Project Update – Feb 2017

The web project is less than a week from launch. The major streams of work are making rapid progress.

Key Points

Rollout date: Monday 13th February.

The new staff and student portals replace staff.mq.edu.au and students.mq.edu.au

The old versions of these sites will no longer be visible, except to IT for archival access: staff.mq.edu.au, students.mq.edu.au, and ofs.mq.edu.au

The staff directory has already been upgraded

A new search function is included in the portals

Google maps have been updated to be accurate

The public website won’t be affected. Research staff profiles and publications are part of the PURE project and are unaffected

What people will see

  • Launch video to increase awareness and set expectations appropriately
  • When they first use the new portal, they will be automatically taken through a built-in tutorial
  • They will be asked to log in and set preferences at the end. This customizes the portal to be even better for their needs
  • Students will see a personalized study calendar for them when they login

Functionality

  • Students will see a personalized study calendar for them when they login. This includes the courses they are enrolled in, their assessments, and their exam timetable
  • Important messages for students are shown on the homepage
  • Important dates relevant for the student are shown in the important dates section of the homepage. Students can fine-tune what appears here by changing their preferences
  • University emergency alerts appear in the header of any web page if an emergency is sent out from alerts.mq.edu.au
  • News and events for students are shown at the bottom of the homepage
  • An improved search lets students find information that is more relevant for them. This can be filtered to just see policy or people results

Staff have the same functionality except for the first item (calendar). The information shown to them is a different version for staff.

Login is optional.

The marketing and brand content is behind a login (it has always been behind a login). Finance content is now behind a login (new).

Performance

The system has been tested to double the previous peak load.

When people use it for the first time, the load on the server will be relatively high, as they system will be creating preference files for them, and downloading styles, fonts, icons and scripts which will be cached. Once they are cached for each device that accesses the sites, load will reduce.

Editors

Editors can receive training (Squiz CMS) by lodging a OneHelp ticket

Editing manuals and guides are published at www.mq.edu.au/_guide . Those who have completed training can use this as a reference.

Editor staff can use a scheduler to automatically make live or archive content in the week beginning 13 February. https://matrix.squiz.net/manuals/edit-plus/chapters/editing-a-standard-page#future-status But they must set all this up by CoB 9 February. Support for this process cannot be provided due to capacity constraints.

Thank you in advance for your support in ensuring we launch with strong content and information for our staff and students. Please contact the Web Project Team at web.project@mq.edu.au if you have any questions.