Lead Developer (SITS)

• Advise and train key application users
• Ensuring compliance of systems by Higher Education regulatory bodies
• Key stakeholder for development and maintenance of student record system
• Management of a team of developers and support staff
• Principal lead for business-critical projects
• Principal lead for development of student record system web portal
• Provide user support to students, support staff and academic staff

• Implemented corporate-branded HTML5 and CSS3 compliant email templates
• Major consolidation and review of critical configuration files
• Responsible for the testing and adoption of Google Analytics, single sign-on, Document Manager and PDF conversion software
• Significantly reduced page-load time on the Paperless Admissions portal
• Using Javascript for SITS certification. Link to certificate -  jpeg pdf (opens new window)

SITS e:Vision Consolidation Project

Project Duration

Begun in January 2015

Project Summary

Complete re-styling and re-branding of the university's SITS e:Vision platform.

Project Details

This project is on-going and concerns the redesign of the university's SITS e:Vision platform in order to introduce a single, unified brand throughout (largely via cascading style sheets) and also ensure compliance with the latest accessibility recommendations. The project also seeks to evaluate all the latest tools available through e:Vision, incorporating these into standard working practice where appropriate.

Key deliverables achieved:

• Production of corporate branded HTML email template, ensuring compliance with latest HTML5 / CSS3 validation rules
• Implementation of standardised corporate branded cascading style sheet
• Google Analytics installed across all HTS files
• Single sign-on introduced in several areas of e:Vision (e.g. student registration emails, proxy logins, etc.)
• Testing, configuration and installation of PDF conversion software
• HTS and assignment files: general clean-up and consolidated across test and live environments
• Document Manager tested and configured

Paperless Admissions Annual Review 2015/2016

Project Duration

April 2015 to October 2015

Project Summary

The Paperless Admissions Portal is a large and complex component within e:Vision, used by support and academic staff during the process of interviewing and accepting students onto a particular course of study. As such, the Paperless Admissions Portal is subject to many changes, both in terms of our course offerings and regulatory requirements (typically from HEFCE).

The annual review is an opportunity to scope all changes required and allocate resources as necessary to implement these changes.

Project Details

The Paperless Admissions portal is the university's most complex area of administration and I was the principal lead for development. I managed the testing (peer and user acceptance), development, implementation, documentation, training and maintenance of all significant changes. Key deliverables achieved during the academic cycle 2015/2016 include:

• Implemented custom SQL stored procedures to store and retrieve student interview details (both answers to questions and tutor feedback) as IOI related documents.
• Existing jQuery altered to show / hide questions dependant on various criteria (e.g. certain questions must be hidden by default but shown for a specific set of courses).
• Overhaul of task conditions to handle different streams of education-related courses.
• RQH / RQI records altered in line with university's changes in health-related courses.
• Major rewrite of reports (SRLs, SLPs) in order to support above changes.

Clearing Dashboard

Project Duration

June 2015 to August 2015

Project Summary

A small project dedicated to improving the look-and-feel of an area of e:Vision dedicated to providing tools for use during and after the critical Clearing period.

Project Details

Several objectives were defined and achieved, as listed below:

• Complete re-write of main, summary dashboard. SRL-based web-page re-written using HTML5 / CSS3 principles.
• Creation of report showing UCAS results (task based, with results presented using DataTables)
• Creation of search tool for querying courses available via Clearing
• Creation of search tool for querying all enquires received via Clearing

Online Registration Annual Review 2015/2016

Project Duration

June 2015 to July 2015

Project Summary

Annual review of the university's process by which students enrol on a course via SITS e:Vision. The University of Cumbria refer to this system as 'Online Registration'.

Project Details

As part of this annual review, I tested and implemented numerous changes, including:

• Use of jQuery for data validation (e.g. National Insurance number)
• Use of jQuery to show / hide questions relevant to specific courses
• Additional functionality created to store student's transport arrangements (e.g. car ownership) as SPD records
• Process created to store student's disability information, where relevant

SITS:Vision Upgrade 2015/2016

Project Duration

January 2015 to March 2015

Project Summary

Upgrade of SITS:Vision and e:Vision to 8.8.0 (via 8.7.1)

Project Details

This was the second major upgrade of our SITS environment in which I played a key role. My role was the testing of the whole of e:Vision. Some of the testing was devolved to other team members, but I retained overall responsibility for signing off all testing of e:Vision.

Main areas of responsibility included:

• Updating HTS files, ensuring the university's modified HTS files are only selectively merged with Tribal HTS files (e.g. custom e:Vision log-on page)
• Updating assignment files (ASN files), again ensuring that all of our modifications remain in place
• All other web resource files (e.g. cascading style sheets and JavaScript files) updated and tested
• Full peer testing of all affected areas of e:Vision
• Liaise with teams affected by changes and ensure full user acceptance testing was completed

Paperless Admissions Annual Review 2014/2015

Project Duration

April 2014 to August 2014

Project Summary

The Paperless Admissions Portal is a large and complex component within e:Vision, used by support and academic staff during the process of interviewing and accepting students onto a particular course of study. As such, the Paperless Admissions Portal is subject to many changes, both in terms of our course offerings and regulatory requirements (typically from HEFCE).

