Three new apps for StudentNET

We have developed three new apps for StudentNET.

Photo Uploader

This application lets our students upload photos online. It validates the type of photo and allows the student to crop, rotate and resize the image. Once it has been uploaded, the file is saved to a University network drive for manual checks. A fairly simple application that helped us deliver on producing University ID cards (smartcards) for our students.

Status letter

To prove that students are studying with us they may need to ask our Registry Department to print status letters. This application is currently pending sign off and will replace manual processes. Students will be able to produce status letters in their own home.

Park and ride application

With restricted parking in the center of Canterbury, the University is offering park and ride schemes to students and staff. This application will calculate the distance between the user's home address and allow them to apply for a park and ride ticket according to that distance. Applications can be reviewed by issuing staff and approved.

StudentNET stress testing - it's not just about running the scripts ...

We have done some preliminary stress tests to see how StudentNET responds to high levels of usage. To start us off we created very simple test scripts that simulated a user logging on, loading the framework and logging off.

Creating test scripts using Visual Studio Team Foundation is a piece of cake, so at first we didn't stumble upon any problems. Within a few minutes of launching the wizard, the script was created in C# and we were ready to set up the first load test.

For an adequate load test we needed to have at least 4 agents that would be sending requests to our web servers; a controller that would be distributing the test load among the agents; a test client that executes the script. Now, considering we do not have a testing environment, let alone a testing lab, we had to make do with PCs of colleagues that were on holiday. So getting together 6 PCs was difficult enough.

Set up

Setting up the testing grid with staff PCs proved to be quite tricky. At first we had problems connecting the client (runs the scripts) to the controller (distributes the load). A few IPCONFIGS later we discovered that the two machines were on completely different IP ranges and were unable to resolve the machine name. Even though we were able to connect via IP, Visual Studio Team Foundation did not work, seemingly because the controller tried to contact the client with its name, which again did not resolve.

Secondly, running Virtual PC 2007 on our staff PCs meant that all 6 machines were too weak to generate a load that we would have wanted to test. It created a bottle neck of 300 requests to our web servers at any one time before the agents started to fail.

So we reduced the load of concurrent users to be able to run a few 5 hour tests to see whether the application was deteriorating in any way. Although this significantly reduced the load on our webfarm and resulted in minimal load balancing, we were able to fetch a few results that helped us improve the application.

Next steps

We're going back to the framework to improve its load and also to fix fundamental errors that cropped up during stress tests.

We are also going to look at the possibility of using a Virtual Environment to run 10-12 agents to increase the stress on our web servers.

StudentNET Pre-registration Portal launches

We have today launched Canterbury Christ Church University's StudentNET Pre-registration portal. It was launched to support the registration event for our students-to-be. Although it is a simple concept of collecting information about our students prior to their arrival, the developments required input from several departments from across the University.

Students are given the opportunity to complete various tasks within this portal, which include

• Confirm your place
• Upload your photo
• Submit your email address
• Activate your computing account
• Get your arrival instructions

The role of the portal was to bring seamlessly together several different systems which are used by our users to complete the tasks above, with a view to further integration next year.

The portal also utilises the University's knowledgebase system by presenting the students with top questions and answers that have been asked by others and also giving them an opportunity to query the knowledgebase should they have other questions about the registration event.

All in-house built applications within this portal, such as the photo upload facility, have web service driven context help fed by our Content Management System on each page to guide students through step-by-step. After several years experience of building online applications, we have found that it does not matter how intuitive you think your pages are, it is always better to guide your users with appropriate help.

All we can do now it has been launched, is to monitor the use of it and if necessary amend the help content and faqs.

StudentNET gets a facelift

From August 12th, StudentNET will receive a facelift. This development will bring all StudentNET applications one step closer towards the final product that will be launched in the late Autumn term.

Our designer has widened the layout to 960px to provide space for a flexible yet structural 12 column grid on the page. We have also freshened up the header by intensifying the StudentNET orange colour while matching it closely to our corporate colour palette. The footer has also seen some attention. It has been tidied up into clear, categorised columns with scope to add a large number of links.

