Making use of Twitter

Within CiCS at the University of Sheffield we currently maintain a service status web page to let all our users know if any of our IT services are unavailable, at risk or back available following an incident.  We have manually populated this information covering core hours between 8am and 6pm Monday to Friday. 

Over the last few months we have been working on automating the web page to be populated from our helpdesk software, and following successful testing this is set to go live in the next few weeks.

As part of trying to improve the service and provide information on issues with key services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week we started looking at technology to allow easy population of our service status page during out of hours periods without needing a member of staff to have access to the helpdesk software or content management system and hopefully without the need to have access to a computer.

It was felt that a great way to update the information would be something similar to Twitter, accessible via a mobile phone, and so we started to investigate what opportunities were available to us.

We now have created and are testing a system where an incident manager can access a password protected webpage via a mobile phone and populate the fields relating to an incident with our services.  This information is then submitted direct to our helpdesk software and the correct fields are populated and in turn the service status web page is also updated.

Following on from this however was our investigations into Twitter itself, we have now created a Twitter account for CiCS that is automatically populated by our helpdesk software in the same way that our service status webpage is.  Along with this information we have also started to Twitter out our CiCS news which is also currently a web page detailing all the developments and achievements of the department which will impact on our services.

As yet we haven’t promoted CiCS Twitter as we want to test the process out thoroughly first, however we already have a number of University staff who have found the twitter and are following it.

Customer liaison - the need for partnership

In many Universities, certain academic departments employ their own local IT staff in addition to the central IT service. A perennial issue the need for good engagement between local IT staff and central IT staff.

I have found that department-based computing staff are increasingly keen to enable their user community to leverage centrally-provided services, since this reduces duplication and frees local IT staff time to focus on discipline-specific needs. Why run a your own server if you can use someone else's?

For everyone to be comfortable with changing from a locally-provided service (perhaps tailored to local requirements), to a central service (which may be less specialised), there has to be a clear understanding of the local needs, and of the nature of the service which is being provided centrally. For instance, what levels of reliability and performance are really required? What levels are being aspired to and achieved centrally?

But beyond this, there's a need for good engagement at a personal level between local and central support staff. A level of mutual trust needs to be built up, so that local IT staff can be confident that particular local requirements will be looked at sympathetically, while central service staff need to know that departments will be reasonable in their expectations. Having this level of trust makes it much easier for all the stakeholders to engage in guiding the ongoing development of the service. In other words, what's needed is partnership.

I think the Managed Desktop service at the University of Edinburgh is a good example of partnership. There is considerable bilateral communication between central and local staff through a range of mechanisims, including workshops and informal lunch meetings as well as mailing lists, a wiki, and of course individual email and telephone contact. Everyone has a say in shaping the service as it continues to evolve. The result is a good level of mutual understanding and trust among stakeholders, without which the Managed Desktop would not have been nearly so successful.

There are many things which can get in the way of good partnership. Sometimes things become too adversarial, or the tone of communication is inappropriate, or (more simply) pressure of work means that personal interaction drops down the priority list.

The challenge for liaison staff is to foster an improved sense of partnership between local and central services.

Communicating away from the office

With all the current bad weather it highlights some of the issues around communication that you take for granted when you make it into the office and so do all your staff.

Whilst less than 50% of my team have been able to make it into work today (including myself) it doesn't mean that we aren't working and it definitely doesn't mean we aren't still communicating.

Some months ago we produced a web page which aimed to help all members of staff at the University of Sheffield be able to work effectively off campus which you can view by clicking here. 

One great tool introduced by CICS is myChat which is an authenticated instant messenger tool for all University staff to use.  Using this technology has a number of advantages over other channels available such as email or phones.   Firstly it allows me to see who is actually logged into the system and available,  all my team log into the system when they start work wherever they are and so I don't need to ring round to everyone to find out if they have managed to get to work, if they are coming in etc.  

Secondly its a really quick and easy way of keeping in touch, its not as formal or intrusive as a phone call or email, and responses are a lot quicker.  Files and links can be shared and you can even have a conference chat with all or a number of the team joining in.

This type of technology has its place and with all communication one solution doesn't fit all situations, however on a day like today I am glad to have such a tool at my disposal.

YouthMedia

Youth Media recently sent round a demo of a widget which sits on the desktop, letting you deliver news (and adverts) with various other bits of functionality. We were looking at it because contacting all students, to let them know about planned service interruptions, changes to opening hours, etc, is one of the things we struggle with. It doesn't seem to matter how many notices you put up or how eye catching you try to make them. We have plasma display screens around campus, but one student at a focus group commented that because they were bright and glossy she assumed they were just adverts and ignored them. We have logon notices, which are plain and simple,  but I think a lot of people just click 'Finish' without giving them a second glance (including me, especially when there has been a spate of them).
 
I guess the problem is we are trying to communicate information people don't really want to know. They might need to know it, but that's not nearly as interesting. I don't think there is a simple answer. I certainly don't think there is any one communication channel that will miraculously get through to everyone. (Of course, if you know what that miraculous method is, please share!) So perhaps plugging away using every channel available is the way to go.  After all, once you have the message, adding it to web pages, printing a few posters, etc, isn't particularly time consuming. Of course, getting the right message, in plain, non-technical English, is a different matter altogether...