Engineering at Cornell

1
Lead Finance Meeting Introduction to College
Intranet August 9, 2005 Presented by Paul
Davis Finance Intranet Content and Better
Practices Team Andy Vail (Co-Chair) Himani
Mewar (Co-Chair) Project Web site
intranet.engr.cornell.edu/intranet/IT/collegeInt
ranet
2
Intranet Presentation

• The Charge for the College Intranet
• Project Team Roles
• History
• The Vision
• Walkthrough of Conceptual Design
• Role of Content and Best Practices Committees
• Phased Development
• Your Role as Stakeholders

3
Charge to the Committee

• Develop a Website to support Faculty and Staff in
  doing administrative parts of their jobs.
• To provide Infrastructure to Support College's
  Best Practices Deliverables .
• To provide intranet to academic departments, not
  just the Dean's office.
• Phase I
• One stop shopping" for information about
  administrative processes in several areas.
• Almanac of reference materials such as data
  tables, reports, and a college fact book

4
History

• Initial charge was hatched January of 2004
• Developed clear project definition in December
  retreat
• Team took Project Management class in January
• This worked so well, many of the content and best
  practice teams will do the same in September
• Delivered an RFP in late May
• Proposals arrived early June
• Had 5 bidders, 3 were very competitive
• Negotiated final agreement about 2 weeks ago

5
Vision Deliver References Resources

• Major Options for Intranet
• Almanac of Reference Materials About College
• Reports, data tables, college fact book
• Resources and References for Processes
• Information related to administrative processes
• Maintaining Project Documents
• Live Project Web Sites, where people update
  content on site, not local computers (Wikis are
  an example)
• Archive
• Place to archive important documents
• File cabinet replacement
• Administrative Systems
• We're focusing on almanac and process resources
  in this phase

6
Vision How Do I AnswersOne stop shopping for
Information

• Address needs from the users perspective
• Use the language of the reader.
• Complete authoritative information for each
  area covered
• If the topic area is covered on the intranet, you
  shouldnt have to look elsewhere.
• Easy to find what you need
• excellent navigation
• Best source of information on Campus
• But dont rewrite stuff available elsewhere, link
  to it
• Not simply a catalog of existing materials
• Decide what we want first. If its not available,
  write it.

7
Vision Almanac

• Information about the college
• Core data set
• Presentation files
• Reports
• Strategic plan information

8
Navigation Homepage

• Tabs will be Topics and Audiences
• Home page default will be Topics
• Taxonomy facets for organization will be
  intersection of topic x intersection
• Not all values will be valid for organization
• But, content will still be returned through
  search

9
Navigation Second level Nav Page

• Second Level Navigation will be boxed
• Shows each second level in taxonomy
• 5? Links in each box
• Administration interface will be created to
  manage which links will appear
• Either choice pages or answer pages could appear
• Issue can answer pages be at this level?

10
Navigation Choice Page

• Lower levels
• Alphabetic
• Links to choice page at top
• Links to answer pages on bottom
• Link will have title, description, last updated,
  and New indicator
• Issue Add Importance ranking to move to top
  of list, even if multiple spots on site?

11
Template Answer Page

• Title of Process
• Introduction
• Intended Audience
• Announcements
• Tools And Forms
• Procedures
• Applicable Policies
• Calendar
• Training
• Related Processes
• Other Resources
• Contact Info

12
Template Resource Page

• Page Title
• Content Area

13
Template Almanac Page

• Page Title
• Purpose
• Data
• TBD

14
Vision Audiences

• Customers
• E.g. someone who needs to buy something
• Need text written in their language
• Presented from their perspective
• Many people will read each page
• Should be written well
• Processors
• Only 10 or 30 people for each topic (e.g. all
  purchasing professionals in the college)
• Will be writing for other people like you
• Can be much more informal

15
Vision Navigation

• Organized in a Yahoo like directory
• Documents can be in all the places in directory
  where it makes sense
• Search functionality
• Related pages listings
• Navigation by Audience

16
Content and Best Practice TeamsSite Map with
initial committee areas outlined
Safety
Purchasing
Grad Student Admin
HR
17
The Grad Student AdminRed section after Content
and Best Practices Team expanded it
18
Phase I

• Goal is to choose a few topic areas we can get
  done quickly and start seeing value of effort
  quickly
• Want to exercise the Content Risk ASAP
• Functionality not needed to exercise content risk
  was dropped
• Initial content areas chosen based on
• Best practice areas
• Will help lots of people
• Will help them lots
• Opportunities to improve consistency, compliance,
  customer service
• Ease of getting content

19
Later Phases

• Project and committee sub sites
• Have a place for everyone on a committee to post
  and share documents so you dont have to email
  them around all the time
• Directories
• Manage department, committee and other types of
  memberships, print mailing labels, create email
  lists, etc.
• Access control
• Use memberships from above to limit access to
  pages or subsites
• Data reporting tools
• Get the data you need
• Other tools
• Based on your input

20
Your Role as Stakeholders

• You have been carefully selected to represent
  different perspectives
• We are counting on you to be active participants
• Represent your clients as well as people like
  yourself
• Guide us to good designs for these people
• Dont just represent your own self interest
• If you dont understand, ask for clarification
  right away.
• If you disagree speak up!
• But please wait your turn
• Respect each other
• listen, dont interrupt, let the facilitator
  guide process
• Keep communication open after meeting
• If you have an idea or comment afterwards, call
  Paul (sooner is better)

21
Schedule
22
Content and Best Practices Team Homework

• Site map outline with at least two level by end
  of August
• Workflow steps for each area by end of September
• 20 pages of content for each area by mid-October
• Verify no additional templates required

23
Questions?

• Questions and Comments