From a development point of view, we have introduced forms authentication to fall in line with external IT products that our students use, such as WebMail and BlackBoard. We introduced context help for each page which is fed by our Content Management System and centralised common error pages which also allow for student feedback should an error occur.

We would love to hear any feedback you might have. So please leave a comment!

First mini barcamp experience

I held a barcamp session today. After 3 years of attending the IWMW, I finally plucked up the courrage to speak in front of my peers at this years IWMW at the University of Essex.

My session was about our development efforts towards delivering a new student portal at Canterbury Christ Church. The session, I think, was well received a few delegates have contacted me since wanting to be kept informed about our progress and student feedback.

You never know, we might be able to share the portal and collaborate on future widget developments.

StudentNET Pre-registration Portal is coming

We have just completed the first stage of the new Canterbury Christ Church University pre-registration portal. It currently lets prospective students log in and supply us with a working email address, so that we are able to guide them through pre-registration. This means that when they arrive at Christ Church, their induction and formal registration will run more smoothly than before.

The next steps of this development are crucial. We will expand our newly built FAQ system to this area and re-purpose and re-fresh most of our tired web content that is spread across our currently unmanaged website. It will also see the creation of packaged up content to support most if not all pre-registration steps that they need to take to successfully register at CCCU.

There will be a 'Uplod your photo' application so that students can provide us with their photo to get their uni cards, and just before they arrive at Christ Church, they will be able to activate their computing account from the comfort of their homes.

Google analytics is our choice

The webteam have written a discussion paper about the use of Google Analytics versus our current analytics software. Following research, consultation with our users and 'trial and error', we have come to the conclusion that it would be beneficial to the University to use Google Analytics as our primary analytics tool. The main reasons for this were, no cost and better usability.

We deemed the risk of the service from Google being unavailable minor enough to be acceptable and would varify its accuracy by comparing the results to our own server logs on a regular basis.

We were pleased when our 'Web Steering Group', the overarching group that makes decisions about the University's online development, accepted the paper.

Yes, like many, we too are selling our soul to the Google empire.

Another year, another IWMW

Not sure where the last year went, but it's here again. Only a few weeks until the IWMW2009 this time hosted by the University of Essex.

i-zone Online Service launches

No posts for a while...

The reason is that the entire team has been working very hard to provide our web users with new and highly advanced online FAQ service. This service complements the university's move to provide a unified help desk - i-zone - which will front all the university's support departments.

"Ask the i-zone" online has been a two months project that saw CIS collect and collate requirements, assist in the choice of software product to drive the search, install and deploy the knowledgebase in the university's environment, structure and input FAQ content, set up the university's CMS, and build a web front for the knowledgebase product.

Currently the i-zone online comprises of about 100 articles all relating to student support services. We anticipate a rapid but controlled growth of the number of articles over the next few months.

So, what next?

The provision of i-zone online content will be expanded to give targeted answers to our students though StudentNET and our staff through StaffNET.

In the mean time, the software will learn from its users' questions and their feedback to refine results. We will also be providing a way for our users to ask an expert should they be unable to find the appropriate answer to their question.

So once again, watch this space because a lot will be happening in this area of development. If you have any questions or comments about the i-zone just write them at the end of this post. We'll definitely get back to you.

New student homepage launched

After several weeks of development the webteam has delivered the new Canterbury Christ Church University student homepage. This new page has less links and an increased focus on important and actual messages.

Messages are administered by the university's communication team and combined with current university events listings.

It is another technological success for CIS as it moves forward with the implementation of the CMS (Content Management System). It also aims to standardise the design across CCCU's web presence.

Looking towards future developments the team have also integrated the jQuery library to provide an enhanced user experience. This way all main messages can be viewed in their entirety on the same page.

We are currently working on a poll control to provide our users other an interactive and friendly way of leaving feedback about new developments and general events.

StudentNET Development Update

The current student home page is being replaced by a totally new portal., StudentNET. The portal will present the student with an extended range of facilities as well as easy to use customisation tools.

