Interactive portal to make life easier for staff
Interactive portal to make life easier for staff
Jul 11, 2005: Staff at the Tertiary Education Commission will have the opportunity to submit forms online for business travel, leave requests, and create their own content, through a new system aimed at improving business efficiency.
The TEC is the government body that is responsible for the allocation of funding for all post-compulsory education and training courses offered by institutions, such as Universities, polytechnics, private training establishments and community education providers throughout New Zealand.
Its current Intranet system will be transformed from a static HTML site to an interactive portal that will provide employees with web access to email, calendaring and documents, as well as an advanced staff directory and personalised, relevant information.
In addition, the new portal, provided by Novell's ExteNd solution, will allow users to sign on as a single-user across a variety of internal applications.
Michael Middlemiss, the manager of information systems at the TEC, said that its existing static Intranet was created through Dreamweaver, and was an interim measure that grew into a permanent solution. He now hope this new system will make life much easier for staff.
"Our users will be able to customise the site to improve their experience and access the information that is relevant to them, such as their email or region specific content and it will allow us to automate processes such as approving leave and travel."
The portal also provides an advanced staff directory, which run on eGuide, a web application that allows users to search and retrieve names and details stored in the TEC's existing Sun One Identity Management Server.
Users can submit online forms and also receive notification of status. The system automatically notifies and reminds managers to approve a form and forward it to the finance department.
Middlemiss added that one of the main problems faced by the TEC is that staff members sometimes do not know whom to contact for specific requests. She hopes that the staff directory will help them to quickly locate the person they need. She also expects that it will help staff to create content more easily too.
"At the moment our staff rely on web analysts at the TEC to create and upload the Intranet content. ExteNd allows users to create their own content and has built in authorisations and approval processes, which will take the burden off the IT team and give our users a greater sense of ownership.
"The content management system will enable the material to be managed centrally with security and version control."
Staff receive personal notifications of updated information, instead of a global email, which Middlemiss expects will reduce email overload too.
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