u of t engineering and docushare

U of T Engineering and DocuShare

The journey so far ...

Summary

Background

•Facts and Figures

•U of T context

•Engineering, and a bit about me

Engineering, Xerox and DocuShare

•Goal, Objectives

•Vision

•The Journey

•Study, RFP, infrastructure, pilot; Current process; Lessons learned

•Plans

Q&A

UofT Facts and Figures

Students in 2011 - 2012

•Undergraduate: 79,530

• Domestic: 56,154, International: 8,009

•Graduate: 15,367

• Domestic: 13,509, International: 1,858

•St. George Campus

• 41,182 undergraduate, 14,229 graduate students

•Scarborough Campus

• 10,399 undergraduate, 226 graduate students

•Mississauga Campus

• 11,679 undergraduate, 538 graduate students

• Toronto School of Theology

• 903 undergraduate, 374 graduate students


Faculty and Staff

•The University of Toronto has 15,033 faculty and staff members for 2011 – 2012

•Faculty: 8,900

•Staff: 6,133

Programs

•approximately 600 undergraduate programs.

•approximately 170 graduate programs; this includes doctoral and master’s programs

•approximately 40 professional programs


Residences and Clubs

•The University of Toronto has more than 700 student clubs across all three campuses

St. George Campus

•The University of Toronto at St. George has 11 residences: eight residences belonging to one of our seven colleges, Chestnut Residence, Graduate House and Student Family Housing.

•The St. George campus is expecting to accomodate 6,160 students in its 11 residences for 2011 – 2012

•The University of Toronto has a housing guarantee that covers all students entering their first year

Scarborough Campus

•The Scarborough campus is expecting 765 students in residence for 2011 – 2012

Mississauga Campus

•The Mississauga campus is expecting 1,500 students in residence for 2011 – 2012


Budget and Cost

•The University of Toronto’s operating budget for 2011 – 2012 is $1.688 billion

•The University of Toronto’s estimated economic impact in the GTA is approximately $6.3 billion

Library

•The University of Toronto has 30 libraries

•The University of Toronto has more than 18 million holdings

•The University of Toronto library system is the third largest in North America

U of T Context

Decentralized organizational structure

•result of an historical coming together of distinct Schools and Universities over time.

Disparate discipline/governance specific operational requirements

•Professional faculties (Engineering, Law …)

•Medical (Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry …)

•Arts and sciences (3 campuses)

•Graduate research focus

•Undergraduate teaching and learning focus

U of T Context

The Centralization Pendulum

•Some governance, infrastructure, systems and services institutionalized over time

•Some remains or evolves ‘locally’ within the nodes of organizational hierarchy

•Federal / Provincial / Regional / Municipal government analogy

•Each dimension ebbs and flows back and forth over time

•Best practices

•Technology

U of T Context

Enterprise / Institutional Systems and Processes

•At any time, still operational gaps that get addressed divisionally based on local needs.

•Registrar’s Offices in the double digits

•Universities

•Schools

•Faculties

•Colleges

•Campuses

Engineering Facts and Figures

The Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto is the premier engineering institution in Canada and among the very best in the world.

• 4,850 undergraduates

• 1,600 graduate students

• 230 professors

• 6 departments and divisions

• 9 undergraduate degree programs

• U of T Engineering is at the fore of innovation in engineering education and research.

• And 1 Undergraduate Registrar’s Office

A bit about me …

Student

•N 9T3 (9T2 + PEY)

Private and public

•6 years government, software development, consulting, telecommunications

•Academic Scheduling at U of T Engineering in 1999

Director Administrative Information and Technology Services

•Providing technology infrastructure and services

•Servers, desktops, mobile

•File, Print, Web, Database, Security, Development

Associate Registrar, Information Systems

•Exploiting technology

•Automating registrarial processes and student services

•Student Information Systems

•Kuali Student

•Electronic Student File


CAO Mission

•Work smarter!

•(I’m paraphrasing a bit.)


Objectives

•Ease fleet management

•auto monitoring of devices

•Already automated ‘forms’ based processes …

•… tackle ‘supporting document’ process automation

•Admissions qualifications, doctors notes, immigration papers, name change documents

•reduce effort required for these manual processes

•improve service speed and quality

•improve information availability


The Fleet Management Vision

•Automated proactive replenishment of resources

•Automatically triggered proactive maintenance

•consolidated billing

The Electronic Document Management Vision

•Searchable document repository

•Foreign-key linked from primary Engineering systems

•Joint Pilot, ‘Learn to fish’, departmental support

•Meta-data driven hierarchical navigational structure

• “Student_files” / [student number] / Session(s) / Process(es) / Document(s)

• “Student_files” / [student number] / Process(es) / Session(s) / Document(s)

• “Student_files” / [student number] / Session(s) / Document(s)

• “Student_files” / [student number] / Process(es) / Document(s)

