Completed Projects

MS Teams and Voice

Project Name - MS Teams & Desk Phone Integration

What’s the project about?

The University of Limerick are currently using Microsoft Teams for collaboration and the purpose of this project is to integrate the current desk phone system in UL with Microsoft teams. It will provide a soft phone to allow internal & external calls through MS Teams for a limited number of users in response to the COVID-19 remote working environment.

What does it mean for you?

Staff members who have been migrated will have a similar experience as if they were in the office using a desk phone. However, all calls both inbound & outbound will be routed through their laptop via Microsoft teams. This will allow staff to make and receive calls while working from home, or moving between different work area’s while in UL. It maintains all the features that are currently available on your desk phone.

Status

The overall project is now live, status Green.

The following is a summary of the key project activities and their status.

Student COVID-19 Request

Project Name - Student COVID-19 Request

What was the Project About?

As part of our COVID-19 Prevention and Control measures, the University, in conjunction and led by the HSE, developed a fantastic initiative to swab-test as many students as possible for COVID-19 in the direct locality surrounding UL.

In alignment with our Medical, HR, Marketing & Communications and Buildings & Estates colleagues, ITD were very much at the forefront in developing and providing the solution to manage the uptake of the student requests.

ITD provided a digital system, which enabled our colleagues in the HSE to input the uptake of students into their HSE systems, in an efficient, secure and GDPR compliant manner.

What did this mean for our Students?

Although, the Student COVID-19 Request initiative was not a mandatory requirement, over an eight day period, as many as 1,062 students submitted a COVID-19 Request prior to Christmas.

The initiative was repeated in February, in what was a further attempt to curb the spread of the virus. Again, the take up from our students was fantastic, with 894 students requesting a COVID-19 swab test.

Status & Success Metric

Phase 1 of the Project is now officially Closed.

Student Submitting a Request

Online Forms and Automated Workflows

What’s the Project About?

The scope of the project is to introduce an Online Form & Workflow solution, which with time, will replace existing, manual, paper-based form processes. The solution will help drive efficiencies, by reducing the time and effort of processing paper forms. There are three key components to the Online Form & Workflow solution:

Ability to complete & submit Online Forms (Using Infowise).
Ability to assign the Online Form through the various stages of the given approval process electronically (Using PowerAutomate).
Reporting – This captures the status of a process, who currently owns the process as well as capturing the full audit trail of the process, including date and timestamps (Using Sharepoint Online).

What does this mean for me?

Human Resources were one of many divisions that expressed the need to migrate onto an Online Form & Workflow solution. The consensus throughout the Campus, was that the HR Recruitment Pack Process would drive many efficiencies, throughout many Faculties & Divisions, and was therefore identified to be the pilot solution. EHS, AHSS, HR and ITD all played a vital role in the implementation of Phase 1 and these areas are now live on the Online HR Recruitment Pack since June 2020.

In Phase 2, we envisage that all Faculties and Divisions throughout the Campus will have the ability to submit and approve their Recruitment Pack approved electronically.

Status & Success Metrics

Phase 1 of the Project is now fully operational and the project is officially closed.

Network and Email Account Management

Project Name Network and Email Account Management

The project aimed to ensure that any access to University network and email resources, is for University use only, is authorised and is maintained in an appropriate manner. This is in line with UL’s Policies approved by the Governing Authority in September 2019.

The project included

A review of procedures surrounding the maintenance of UL network and email accounts.
Additional automation of the processes to grant, maintain and expire the accounts.
An audit of all existing accounts was conducted as part of the project to ensure the accounts were provisioned in line with UL Policies.

Why are we doing this?

To implement controls that are required in order to ensure that the University of Limerick remains compliant with Data Protection laws.
To improve efficiency of processes through automation.
To reduce Microsoft licensing costs paid by the University of Limerick
To reduce user support costs associated with accounts that are no longer required.

Impacted Services/What does it mean for you?

You may notice some changes as you may receive automated emails when your account is about to expire or asking you to notify us of any changes regarding your account details, example ID number or Department.
If you are a Head of Department, you will receive requests to sign off on ID Cards for contractors/employees of approved suppliers working for your department or to re-approve temporary accounts.
If you are employed by an Affilliate/Subsidary/Supplier of UL you will be required to attain approval for your account and a UL ‘Authorised User’ ID Card on a regular basis, you will receive automated emails when your account is about to expire or is in need of review. Following the HR ID Card Policy https://www.ul.ie/hr/current-staff/hr-policies-procedures-forms-z.

Status