Communication and Documentation

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Communication and Documentation

• Activity Review

2
Management Staff

• Director Meena Lakhavani
• Manager Brian Bennett
• Writers Dot Foote Patty Riether
  (Part-Time) Peg Figore (Part-Time)

3
Agenda for Today
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Objectives

• Lay groundwork and answer questions before
  defining mission and scope
• what we do
• how we do it
• issues/challenges
• Gather feedback/input from managers for next
  steps with directors.

5
I - Overview of Services1005 AM

• Software and Service Documentation
• Orientation Activities
• Announcements and Advertising
• My Andrew Content
• Division Website Development
• Division Groups' Website Development
• Internal Website Development

6
Software/Service Documentation

• 150 documents at www.cmu.edu/computing/document
  ation/
• Integrated help (mailing lists, My Andrew,
  Portal).
• General information (IP Extension, Wireless,
  Andrew Calendar, etc.

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Software/Service Documentation

• Average of 6000 to 7000 hits per day for the
  entire site. 25-30 from 128.2.x.x
• Unknown how many non-128.2 are Carnegie Mellon
  affiliates from remote locations.
• Only 10 of referring pages are not cmu.edu.
• 88 of users surveyed were satisfied with the
  documentation.

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Software/Service Documentation

• Top Documents (Mid Aug End Sep)

9
Orientation Activities

• First-year undergraduates, graduate students,
  summer programs, faculty and staff.
• Pre-arrival mailings to accepted/confirmed
  students and special materials for orientation.
• Coordinate/support activities on first-year
  student orientation day.

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Orientation ActivitiesService Usage

• Assume near 100 of first-year undergrads.
  Others unknown.
• www.cmu.edu/computing/freshstart/
• October May 100 hits per week
• June mid-Aug 300 hits per week
• Mid-Aug Sep 900 to 1000 hits per week
• (Recall Network Connection Statistics)

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Announcements and Advertising

• Announce emergent events outages, security
  issues, etc.
• Announcements, news, information for new releases
  of software, software phase-outs, etc.
• Advertising campaigns to promote awareness (this
  year Portal and Cybersecurity Month)

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Announcements Advertisement

• Portal Up to about 1600 unique logins per week
  in April 03.
• Official.computing-news About 1000 unique
  accesses per week???
• Campus Mail Experiment during summer/04 showed
  somewhat effective with faculty/staff
• Post on Website? Hits to schedule page starting
  week before holidays 78, 43, 54.

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My Andrew Content

• Maintain and publish the software
  overview/download pages and installation
  instructions for 25 software packages.
• Publish software installers and supporting
  documents on the software server for some
  software.

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My Andrew Content

• 37,700 software downloads during Fall '04
  semester - about 314 per day.
• Does not reflect hits to front-page generated by
  other My Andrew applications.
• My Andrew front page could be a great news
  source, but its being moved to the portal.

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Division Website Development

• Maintain top-level navigation pages.
• Publish and maintain division information, such
  as organizational charts, management team bios,
  etc.
• Help with others web development to varying
  degrees (Technical Integration, IT, OVP, others.
• ISAM

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Division Website Development

• /computing/ home page gets about 2500 hits per
  week.
• Logs too loaded with extraneous data to get much
  better numbers.
• Determining usage of the Computing Services
  website at a high level would be an involved
  project.

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II Customers, Operational Issues and
Resources1015 AM
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Changing Customer Requirements Most Important

• Vast majority of users (84) would like to
  receive announcements, news, etc. in their email
  inbox.
• Would like to see more of FYI types of news,
  like new services, classes, etc.
• Satisfied with content, but need to be able to
  find it more easily.
• Requests for help with websites is growing,
  increasing immediate demand as well as
  maintenance burden.

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Changing Customer Requirements Not as Important

• Departmental support want special cases included.
• Bboard usage low compared to other vehicles.
• Portal usage should continue to rise, but
  shouldnt be seen as a solution for some time.

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Operational IssuesImportant

• Unclear ownership of final communication product.
• Unclear ownership of software/service
  decision-making and unclear support stances.
• Waning subject-matter expertise.
• Distributed maintenance of division content
  impedes development of consistent design and
  navigation.
• Growing demand for website development/maintenance
  .

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Operational IssuesNot As Important

• Unclear and often changing objectives for
  balancing the needs of an extremely diverse
  audience.
• No formal and regular review schedule, except
  summer update for Fall semester.
• Activity peaks and valleys (hopefully
  improving)Inadequate notification of upcoming
  releases (seems to be improving).
• Emergent announcements disruptive of other
  activities.

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Operational IssuesNot As Important

• Installers are frequently not tested adequately,
  resulting in the need to publish updates shortly
  after initial release.
• Tools preferences and groups' staff skill
  sometimes makes handoff of website maintenance
  difficult.
• Need to develop standard practices for
  maintaining older versions of software for users
  who may need it, even if unsupported.

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Resources
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Resources

• We have adequate resources, assuming that
• Well implement and adhere to regular review
  schedules
• Tactical Planning improvements will
• Compensate for waning technical expertise
• Level the peaks and valleys
• Provide adequate notification of upcoming work
• We take on no additional website development work.

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Resources

• If we had more
• We could alleviate other staff of website
  development activities.
• We could further develop technical expertise and
  be less dependent on subject-matter experts.
• If we had fewer
• We would not do anything that did not have broad
  end-user impact.

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Current/Planned Initiatives

• Define clear mission and scope of responsibility.
• Mailing Lists
• Allow users to subscribe to mailing lists for
  information they want.
• Deliver announcements to users the way most of
  them want.
• Service/Software Data Sheets
• Create a single source for various information
  about a service.
• Eliminate the publication of content in multiple
  places.
• Ensure regular update.

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Questions/Discussion1030 AM