remained fit-for-purpose, particularly in relation to changing regulatory requirements, whilst the lengthy re-development programme progressed.

 

Jacquie Harrison and Jane Snape will work in the Help Desk/Requests area with effect from 1st September.

 

Peter Harvey and Pali Bains will work in the database/infrastructure area of user support. Their work would include completion of the Oracle 9i environment upgrade.

 

Nick Bullen and Marc Gibson will work on the Oracle 9i systems’ upgrade programme.

 

Following the wind-down of the HRIS programme, support of the Trent package would fall within the remit of User Support with effect from September 1st.

 

7.     Any Other Business

 

LD opened up a debate regarding the purpose of the CIS User Group and the interface between the group and the Information Services Committee (who are now recipients of the meeting notes). There was concern that the current terms of reference of the group were formulated when the CIS Priorities Group and the CIS Advisory Group were in operation. These groups had been disbanded. The Terms of Reference were no longer appropriate and were in need of revision. Group members felt that there was insufficient involvement at user level in setting priorities for CIS, particularly in the absence of CISAG, and that giving the group a wider brief may help fill the gap.

 

It was proposed that the group should report directly to ISC (rather than being managed and co-ordinated largely by CIS) and thus ISC should formulate the Terms of Reference. However, it would probably be helpful if the ISC were given some suggested Terms of Reference as a starting point for consideration.

 

SM agreed to circulate the current Terms of Reference for members to review.

 Action: SM

Suggested amendments should be sent to TB, who would put together revised TOR for circulation and consideration by group members. Action:  TB

 

8.     Date of Next Meeting:

 

Friday, 26th November 2004 in N.1.28, Haslegrave Building

(Note change of date to that originally proposed at the meeting).

            

 

 

 

 

 

y:/dp/User Support team/CIS User Group/CIS User Group notes 130804.doc