VOCAL (Virtual Online Collaboration at Liverpool) is the University of Liverpool's collaborative working environment.

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1 Institution Name: Department: The University of Liverpool Computing Services Department Contact Name: Jake Gannon Objective of the VOCAL System VOCAL (Virtual Online Collaboration at Liverpool) is the University of Liverpool's collaborative working environment. The main objective of the VOCAL system is to address the need for staff to be able to collaborate in a secure environment, particularly with colleagues who are external to the University. For example, allowing research funders, academic colleagues at other Universities or commercial collaborators to have access to content in a secure, managed area. Additional objectives of the system relate to best practice, including: Make it easier for users to be able to collaborate on data that is stored centrally, rather than ing multiple copies and keeping track of contributions. Accessible remotely the system can be accessed via a Web browser anywhere in the world. Cost effective the solution needed to be cost effective on a limited budget. Managed creation process the process of creating workspaces needed to be managed to ensure best practice. Devolved management once a workspace has been created, management of the content and permissions reside with the members of staff who own the workspace. Description of the VOCAL System System overview VOCAL uses Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0, which is freely available. It included all the collaborative functionality that we required, and being developed on ASP.NET, provided scope for inhouse development to extend the product. The system is web based and linked with the University s Active Directory so, to access VOCAL staff go to and login with their University username and password. Collaborative features in VOCAL include shared documents, discussion boards, wikis, blogs, team calendars, surveys, picture libraries, contact lists and issue tracking. alerts enable users to keep up to date with changes and the system integrates with Microsoft Office 2007, allowing users, for example, to manage the VOCAL calendar or reply to discussion board posts using Outlook 2007 on their desktop. VOCAL sites are also accessible via mobile devices. VOCAL includes links to our current video conferencing / live meeting software, Adobe Connect. We have promoted the services together as a suite of collaborative tools. SharePoint is optimised to work with Internet Explorer. Most key functions can be carried out across different browser platforms, however, the SharePoint built in text editor is only available in Internet

2 Explorer. Firefox and Safari users were limited to using html tags for formatting. We addressed this by implementing the TeleRik RadEditor, which is a free enhanced built in editor that improves the cross browser compatibility. Creating a workspace The VOCAL development team developed a customised site creation process. Members of staff request a workspace (or site) by logging into VOCAL at and clicking on the link Request a new VOCAL workspace. The user then completes the online form, providing a Title, URL and Description for the site as well as two usernames who will be owners of the site. On submission, the form contents are sent to the Computing Services Helpdesk, and a member of Helpdesk staff creates the workspace. This is a quick and easy process but is not fully automated in order to include a quality control element. When a user logs in to VOCAL a customised homepage lists all the workspaces that the user has permissions to access (shown in Appendix A), so they do not need to remember or bookmark specific URLs for the sites. Managing a workspace Once a workspace has been created, it is the responsibility of the owners of the site to manage both content and permissions for that workspace. It was a clear objective that owners must be able to manage the maintenance of the site themselves. VOCAL sites are setup with three default permission groups Site Owners with full control over content, layout and permissions; Site Members, who can contribute content but not change layout or permissions; and Site Visitors, who have read only access. Site Owners can add users to one of these groups to give them the relevant permissions. It is also possible to create additional groups if required and to adjust permissions across different areas of the site if required, so a group may have read only permissions for announcements but contribute permissions for the shared documents. External Partners The key innovation with the VOCAL system is the ability for University staff to allow external colleagues access to their secure workspace. This was a key requirement for our collaborative environment. Using ASP.NET, the VOCAL development team extended the Windows SharePoint Services system to use an alternative authentication method, so that external user accounts could be created and stored in a separate database. This keeps the external user accounts outside of the University s Active Directory system but enables external partners to have a VOCAL account. External users have a separate login screen at external.liv.ac.uk/ which uses the alternative authentication method. The creation and management of external user accounts is devolved to the Site Owners through the further in house development of an external partner account creation wizard and a series of tools