The technology underpinning the portal is also new. The current StudentNET is effectively a web page that brings together a variety of student related applications and services. The new version of StudentNET will be a true portal that will give the student seamless, authenticated access to relevant services and applications. One advantage of an authenticated portal is that the system will be aware of who the user is and will be able to tailor the facilities presented to match the user’s profile. For example a final year student will not normally be presented with the option to re-enrol for the following session.

The development of the portal is being shared between CIS within the University and an external software supplier. The external company, Ballard Chalmers, has been contracted to provide the portal framework using a product known as ‘Drop Things’. The final version of the work from Ballard Chalmers is due to be delivered at the end of April and will be delivered complete with the university’s styling already incorporated into the framework. The University will develop the content (known as widgets) and this will include a variety of university applications, RSS feeds and some of the more popular social sites (in the first instance Flickr, an image sharing site). Once the framework is delivered CIS will progressively develop and introduce the widgets so that the functionality is incrementally increased. In the case of the student administration functionality, it will be introduced to coordinate with the student calendar. CIS are currently developing a detailed project plan and deliverables map but the mock-up included in this report is a reasonable approximation of the content and appearance of the intended phase 1 deliverables.

The portal will include the concept of an ‘application area’ where those widgets that require a work area will ‘open’ an area of the portal to present the user with additional facilities they need (e.g. the fields to enter if they are changing their address). The portal has a single application area which is shared by those applications that need it. The area is managed, such that if a user tries to use the area for a new application before saving their current work they are warned and given the opportunity to save or continue.

The portal will have a default colour scheme and layout but students who wish to do so will be able to easily modify the appearance of their portal. CIS has consulted extensively with the Marketing Department in order to agree a set of applications and default layout but each widget can easily be dragged into a new position within the framework and the colour scheme will be replaceable by selecting another from a set of available schemes.

CIS are working with selected student focus groups to obtain their perspective on the new development and to obtain the maximum ‘buy-in’ from the users. Once the framework is delivered and stable the focus groups will be invited to use and comment on the new StudentNet. It is planned that as development progresses the number of users will be increased in order to get the maximum input and to stress test the environment with a view to a full release at the end of July.

Want to be part of StudentNET usability testing and be one of the first to be grated access to the new portal? Just let us know.

IE 8 ready for download

Microsoft have released their latest version of Internet Explorer, IE8. It's not as much of a jump as version 6 to version 7 but nevertheless it comes with significant enhancements. This improved web browser is now faster and easier to use. Pages load quicker and its script engine has been improved to minimise the load time for webpages based on JavaScript or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX). Great news for our own in-house developments!

A cool tool for web developers is the Compatibility View toolbar button which displays the website as viewed in Internet Explorer 7. This will correct display problems like misaligned text, images, or text boxes. This option is on a per site basis and all other sites will continue to display with Internet Explorer 8 functionality. In the past it has been problematic upgrading Internet Explorer because we lost the previous version, which made supporting it impossible.

An amazing new tool for the ordinary web user is the Web Slices feature. It lets you keep up with frequently updated sites directly from the new Favorites Bar. If a Web Slice is available on a page, a green Web Slices icon will appear in the upper-right hand corner of the browser. Click on this icon to easily subscribe and add the Web Slices to the Favorites Bar so you can keep track of that "slice" of the web.

We'll update you on our latest experiences with this new browser. If you want to send us some feedback, just leave a comment.

New "Staff Applications" web on the way

A new "Staff Applications" website is being developed by CIS. This new site will host he University's important web applications for all staff.

It will include the crucial Error Logger application which logs all out in-house-built applications so that we can track problems that our users might be experiencing. It will also host several administrative interfaces ranging from the University's client management to posting notices on the student portal.

More soon.

Getting it right...write now

There are some big changes ahead for the University website, as you will have seen from Jo’s earlier posts. At the heart of these plans is the desire to improve the experience for our website users – whether students, potential students, staff or members of the public.