The annual review is an opportunity to scope all changes required and allocate resources as necessary to implement these changes.

Project Details

The Paperless Admissions portal is the university's most complex area of administration and I was the principal lead for development. I managed the testing (peer and user acceptance), development, implementation, documentation, training and maintenance of all significant changes. Key deliverables achieved during the academic cycle 2014/2015 include:

• Major re-write of main search page, reducing average page load time from 30s to 8s; this was achieved primarily by using RQH / RQI to query the SITS database directly using SQL.
• Introduction of jQuery as a means of showing / hiding page elements based on user interaction (e.g. if a particular check-box has been selected) or a student's academic profile (e.g. show only those fields relevant to a particular course of study).

Not quite a full-blown project, a mini project is a significant piece of work scoped, tested and implemented using normal software development methodology. A mini project will typically be an improvement to a business process, introducing efficiencies and reducing complexity where possible.

SITS Search Tool

Project Duration

June 2014 to October 2015

Project Summary

It's often necessary to search through certain commonly-used areas of SITS, looking for a specific string. This project is a stored procedure to perform this search and return the results.

Project Details

A widely-used stored procedure that allows the user to search throughout SITS, searching for a specific string, ignoring records marked as 'out of use' where required.

The long duration of this project is indicative of the fact that many updates have been made to this project, as more tables are included in the search.

Key features:

• User specifies search string and whether to take account of the 'in use' flag or not
• Many tables and fields checked, for example: SRL, SLP, TTE, tasks, Vista
• Output details exactly which fields and which tables contain the search string given

IOI Related Documents

Project Duration

November 2014 to July 2015

Project Summary

A suite of stored procedures, functions, tasks, RQHs and SLPs in order to store and retrieve interview questions and feedback.

Project Details

As part of the Paperless Admissions process, it is necessary to store information about a student gathered both during their interview and afterwards (as part of the feedback process). In storing this information, all available fields in IOI were accounted for and it was then necessary to make use of user-defined fields. Prior to this project, a lot of interview-related information was stored as a fixed-width string within IOI_UF20, with specific positions in the string corresponding to answers given to specific interview questions. Taking all of this into account, the project had several aims:

• Creation of library of all possible interview questions and feedback
• Alternate means of storing interview answers and feedback, replacing IOI_UF20
• Full audit trail of what answer / feedback was provided, when and by whom
• Simple means to view library of interview questions and feedback
• Simple means to maintain library of interview questions and feedback (given sufficient privileges)

Deliverables achieved as part of this project:

• Stored procedure (and associated SLP and RQH records) created to store answers and feedback provided both during and after an interview, as a new related document associated with the IOI record for that interview.
• Stored procedure (and associated SLP and RQH records) created to retrieve answers and feedback provided both during and after an interview.
• Stored procedure (and associated SLP and RQH records) created to delete IOI related documents.
• Stored procedure and task created to display all interview questions and feedback in e-Vision.
• Stored procedure and tasks created to allow creation and adjustment of interview questions and feedback in e-Vision.

Enable / Disable Photo Upload

Project Duration

January 2015 to April 2015

Project Summary

Creation of two stored procedures to enable / disable the process by which students upload a photograph (for use on their library card) during registration for their course.

Project Details

During busy times of the year (typically from late August through to early September), library staff do not have the resources to pre-print library cards for students, who are able to submit a photograph during registration for their course. To resolve this problem, it is necessary to disable the submission of photographs during this busy period.

Two stored procedures were created, one essentially reversing the actions of the other, both with the aim of either enabling or disabling the photo submission process normally available during course registration.

Key features:

• Insert / remove all references to photo submission
• Prevent / allow users to access photo submission page
• Alter course registration task, preventing / allowing navigation to photo submission page

Course Deletion Tool

Project Duration

September 2014 to December 2014

Project Summary

A process created to delete a course record (CRS) and all records associated with that course.

Project Details

Working closely with a colleague who had a detailed knowledge of the university's academic model, I created a stored procedure to go through all records associated with a given course (all the way from PWY to CRS), deleting records marked for deletion.

Key features:

• Various levels of test mode. Stored procedure can be run in 'trial' mode.
• User can specify to delete a specific course or all courses flagged for deletion.
• Stored procedure provides full report of exactly what was deleted.
• Data validation performed and feedback provided where necessary.

Synchronise Address Records

Project Duration

May 2014 to June 2014

Project Summary

Stored procedure created to synchronise student address details between INS_STU and MEN_ADD records.

Project Details

Ordinarily, the university's instance of SITS is configured in such a way that any changes to a student's address made in the ADD screen are automatically copied over to their main student record (INS_STU). This stored procedure checks that this synchronisation has occurred and, where the INS_STU and MEN_ADD records are inconsistent, data is copied over (i.e. address details synchronised).

Key features:

• All student address records checked and fixed (where necessary) to enable automatic synchronisation
• Eleven address / contact details copied from MEN_ADD (student's home address) to INS_STU
• Eleven address / contact details copied from MEN_ADD (student's contact address) to INS_STU