ITS Launches Redesigned Web Site

Submitted: Tue, Jun 02, 2009 03:09 PM

Information Technology Services debuted its redesigned Web site June 1.

The updated site is easier for users to navigate, timelier in providing information about system outages and updates, and is more in line with the look and feel of other department Web sites at Eastern.

“The new page is the result of ITS’s effort to enhance our ability to serve campus stakeholders and improve communication, to rethink the way we present information to the campus community,” said Greg DeYoung, ITS’s associate director for campus infrastructure technology.  “And it repurposes how we define our content. It looks at things from the perspective of our users.”

The refigured site includes the same useful links and information found on ITS’s previous page, plus several  new features and concepts.  The site still provides quick access to the ITS Help Desk for  technology users needing immediate assistance, and it retains quick links for password changes, PantherMail, WebCT, PAWS, software downloads, Outlook Web access and computer labs  –  in easier-to-find, more logically categorized groupings that will make navigating the site easier than in the past. But it also takes some new approaches. The revised site differentiates usage by audience, grouping features for the convenience of either students or faculty/staff. And it gathers and indexes services and solutions such as accounts/NetID, security, network services, Panther Card, policies, technology purchase recommendations, telecommunications and smart phones, campus technology resources and Web publishing. The site also features an anchored section listing ITS maintenance schedules to better communicate future outages and downtimes for servers and applications. And it provides a separate listing of official university e-mails to help users differentiate between legitimate communication from the department or administration and spam/phishing scams.

The nucleus of the site will be a regularly updated blog featuring timely articles about technology at Eastern. This will make the page not just a collection of links and references, but a dynamic source of news about IT at the university and beyond.  These entries will focus on campus computing resources and activities, network and communication issues, new technologies and innovations, and applications relating to academic technology. The section also will incorporate ITS technical news as well as a feed of technology-related information from beyond campus, all of which is keep the site fresh and make it a useful, informative source for the entire campus community.

“We want to create a technology destination for people to come to rather than just a place to look for the specific answer to a specific question,” said ITS network specialist Thomas MacMullen, who did most of the coding work in putting the Web site together.  “We wanted to create something that people would want to come back to on a regular basis.”

“The whole idea is to communicate better with the campus community,” DeYoung said.  “We want to be more relevant with content. We want to be more real-time with news and notices to technology users about outages and downtimes, and to simplify the way we support our stakeholders.”

A key difference between the old and new sites is the way they are put together, with a repurposing of how content is categorized.

“Our old site was structured around the department organizational chart,” DeYoung said.  “If you wanted to find information about e-mail, for example, you had to know who in ITS worked with e-mail. The new site has been developed around the audience. Users don’t have to know the architecture of the department. They just have to look at the site’s navigation tree -- from the perspective of whether they are faculty or staff, student or parent – and their own needs. We’ve tried to ‘de-geekify’ things.”

A key, behind-the-scenes change  in the site is the technology by which it was put together.

Previous versions of the ITS site were built using Adobe Dreamweaver software. The new site was constructed using OmniUpdate, a simpler, easier-to-use content management application popular with higher education Web developers.

“Omni is an easier way to deploy department Web sites,” said Eastern Web Master Ryan Gibson, who worked with ITS in developing the new site. “Dreamweaver is difficult to use and update. We had to find a better solution for Eastern, and Omni clearly fit our needs best. ITS’s transition has gone very smoothly.”

 That ease of use in making updates will be a key to keeping the ITS page current, said DeYoung.

“Omni really democratizes content management while still maintaining quality control.  It has a short learning curve so that anyone can edit content after receiving just a little training. This removes the bottleneck of having to rely on just one person to keep the site updated. Now, our e-mail manager s will be able to post changes dealing with e-mail. Our Banner module managers with be able to make updates for Banner. If there’s an outage, we won’t have to call one particular person in the middle of the night. It allows us greater depth of access to get the message out,” he said.

So far, about 50 department Web sites at Eastern have been created using OmniUpdate. That was a factor in ITS choosing Omni for its site because the selection means the appearance of the ITS page will follow the general EIU Web site design template. “It gives us a more unified feel with the rest of campus,” said MacMullen. “OmniUpdate has proven to be a very useful and powerful solution for creating Web pages, not only for the technologically inclined, but for those who may not have a lot of experience in creating Web Pages.”

Unlike other Web sites at Eastern, however, the ITS site will be housed on its own dedicated server separate from the university’s eiu.edu home page.  “It’s completely independent so that if the main server goes down, ITS can still get the message out,” Gibson said.

Accountability, too, is a key factor of the new site.

“We will be integrating the ability of users to access their Help Desk work order tickets and service requests and are re-engineering the entire request process in an effort to make our services easier to access and simplify the process of how we support stakeholders.”

Just as ITS looked at other content management tools and graphic designs over the past year before finalizing its presentation, the new site is just a first iteration, and updates are already in development.

“We are planning several improvements,” said ITS Associate Director Julie Wilson. “For example, the next version will contain a section just for employees who are new to campus, with information on things such as how to get their NetID, how to use their e-mail, etc.  And we are also looking at an automated purchasing wizard that will help employees make informed decisions on computer purchases and guide them through the procurement process.  Most areas of the page will be expanded, too, so that what you see now is just the first variation of what you’ll see in the future.”

ITS solicited and responded to input from users across campus about the features and usability of the site, and initial reviews have been positive, Wilson said. “Simple is what people are looking for, and that is what we have tried to do, to make it simple.”