• “Student_files” / [student number] / Document(s)


The Journey to date

• Study

• RFP

• Infrastructure

• Operationalize fleet management

• EDM process selection and planning

• Pilot EDM process

• Learn


The Journey

•Study of in place technology and corresponding costs

•Omnibus RFP

•Consolidate technology, plus new software and services

•Many players in EDM space, many fewer in both HW and EDM

•In depth onsite Proof of Concept with demo licenses

•Selected Xerox

•Overall cost neutral despite expanded capabilities


The Journey

•Infrastructure implementation

•MFP consolidation with “follow you” card swipe and/or password protected document release

•XDM HW monitoring

•DS CPX, NSI Autostore, Equitrac for Secure Access, high speed scanning

•VMWare virtualization of Windows 2008 Server 64-bit for all servers

•Fleet Management in place

•Rough start aligning all systems and processes

•Working well now

•Users enjoying enhanced functionality

•No more wasted paper!


The Journey

•Pilot goals

•New tool, sophisticated range of possible use cases and corresponding approaches

•Desire for ‘best practices’ in our environment

•To facilitate supportability

•To avoid duplicating existing information bloat in yet another system (email, file server shares, physical files)

•To identify compelling use cases for Engineering staff

•Establish/Learn best practices through a limited access ‘control’ process pilot to experience reality of using various available features

•Organic growth using a carrot, not a stick (organic carrots?)

•Train balance of users on compelling use of relevant best practices, open the flood gates


The Journey

•Pilot Selection and rational

•Focus on most opportune and strategic workflow to get significant operational gains

•Targeted ‘the student file’ at the Faculty level as initial vortex of paper processes

•Tight control, limited stakeholders

•Range of use cases

•Range of feature exposure expected


The Journey

•Pilot planning

•Need cradle to grave solution

•Targeted Admissions supporting documents first

•Chronological start of file

•Allows smooth process migration

•Incrementally virtualize new active student files

•Incrementally retire alumni paper files

•population slowly migrates from paper to virtual

•at some tipping point may batch convert remaining active paper files


Engineering Admissions

For 2011/2012 incoming class:

• ~9000 applicants

• 50% are from Ontario High schools and are required to submit few documents

• 25% from other Canadian province

• remaining 25% are international

• Applicants from all provinces and the Yukon

• Applicants from over 110 countries representing all inhabited continents

• Offers made to over 3400 students

• Incoming first year class of 1354 students

• 23% of these students are female

• mean Ontario High School average 90.6% (highest in the history of the Faculty)

• We received in excess of 12000 logged documents to support applications (note some may be electronic)


The ‘Before’ Process

•Existing decision support system, SPF (Reader)

•Tracks document requirements•Adjustable document requirements

•Parallel recording of document receipt•On paper file

•On SPF once paper file ‘ready’

•No ability to search for ‘ready’ or ‘almost ready’ paper files

•Missed opportunities for proactive/strategic file handling


The ‘Pilot’ Process

•Print custom scan cover page for each received package

•Prepare package documents

•Separate documents with generic ‘new document’ cover pages

•Scan at Fujitsu, not MFP (fast, double sided, no jambs)

•Wait to arrive in DS

•Find and open in DS

•Open applicant requirements to find match

•If missing, find applicant in SPF and adjust requirements

•Back to DS, refresh (web) screen to see new requirements inventory

•‘Link’ virtual doc to (new) SPF requirement

•SPF aware of and searchable for completeness of requirements satisfaction


Screen shots …


Lessons Learned

•Efficiency is key

•Integrated workflow functionality between DS and SPF Admin

• Issue: both web based, changes in one not automatically reflected in other without screen refreshes, very disruptive for user.

•Can’t keep up at peak mail times

• Wow … it takes _lots_ of time and resources to open, separate, prepare, coversheet, scan, file and match ~10,000 docs. Plan better and resource appropriately.

• So we didn’t … we stopped part way through. Fortunately, we had a Plan B: we had maintained the paper filing system and were able to just skip the whole scanning process.

•Customization

• Used customized 3rd party add-on for integration of external meta-data from existing process admin/decision support system

• Because it was customized, limited flexibility to use otherwise built in configuration features

Engineering, Xerox and DocuShareThe Plan moving forwards

•Fix and evolve pilot

•Remove customizations

•Implement pre-printed Foreign Key coversheets to eliminate printing custom cover sheets.

•Possibly scan all documents in a package as one big document to eliminate the need to separate docs and add individual separator pages

•Remove linking process from DS: record identification atomically at first inspection within our system

•AutoStore will use FK to pull meta-data from our system to populate DS meta data for auto-filing

•Other coordinated formal process uses

•CEAB

•Purchase requests and approvals

•Individual/Personal use

•Routing

•Windows 7, Office 2010/2011 compatibility?

•Departmental use

Thanks! Questions?Email: [email protected]

u of t engineering and docushare

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