University Experts http:experts'sjsu'edu HigherEdWebDev 2006 October 2225, 2006 Rochester, New York

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University Expertshttp//experts.sjsu.eduHighe
rEdWebDev 2006October 22-25, 2006Rochester, New
YorkTrack TPR9Harish V. ChakravarthyInterim
Lead Web Applications DeveloperWeb Services
Unitharishvc_at_sjsu.edu
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Session Layout

• Background
• About us
• IT infrastructure
• Relaunch of Univ. Experts
• Lessons learned
• Objectives
• Solutions
• Architecture
• Roll out
• Usage status
• Future road map
• Q A

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Before we get started

• First time at HighEdWebDev Conference
• First time to Rochester
• I am thrilled to be here!
• Feel free to ask me any questions during the
  presentation
• Feel free to let me know, if you cant understand
  what I am talking about
• Slides will be available online!

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Background About us
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BackgroundAbout ushttp//www.sjsu.edu/webservice
s

• Formed in Fall 2002
• Web site redesign project
• ORG chart
• Office of the President
• Office of the Provost
• Academic Technology
• Web Services Unit
• Services we provide
• Maintain University main Web site (www.sjsu.edu)
• Maintain content for top level pages
• Maintain the Content Management System
• Create subsites for Site Masters
• Maintain and configure search engine
• Develop Maintain web applications for
  University needs
• News, Events, Form Handler, Syndication Feed, web
  survey and more
• Web space

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BackgroundAbout us http//www.sjsu.edu/webservice
s

• Staff
• University Web Master
• Position open since Mar/2006
• Web Applications Developer (me)
• Content Editor/Programmer
• New position
• Staff hired in May/2006
• Web Infrastructure
• Servers
• 4 Sun Solaris, 1 Windows
• Set up
• Production
• Stage
• Development
• Web Servers
• Apache, Tomcat
• Database

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BackgroundAbout us http//www.sjsu.edu/webservice
s

• We serve
• Academic Units and Departments
• Faculty
• Staff
• Students
• Current
• Prospective
• Alumni
• We serve the entire campus
• Units we work very closely with
• University Computing Telecommunications (UCATS)
• Servers in a cold room
• Ensure 24X7 uptime (power supply)
• Monitor network
• CMS Team (my.sjsu.edu)
• Query tables for information
• University Communications Marketing
• Approve content for top level pages

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Background IT Infrastructure(related to this
session)
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Background IT Infrastructure

• Campus IT Infrastructure
• Decentralized
• Numerous authoritative sources of information
• We have more than one login and password to
  access various services offered.

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Background IT Infrastructure

• Faculty Staff Directory
• http//www.sjsu.edu/directory/
• Authoritative Source
• Phone number
• Email address
• FAX number
• Location
• Building
• Floor
• Extended Zip
• Department

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Background IT Infrastructure

• Faculty Affairs
• http//fa.sjsu.edu/
• Authoritative Source for faculty
• Education Terminal Degree
• Licenses Certificates
• Job Classification

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Background IT Infrastructure

• Bursars Office
• http//www.sjsu.edu/bursar/
• Authoritative Source
• Tower ID Photo

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Background IT Infrastructure

• Human Resources
• http//www.sjsu.edu/hr/
• Authoritative Source
• Name
• First
• Preferred first name
• Middle
• Last
• Prefix
• Suffix
• Working Title
• Employed faculty staff
• Not Phone Directory!

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Background University Experts (Version 1.0)
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Background University Experts

• Maintained by Univ. Marketing and Communications
• Information was manually updated by staff
• Static pages with no search and proper
  navigation
• Primary key was not Tower ID
• Sometime information was out of date
• There was no easy way to know!
• There was a need for a better system!

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Background University Experts

• One earlier attempt
• Developed some time before 2003
• A standalone web application
• One more login and password
• Not user friendly to input or view
• Not a committee approach
• Unsuccessful in achieving its objective

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Relaunch of University Experts(Version 2.0)
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Project ObjectivesLessons Learned

• Put a committee together
• Automate as much as possible
• Pull data from authoritative sources
• Empower experts
• To update their own information
• Ability to opt-in and opt-out

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Initiative LaunchedFall 2004

• Project Team
• Rhea Williamson, Associate Dean, Graduate Studies
  and Research
• Mary Jo Gorney-Moreno, AVP, Academic Technology
• Jeff Gordon, Director, Business Development, SJSU
  Foundation
• Joan Merdinger and Angee McGhee, Faculty Affairs
• Nancy Stake, Media Relations Officer, University
  Advancement
• Paul Nozicka, University Webmaster
• Harish Chakravarthy, Web App. Developer, Web
  Services
• Rigo Vargas, Enrollment/Academic Services-IT
• Danielle Moon, MLK, Jr. Library Special Projects
• Sara Willis, Sponsored Programs Office, SJSU
  Foundation
• Beth Lemke, Content Editor, Univ. Marketing
  Communications
• Bethany Shifflet, Faculty, Kinesiology
• Andrew Wood Christina Sabee, Faculty,
  Communications Studies
• Carrie Medders, CMS Project Support
• 16 member team!