But putting the technical developments to one side, there are lots of simple things we could all start doing right now to make our website more user friendly.

Here are a few tips for anyone who contributes to our web content...

Putting the user first
It can be tempting to create our content according to how we work, or how we are structured, but this rarely reflects how our users might need to find information. Try to imagine you have no prior knowledge of the University and its workings – what would you need to know? And how would you want that information to be delivered?

The devil’s in the detail
What details are really needed by our users? Sometime the kind of information we use to ‘set up’ our page may be more meaningful to us than to them. For example:

“The Department was established in 1995 and we moved to our new offices earlier this year”.

This may be central to our experience as a member of staff but does the user really need to know?

Hearing us loud and clear
We pride ourselves on being a friendly University and how we communicate is vital part of expressing our character.

Very formal, densely written or complex language can be really off-putting, particularly online. It can give the impression that we are a stuffy, unapproachable place to study or work. For example, which of these sounds friendlier? :

“Our support services are available to you whilst you are a student here, and we trust that you will make use of them should you need to.”

OR

“We are on hand to provide support throughout your time here – don’t hesitate to contact us for more information”

Finally, if in doubt, try reading your web copy out loud - imagine you are talking to a to a friend or colleague. If it sounds or feels 'unnatural' then head back to the drawing board!

Hope that helps. If you are interested in more web writing tips then leave a comment.

IIS Training in London

The CIS development team has expanded its skill sets by sending one of its members, me, to attend a Learning Tree IIS Course in London.

The week's course covered all aspects of IIS including application management, website set up, stress testing, and creating server clusters. The CIS development team is now in a good position to understand and positively contribute to the University's Infrastructure developments.

IIS stands for Internet Information Services and is a set of internet based services for servers created by Microsoft. It is the world's second most popular web server in terms of overall websites behind the industry leader APACHE HTTP Server.

I spy ...

Ever wondered what your visitors are doing on your web page? Ever wanted to record visitors' behaviour? Ever wanted to find out whether users follow your carefully designed and constructed navigation? Well, now you can! And it's as easy as adding a line of javascript to the header fo your page.

There’s a new (currently free) service called userfly that enables you to watch actual movies of users’ browsing sessions on your web site. How cool is that! All you have to do to run these instant usability studies for your web site is add a line of javascsript to the header in your source code. Watching these movies makes you feel like a fly on the wall.

Somethimes it's best to watch a clip so here it is:

userfly.com from Chris Estreich on Vimeo.

Quite amazing what javascript can do.

BUT there are drawbacks.

Currently, when running Firebug on the page that has the line of code, it's taking over 6-9 seconds to load. I still need to find out how and where the data is stored. So for the time being we might use it for testing minor pages, but I would not deploy it on any of the main pages just yet.

New .Net Developer

Today we welcomed a new addition to CIS. Femi Ojemuyiwa joined us as our new .Net Developer. 

We are pleased to welcome Femi on board and look forward to working with him on our exciting new developments.

StudentNET design and security

Another milestone has been passed on the journey towards the new StudentNET. Two major developments are complete.

StudentNET framework design

A revised, final design has been completed by our in-house designer. Drawing on the latest design techniques and online trends, Chris has produced a highly usable, friendly and customisable StudentNET homepage. As well as the layout of the page, Chris has produced custom buttons, panels and icons of every aspect of StudentNET, which, as you can imagine, is a mammoth task in itself. Here is a sneak preview of his design.

StudentNET Security Model

We take security of your data and access to our web servers very seriously and have therefore spent a lot of time planning out and testing appropriate security models to allow us to publish StudentNET pages. External specialists have thus been employed to help CIS proof that it can overcome several security issues.

From our meetings with the company last week, we are now confident that StudentNET will allow us to protect ourselves appropriately while remaining a flexible and extendable application.

If you have any questions about any StudentNET developments or would like to find out how you could be part of it, just leave a comment on this blog post.

Happy new year!

Here's a slightly delayed Happy New Year to everyone. Hope you all had a great Christmas break.