3 that enable Site Owners to reset an external user s password and unlock an account (an external user account is locked if the incorrect details have been entered consecutively more than 5 times). To create an External Partner account, the Site Owner simply goes to the Site Settings screen and chooses Create External Partner Account. This starts the wizard and the Site Owner enters the name and address of the user and a username and password for them. They are then asked which Permissions Group within the site the user should be added to. On clicking Finish, the external user is then sent an automatic with the username and password details and the URL to login to VOCAL. Screen shots of the External user account creation process are shown in Appendix A. User Support Extensive support resources have been developed for VOCAL users the VOCAL Support site (shown in Appendix B) is a working VOCAL site, containing user guides that can be downloaded, an online Help and How To section which was developed using the wiki, a calendar of training events, a discussion board for users to post VOCAL queries and suggestions to, and a VOCAL tips and tricks blog that the VOCAL development and support team maintain. Supporting documentation about the VOCAL System The system was in pilot for nine months and has been a live production service for 2 months. Already, more than 200 VOCAL sites have been created. There are more than 670 external users with VOCAL accounts. Appendix C shows the organisations that some of these external users belong to. VOCAL is a significant milestone in supporting collaboration with colleagues within the University as well as our external partners. Professor Jon Saunders, Deputy Vice Chancellor & Pro Vice Chancellor for Research and IT VOCAL has been immensely valuable in developing three research consortia involving UK and Indian partners. Professor Martin Mortimer, Institute for Sustainable Water, Integrated Management and Ecosystem Research (SWIMMER). "Our experience with VOCAL has been so successful that we are thinking of doing something similar ourselves" Paul Mullery, IS/IT Project Manager, Natural Environment Research Council

4 Summary VOCAL has brought significant benefits to researchers and to the wider institution. The return on investment has been immense, particularly given that the Windows SharePoint Services software was free, the pilot was run on existing hardware and the system was developed and customised by in house expertise. VOCAL has already played a significant role in establishing a number of new international research collaborations. The system has also contributed to the University s Green initiatives, for example, by reducing the number of meetings staff have with collaborators and thereby, reducing travel. Another frequent comment from users is that it saves time for academics as they no longer have to trawl through to find different versions of documents that collaborators have sent to them. The innovation in developing the facility to allow non University members to be given permissions to a workspace has led to a transformation in the way that researchers can collaborate but also other areas of the University. For example, the system is being used by the Veterinary Faculty to deliver Continuing Professional Development courses as part of a module on behalf of the Royal Veterinary College (i.e. for students who are not members of the University of Liverpool) and our Estates department is using it to manage major and minor building projects, collaborating with external Architects, Contractors and Surveyors. The innovations and best practices demonstrated in this paper are transferable across the many other HE institutions which are investigating or deploying SharePoint and have ASP.NET skills. For example, contacts are already in place to work with the University of Oxford when they begin their project to implement SharePoint. Name of Staff involved (including job titles and addresses) Simon Hatton, Programmer/Analyst s.c.hatton@liverpool.ac.uk Janet Stam User Support, Computing Services janet.stam@liverpool.ac.uk Sarah Whiteley Programmer/Analyst sarah.whiteley@liverpool.ac.uk Support of Institution UCISA Representative Dr Chris Wooff Acting Director, Computing Services c.wooff@liverpool.ac.uk

5 Appendix A Screenshots of the VOCAL system VOCAL homepage This is the first screen a user sees after logging in to VOCAL. It lists the sites that the user has permissions to access. The right side of the page includes key tools and resources, including: Request a new workspace Adobe Connect for real time collaboration VOCAL announcements, such as up coming training courses or system developments VOCAL Support site with user guides and online help Tools for external users to change their password or update their address.

6 Wizard to create an External Partner accounts Within the relevant VOCAL site, the Site Owner goes to Site Settings and clicks on Manage External Partner Accounts. This brings the Site Owner to the tools available for managing external accounts. The Site Owner selects Create a new External user account. The External Account Creation Wizard starts. The Site Owner completes the details for the user and assigns a username and password then clicks Create User. The Site Owner can then choose to which permissions group for the site the user should be added then clicks Finish. An automated is then sent to the External User informing them of their username and password and providing the URL to login to the VOCAL site.

7 Appendix B Example VOCAL sites 1. Research Collaboration VOCAL has played a significant role in developing existing research collaborations and establishment of new ones. The screenshot below shows the homepage of the PARIS consortium VOCAL site. This consortium brings international organisations together with agricultural universities in India to investigate alleviating poverty through rice innovation systems.

8 2. VOCAL Support Site The VOCAL Support site has a document library containing user guides for general users, site owners and external users. There is a discussion board that users can post to and the calendar shows VOCAL training sessions. The site has a wiki that includes online help (shown below) and a blog where the Computing Services VOCAL team can post tips, tricks and updates about the development of the service.

9 Appendix C Snapshot of Service Statistics Number of VOCAL sites: 214 * The purpose of sites ranges from: international research collaboration, continued professional development, research and other project collaboration across HE institutions, University building projects, journal editing, internal projects across University departments, intranet developments. Number of external user accounts: External user accounts have been created for colleagues from 57 other UK academic institutions, 10 academic institutions from USA, Canada and Australia, 7 different NHS organisations and 95 international organisations such as World Health Organisation, UNICEF. * This excludes Computing Services test sites + Based on the domain name of addresses for registered external user accounts.