Portal Implementation and Training

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Portal Implementation and Training

• OSU Federal Credit Union
• Corvallis, Oregon

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About Us

• OSU Federal Credit Union
• Original charter Oregon State University faculty
  and staff
• Converted to community charter in 1998
• 5 counties in the Willamette Valley
• 45,000 members
• 375 MM

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Introduction

• Initial portal implementation
• Installation took place on October 12-13
• Portal release took place on December 13

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Rationale Objectives

• To ensure that all employees would come to value
  the portal as an effective resource for their
  informational needs
• To introduce to them the power of the portal, and
  to allow them to focus on what the portal will
  become in the future as more features are added
  to the foundation

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Outline

• Training department involvement
• Portal promotion
• Follow-up training
• Enforcement of training
• Phase II

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Employee Development Department Involvement

• Training department was involved with the project
  from the initial implementation so that they
  could develop the training material
• Training material went from general to specific

Workgroups Pages Islands Roles
Organization Public pages
Private dept pages Private user pages
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Employee Development

• Director Assisted in Training material
  development
• Training Consultants Assisted in determining
  document location, implementation of initial
  Products and Services material
• Operations Specialist Acted as gatekeeper for
  documents that would be located in the document
  repository

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Portal Administrators

• Human Resources Representative
• Would be able to ensure that all details
  regarding employees would be accurate.
• Already caretaker of many of the major document
  areas of the organization
• Webmaster
• Ability to develop and implement new features and
  modules into the portal
• Programming experience would prove to be
  beneficial in managing the portal

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Portal Administrators

• Project Manager
• Included in the initial portal release to provide
  organizational consulting to the project
• Increase communication effectiveness to ensure
  that departments felt involved in the portal
  construction
• Network Administrator
• Well-versed in the capabilities and needs of the
  current and needed information systems equipment
  for portal implementation
• Initial means of technical support, capability of
  training the rest of the information services
  support team.

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Training Materials

• Using feedback from initial test users and
  department heads, Training gathered initial
  competency needs and weeded out information for
  modules that would not be included until after
  the initial portal implementation
• Took Passageways training information and
  developed a customized training information
  packet for distribution with the initial training
  meetings.

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Power User Training

• Workgroup administrators had 1 ½ months to create
  their workgroups before portal was released
• Individual visits necessary by portal
  administrators and training department to help
  workgroup managers
• Training forced the workgroup administrators to
  be portal resources for their respective
  departments

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Training

• Post-release training done by department
• Portal Administrators and Training department
  split up to visit departments to introduce portal
  and encourage use of new tools
• Training department customized Passageways
  training info using PDF converter
• Made training materials more applicable
• Able to remove materials regarding modules that
  had not been installed until they are needed

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Training Outline

• Visual representation of workgroups
• Venn-diagram

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Training Outline
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Portal Promotion

• Various methods were used to promote the portal
  within the organization
• Slide show
• Portal naming competition
• Scavenger hunts
• Best practices gift certificates

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Slide Show

• Shown to the employees on our corporate training
  day, showing various screenshots of the portal

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Naming Competition

• Portal naming competition held to generate
  excitement
• CUInside chosen as the portal namematched
  other programs within OSU Federal
• CUHereinternal training website
• CUThereonline banking website
• The fact that employees were able to have some
  say in the decision-making process helped with
  buy-in
• Person who submitted winning name received gift
  certificate
• All who submitted names were put into a drawing
• Winner received lunch delivered by Executive Team

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Continued Promotion

• Scavenger hunts
• Hidden graphics
• Other departments encouraging use of their pages
  by doing promotions
• Fun pictures of Executive Team, other employees
  posted in various locations
• Best Practices
• 5 gift certificates for employees that show
  unique and efficient ways to use the portal or
  for workgroup managers that have well-organized
  public and private pages.

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Follow-Up Training

• Non-training related
• Tip of the Day posted every day by portal
  administrator
• General Instructions Page for Portal Terms,
  Search tips, etc.
• Additional tips in rich text islands near
  confusing or important portal functions

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Follow-Up Training

• One month following portal release, Portal
  Resources (Portal Administrators and experienced
  trainers) conducted follow-up visits to help with
  navigation, conducting effective searches and
  setting up personal pages
• Personal pages suggestions generally include
• List of links, linked to both documents and
  commonly used web sites
• My Group Announcements to see all announcements
  in one place
• Rich Text Editor

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Enforcement of Training

• Buy-in of Managers
• Expectations set early that the portal would be
  the place for information
• Old system of organizing documents removed in
  conjunction with the additional training visits
• As expected, removal of old system improved
  greatly the welcoming reception of the Portal
  Resources
• Even before old system was removed, all updates
  were done on the portal. Employees who wanted to
  ensure that they were using the most up-to-date
  information had to use the portal

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Conclusion

• Promotion and secrecy increased interest and set
  up successful launch of portal
• Users were aware that it was coming, prepared
  themselves mentally for the change
• Follow-up training resulted in dramatic increase
  of visits and log-ins per day
• Increase of approx. 20 from before follow-up to
  after follow-up training
• Private pages have positively impacted adoption
  time length
• Once staff saw the capacity of the portal,
  especially the private pages, visits increased
  dramatically