Extreme Makeover: Columbias Online Directory

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Extreme Makeover Columbias Online Directory

• HighEdWebDev, October 15, 2007

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Extreme Makeover Table of Contents

• Our Story Begins
• The Extreme Goals
• The Before Picture
• The Extreme Team Collaboration Across Groups
• The Guts of the Makeover
• And NowThe After Picture
• Results
• Phase 2 on the Horizon

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Our Story Begins

• Late 2005 Columbia Universitys senior
  management decided to stop printing the annual
  Faculty Staff Directory
  
• Rationale labor-intensive, costly, out of date,
  not ecologically sound
  
• Most information already online, but could be
  hard to find
  
• Columbia University Information Technology (CUIT)
  charged with mission to go electronic before
  the 2006-07 printing
  
• We began figuring out how to replicate features
  of printed book online
  
• OF COURSE we reviewed our peer institutions
  sites and asked for input on their experiences
  with paper directory elimination (thank you, peer
  institutions!)

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The Extreme Goals

• To consolidate information about the people and
  places at Columbia into one area online for easy
  navigation
  
• To provide a complete listing of faculty, staff,
  and students (including affiliated institutions)
  online with an improved search engine
  
• To provide a browse function for staff/faculty
  and students
  
• To add the components (such as the CU
  organizational hierarchy) that resided only in
  the printed directory
  
• To eliminate the mass creation and distribution
  of the current printed directory, yet enable
  one-off printing of the directory listings when
  necessary
• To communicate the plan with the CU community
  during the rollout of the new online directory
  

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The Before Picture
Main criticism too slow!
Can filter by department, but no way to browse
Obscure error messages
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The Extreme Team Collaboration Across Groups

• Identity Management Responsible for underlying
  data, feeds from other sources (Human Resources,
  Student Information Systems, affiliates)
  
• Systems Integration Project management,
  applications development
  
• Web Services Design, Information Architecture,
  HTML/CSS
  
• Unix Systems Hardware setup and configuration
• Outside CUIT Human Resources, Student Services
  played role in managing expectations,
  communicating plan to CU community
  
• Advisory committee, comprised of senior managers
  from administrative and academic departments,
  helped drive requirements

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The Guts of the Makeover
Two load-balanced Solaris T2000s running Tomcat
for front end Java-based front-end application M
ultiple Linux servers for LDAP back end
(directory data) makeover included upgrade to
OpenLDAP 2.0 Password-protected sections use WIND
authentication (similar to CAS), used widely
within Columbia
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And NowThe After Picture
Search for people or departments
Organizational hierarchies now online
New Browsing (by name or department)
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New! Improved! People Search
Search is fast marked improvement over old
engine
No more too many matches (see 20 results, or
login for full list)
Essential info displayed horizontally for easy
scan
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Advanced Search
Filter by title or department
Search by phone number (when you receive garbled
voice mail message!)
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Detailed Information
Displays multiple roles (if applicable)
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Columbia Home Page
Link to new Directory home page
Search for people here
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Results

• New online directory launched in January 2007,
  heralded by were no longer printing the Faculty
  Staff Directory message
  
• Email feedback came in, mostly positive
• Directory has run smoothly since then, delivering
  fast results
  
• Handful of additional requests has come in
• Few miss old printed directory (and they can
  order printed listings from Print Services we
  generate monthly PDF)

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Phase 2 on the Horizon

• Simplify update my information process
• Incorporate photos, URLs, other personal
  information, possibly requiring login to view
  
• Reinstate Soundex (fuzzy matching finds similar
  names)
  
• Include add to vcard or click to dial links
  within listings
  
• Still mulling the requirements

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Questions?

• Carol Kassel
• Columbia University Information Technology
• ckassel_at_columbia.edu
• [phone]