Speaker: T. Kim Nguyen Abstract: In the fall of 2008, UW Oshkosh embarked on a campus-wide migration to Plone for all of its ~300 public web sites; that deployment project is now well under way. Early last year, however, it became clear that while our external audiences (prospective students, faculty, staff, donors, alumni, members of the local community) were being served, our internal audiences (current students, faculty, and staff) were not. We needed an internal, collaborative information sharing platform that would allow the university to streamline its mostly paper-based processes and to make it easy for faculty and staff to locate information they need to get their work done and make better use of their collective knowledge. In the spring of 2009, we formed an Intranet Task Force that met with and listened to constituency groups across campus to understand their frustrations and learn what they would most like to have in a campus-wide intranet. The task force ultimately presented the Vice Chancellors with a final report, including recommendations for funding and staffing, short term goals, and a governance model that would ensure a voice for all campus groups in the ongoing development of our intranet. This talk will cover the motivation for the creation of the task force, the segmentation between external and internal content, the process of gathering and formulating a vision for an information sharing system that will bring sweeping change to the campus, the use of highly focused pilot projects to obtain approval and funding, and how we will be targeting cross-unit business processes and move paper-based processes online with our uwosh.northstar Plone workflow application generator.

1. Getting Buy-in and
Planning for a
Campus Intranet
T. Kim Nguyen
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

2. Overview
Why an intranet?
Our intranet task force at UW Oshkosh: formation,
process, outcomes
What should be in an intranet?
What will it look like?

3. UW Oshkosh
13,000 students & 1,900 faculty & staff
Plone for ~200 external web sites (expect 300)
External sites driven by marketing & branding
Plone migration project started late Fall 2008
Result: a transformed web presence… for
outsiders

5. Why an Intranet?
External-facing web sites:
targeted to prospective students/staff/faculty,
donors, alumni, local community
constraints on imagery, site organization, page
layout
What about internal users (current students,
faculty, staff), e-business?
Fer cryin’ out loud, people, it's the 21st century

6. An Intranet: What for?
collaboration, information sharing
e-business: forms, workflow, procedures,
checklists
information at your fingertips, “one stop shop”
make the intranet site the default home page for
faculty, staff, possibly students
accelerating day to day business

7. What is it Not?
Not a MS Word/Excel document repository
Not a static web site
Content is not centrally controlled
Appearance is important but not primary

8. Intranets Today at UWO
Two major colleges have their own separate Plone
intranet sites (College of Business, College of
Education and Human Services)
Many other Plone sites have an “Intranet” folder

12. Intranet Task Force
Timeline: April 2009 - May 2010, ~15-20 meetings
Charge
Members
Process
Outcomes

13. ITF Charge
Authorizing authority Chair
Purpose Membership
Goals Decision-making
process
Deliverables
Communication
Stakeholders
Milestones & Timeline
Executive Sponsors

14. ITF Purpose
“Research (other campus’s solutions, obtain
information about faculty, staff and administrator
needs, best business practices) and recommend
[...] the various ways intranets might be
implemented to serve the academic missions and
internal business of the institution. This will include
use of the intranet in more efficient work flow and
reduced use of paper.”

15. ITF Members
Chair: Director of Polk Library
Staff from: Integrated Marketing, Community
Engagement, Admin. Services, office of the Dean
of the College of Education, Dir. of Academic
Computing, Registrar, Dir. of Human Resources,
Asst. Dir. of Residence Life, Admin. Computing

16. ITF Members cont’d
Faculty:
Information Systems (Dir. of Technology for
College of Business)
Chemistry
College of Business (former interim Provost &
Vice Chancellor)
...and one rep from Oshkosh Students Assoc.

17. Process: Research
intranet “best practices”
web vs. intranet: goal, audience, efficiency,
content structure, update frequency, presentation,
authoring model, integration
stages: communication & info sharing; self-
service; collaboration-driven; enterprise portal
governance model: monolith vs satellite vs
federated

18. Process: Focus Groups
“What UW Oshkosh web Faculty Senate
sites or web information
do you use most often in Senate of Academic
your work?” Staff
Administrative Support Oshkosh Students
(small & large groups) Association (assembly
& senate)
Classified Staff
Advisory Council Academic Computing
Users Group

19. Needs Expressed
Better way to find Notification of
internal info changes to forms &
processes
Convenient access to
forms, work orders; All groups appreciated
workflow for forms being listened to
Better way to track uni
deadlines, important
messages (not email)

20. ITF Outcomes
Report
Executive Summary
Presentation to the Vice Chancellors
Pilot project proposal: approved in principle,
money pending

21. ITF Recommendations
A long term university commitment
Governance model
Funding
Staffing
A phased implementation approach, ongoing
development

22. Governance
Campus-wide representation, collaborative, not owned
by any one unit, actively seeking feedback
Sponsored by the Provost & Vice Chancellor and the
Vice Chancellor for Administrative Services
Create a formal communication structure between units
Identify a project manager
Include the intranet project with the Project Prioritization
process

23. Phased Approach
Phase 1: “Communication & Info Sharing”
Phase 2: “Increased Self-Service & Collaboration”
Phase 3: “Role-Based Enterprise Information”

24. Phase 1: Communication
& Info Sharing
Deliverables: hiring, systems prep, site creation,
content creation & organization, templates,
guidelines, training, support
Staffing: 0.5 project mgr, 0.5 programmer, 0.25
systems, 0.5 trainer, 0.25 support: 2.0 total, or ~
$160,000/year *
Other costs: server, consulting: ~$22,000
Timeline: 9 months

25. Phase 2: Increased Self-
Service & Collaboration
Staffing increase: +0.5 -> 1.0 programmer: total
staffing cost ~$200,000/year
Other costs: +1 server (total of 2): +$7,000
No specific timeline; Phase 1 will inform Phases 2
and 3

26. Pilot Projects
Why pilot projects?
Specific shorter term deliverables
Less risk; learn as we do
Easier to sell
Cross-unit Plone workflow apps to showcase their
power: HR, curriculum changes, tenure and
renewal

27. Production Workflows
Office of International Education “Study Abroad”
College of Business internship program
Faculty-undergrad/graduate collaborative research
grants
Project Success “tests with accommodations”
“Where are the cost savings?”

31. Status
Awaiting final approval & budget for pilot project **
Planning for feature set, deployment strategy
Software to support rollout of e-business workflow
apps

32. Features
information architecture: multi-dimensional
organization (by college/unit/department, by role)
procedures, checklists, forms (PloneFormGen)
searchable directories (phone, email, Faculty/Staff
Directory)
portlets & dashboard
Cynapse cyn.in? KARL?
e-business processes (workflow apps)

34. Project NorthStar
Plone workflow apps: custom content type &
custom workflow
uwosh.northstar provides through-the-web (TTW)
workflow design with streamlined UI
Use Dexterity to create live custom content types,
or
...point NorthStar to your PloneFormGen form to
generate a file system product

38. Open Questions
Ideal: a single intranet Plone site for all of campus;
Federated: many separate intranet Plone sites,
with shared authentication (WebAuth? SSO?)
Authorization: LDAP groups vs. local groups
Where to put content (intranet vs internet)
Other systems’ workflow capabilities
Integration of current intranets, student portal,
other systems with campus intranet

39. Your Questions?
nguyen@uwosh.edu
http://uwosh.edu/plone
http://plone.org/products/uwosh.northstar
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