Staff within the Applications Directorate at the University of Edinburgh are continuing to rollout the new version of UniDesk to our seven member institutions. The primary objectives of the project is to deliver new infrastructure, upgrade UniDesk to version 7 and deploy a new in-house version of Quick Calls – functionality that quickly records face-to-face interactions with our students and staff. The upgrades include all demo, development, test, live and reporting environments for both the University of Edinburgh and its members – in total 21 environments! All test, development and demo environments have been successfully upgraded with Edinburgh’s live environment completed in February. This was followed by the upgrades to the live environments for St Andrews, Durham and Sheffield and Abertay Universities completing by early May. The remaining live environments for Ulster, Stirling and Edinburgh Napier Universities are scheduled and are on track to complete by the end of May. The new version brings substantial changes to the User Interface of UniDesk with a more modern and simplified design and a much improved Self Service Portal. Image There are also improvements to the Quick Calls interface that have taken on board suggestions by the University of Edinburgh and its member institutions. These include: Logging multiple calls at the same time Quick Link to UniDesk – great for the operator if they need to add more information Call number can be given immediately to the student/staff member Mobile friendly interface This new Quick Calls interface is proving to be very successful. More teams at Edinburgh are using this to record face to face interactions. There is also an increased uptake by our member institutions. We would like to thank all the teams involved in for making these upgrades a smooth and successful transition. “A big thank you from me to all the team for ensuring we had a smooth transition last week. The support we received was really appreciated; the advance summary of changes, the test process, open communication and the proactive support throughout, gave us confidence that things were under control. One of the big successes we see is the self-service portal which we intend to formally launch next month but already its use has risen significantly and that’s during a period where many people are on holiday. So thank you!” Ian Turnbull, Head of Service Management, University of Durham Following on from the completion of the project the UniDesk community will come together at the 3rd annual conference on the 13th June. Hosted by University of Edinburgh the event offers our members the opportunity to meet to share best practice, learn from each other and collaborate to enhance the service to add value to our respective institutions. Further information relating to the event can be found at www.unidesk.ac.uk/conference2018 Publication date 11 May, 2018
