About

The University is in the early stages of updating the framework for the delivery of a variety of IT services using an Enterprise portal based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007.  SharePoint is a creative collaboration environment for students and staff at the University of Glasgow. You can use it to assist your studies, research or work.

Aim

The approach is user centric and is taking a fresh look at the services provided and how delivery can be improved. Key considerations are: delivering IT services in an integrated manner;   the requirement to access facilities from both on and off campus; the rise in use of mobile technologies; to allow students and staff to collaborate in new ways; the need to improve the user experience.

Features

The suite of features will gather together services such as:

• Email, Calendars, Moodle, Mahara, WebSurf, Student Lifecycle Project, Document Management
• Access to Filestore services from anywhere in the world.
• Collaboration tools to allow students and staff to set up shared workspace or web sites for peer working with tools for blogs, wikis, surveys, etc.
• A personalised MySite.
• RSS feeds.
• Personalised access to Library books/search information.
• Single sign-on (or at least same sign-on) to desktop, portal and services.
• News, Announcements and alerts targeted at specific audiences e.g. by Faculty, Department, Class, Staff etc.
• Links to business applications and automation of existing paper/web forms

Other initiatives being investigated alongside the portal project include an extension of the central ‘Exchange' e-mail and calendaring service to all students, centrally supported Instant Messaging (IM), Web conferencing, wiki and blog services and an enterprise Voice over IP (VOiP) service.

Advantages

Key components of MOSS 2007 which will be utilised are:

• Portal: personalised information for the user.
• Collaboration: sharing information and working in teams.
• Search: search for documents, or for people based on published profiles.
• Business Forms: management of on line forms and workflow services.

Further information

Visit the Sharepoint for staff site at: http://www.gla.ac.uk/it/forstaff/sharepoint

Contact

Diane Montgomery d.montgomery@it.gla.ac.uk
Colin Farrow c.farrow@it.gla.ac.uk