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Project Objectives

• Increase Awareness of SJSU Experts
• Foster Collaborative Opportunities
• Leverage Investments/Resources
• Capture information in a standard format
• Identify top categories
• External Speaker
• Contact for news media
• Collaborative researcher
• Provide accurate information
• Retain the SJSU look and feel
• Keyword searchable
• Easy to navigate
• Standards compliant
• One stop shop to find experts

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Possible Solutions Plan A

• Write a new web app. from scratch
• Pros
• Develop inhouse
• We already have the infrastructure
• Save time
• Less coordination with rest of campus
• Cons
• One more login and password!
• One more standalone application!

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Possible Solutions Plan B

• Use MySJSU, PeopleSoft Portal (my.sjsu.edu)
• Pros
• Currently in use
• University has vested interest
• In built modules available to capture
• similar information
• No need for additional login and password
• Cons
• In built modules will require customization
• May require approval from Chancellors Office
• Will require coordination with the CMS team
  other teams on campus
• Long process

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Possible Solutions Plan Aor Plan B

• We decided on Plan B!
• (A road less traveled)

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Using MySJSU Customize modules

• Identify modules to capture information
• Education-Degrees
• Courses-Teaching Experience
• Research-Scholarly Activity
• Professional-Service Activity
• Licenses-Certificates
• Publications-Presentations
• Customize
• Text changes
• Remove fields
• Add fields
• Easy to Copy Paste
• Accept Home page URL
• Accept to existing URLs
• Courses
• Publication

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Using MySJSU New module

• Faculty Info
• Display Tower Image
• Yes
• No (Default)
• Select 3 categories
• External Speaker
• News Media Contact
• Collaborative Researcher
• Expertise Summary
• Keyword field for search
• Experts should select any one of the 3
• categories to be found inside university
  experts
• Provide a way to out-out if desired
• We went through 13 iterations!
• (Fall 2004 - Summer 2005)

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Using MySJSU Architecture

• Identify Authoritative Sources
• Query for a list active experts
• Pull information for active experts from various
  
• authoritative sources
• Various databases across campus
• Map information gathered using Tower ID as the
• primary key
• Map Tower ID to unique random key (public
  display)
• Generate SQL inserts
• Update local database
• DBTrainman
• (a command line driven program written in
  JAVA)

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Putting all this together making it work
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Office of Public Affairs News Media
Contact database
Graduate Studies Research/Foundation Funding
alerts and Keywords database

• Faculty Initiated pages
• Courses
• Research
• Publications

Active Experts vis CMS
Education (Terminal Degree from Faculty Affairs)
Towercard Photo from Bursars Office
UCATS DB www.sjsu.edu/directory
DBTrainman (The BRAIN)
CMS DB my.sjsu.edu
http//experts.sjsu.edu
Experts DB
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Univ. ExpertsRoll out

• Step I (early Fall 2005)
• Identify beta testers
• Request feedback make required changes
• Step II (Beta Launch, November 2005)
• Communicate via campus mail and email
• Request experts to check accuracy of information
• Raise awareness
• Request experts to fill out their information
• Step III (Full Service Public Launch, January
  2006)
• SJSU Press Release
• Point all references to Univ. Experts

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http//experts.sjsu.edu

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Univ. ExpertsProject Update

• Experts
• 
  Feb/01/2006 Oct/20/2006 change
• Contact for News Media 329
  362 10
• Collaborative Researcher 38
  76 100
• External Speaker 47
  91 94
• Tower Images 19
  45 137
• Records
• Active Experts
  2016 1743 -14
• Education
  2120 2366 12
• Licenses Certificates 19
  21 1.6
• Research Scholarly Activities 363
  386 6.3
• Courses Teaching Expertise 196
  375 91.32
• Professional Service Activity 258
  305 18.21
• Publications Presentations 264
  334 26.5

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Univ. ExpertsFuture Roadmap

• Increase awareness
• Offer hands-on lab session
• Memo from Office of the Provost
• Meet with Department Chairs and College Deans
• Visibility on website and other forms of
  communication
• Students newspaper
• Technical Improvements
• UI Improvements
• Import publication from University Library
• Integrate data with other web applications

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Beta Site Demo
http//experts.sjsu.edu/
www.sjsu.edu/cats/2003/showcase/
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Additional Slides
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DBTrainmanCode Output

• Generating a Vector of active IDs ...
• Generated a Vector of existing Mapping ID
• Checking for complete ID Mapping ...
• Insert into sjsu_id_map values (531281767,"55AESWE
  34")
• Generating ID Map ...
• Generating DeptID Map ...
• Generating sjsu_experts_contact header ...
• Generating sjsu_experts_contact sql ...
• rows processed1748
• Generating sjsu_experts_info header ...
• Generating sjsu_experts_info sql ...
• rows processed479 (392)
• CR/ES/NM76 91 362
• Generating sjsu_experts_education header ...
• Generating sjsu_experts_education sql ...
• rows processed6568 (2366)
• Generating Images ...
• rows processed45

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DBTrainmanCode Images
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DBTrainmanCode Query Phonebook
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Service Oriented Architecture