Administrative Technologies works collaboratively to support the business units' applications at the University through multiple projects at different stages of implementation and maintenance. Large-scale projects include University-wide “enterprise” applications, that impact the finance, human resources, and research aspects of the business of the University.

The teams in Administrative Technologies offer several layers of application development and support. An example is when code updates are offered by the software vendor and reviewed for technical specification by the developers. There are over 17 unique vendor software integrations into the university’s employee workforce system that the UAccess Employee team must error check whenever a change is being implemented. These include benefits, retirement, insurance, payroll, applicant tracking, international employee portal, each have unique coding and integration needs.

The Administrative Technologies business analysts review software updates for value to the end-user business case. Once an update is determined to be of value, developers process the update and any custom changes needed in a test environment. Working groups collaborate with business users on potential changes to application and determine optimal time to implement changes. And this is where the Administrative Tech team excels.

The team’s value to many business departments and colleges across the university is their ability to build collaborative teams of disparate units and guide a project with often a very large group of stakeholders. Though the technology involved usually falls under the UITS portfolio of services, building a cohesive group effort that results in a successful project completion is where the Administrative Technologies team stands out.

A great example of the team’s ability to gather a collaborative effort on projects, is the Administrative Technologies’ team response to a request for help to make improvements to the UAlert System. UAlert is the university’s emergency mass notification system that broadcasts urgent messages in times of crisis. Lane Spalla, Emergency Management Coordinator for the University’s Office of Public Safety tells of how the Administrative Technologies was called upon to assist with cleaning up data and establishing an automated process for ongoing updates to cell phone data in UAlert. But he quickly described that the team’s true value was much more than that of application development. “We had to look at the phone number registration processes from the student and human resources perspective as well as the technology process to ensure the data was up to date and maintained.” Tim Schwab, Executive Director of Administrative technologies told him, “Give me a day or two and we’ll figure something out.” He came back with a whole team of people.

The roster of the working group (still meeting regularly after implementation) started with UAPD and Office of Emergency Management and was expanded exponentially to eventually include Facilities Management, Risk Management, Dean of Students, Office of University Initiatives, Housing and Residential Life and even online and distance education. Spalla clarified, “We not only had to do this on the main campus, but this program needed to be functional statewide.”

The Administrative Technologies team led this effort. “They kept us focused. They defined responsibilities and lines of authority. It was a technical issue but impacted humans statewide.” Anyone associated with the university community, including visitors and neighbors, had to be considered as the working group began redefining the UAlert system procedures and processes.

When facilitating change over such a broad area of units, colleges and communities, creating a governance team and structure is often the best way to make sure everyone has a voice. The resulting changes then are not made in isolation and without regard to varying levels of needed outcomes. “With the governance team that was put together the registered membership of UAlert went from 60,000 to just over 100,000. The database was refreshed and the team could feel confident that the data reflected current to today’s students, employees and community members.

“We became very informed, very organized, and all of that came from the experience brought to us by this UITS Administrative tech group.” The Admin Tech team brought technology change management practices that have been previously used in such large projects in the past, and the result was a smooth delivery of a critical system.

“And what I really liked about it is that though they brought that organizational structure to this team, they didn’t try to take over. They worked to keep this team organized, and they showed us ways to find the proper leadership to define who is responsible for what and to hold them accountable.”

“What had been alert responsibilities placed just on UAPD in the past became a campus-wide governance group.”

Lane Spalla, Emergency Management Coordinator, Office of Public Safety

Over a period of several months, the Admin Tech team helped to identify where UAPD and the Office of Emergency Management needed help with the UAlert system, and found ways for them to initiate the changes, and then maintain the structure of the meetings. “They kept minutes and sent out agendas, had responsible action items for different people. And it really helped us take on a monumental task.”

As with many enterprise applications, the UAlert system is in a constant state of upgrades that bring better processes and smoother management capability by the Office of Public Safety and the Office of Emergency Management. The Administrative Technologies team continues to be involved with Lane and his team. “I would say that not only did they organize us, but to this day they are still involved because we still have those meetings on a bi-weekly basis that are still organized administered by UITS. They are the ones that are inspiring and keeping us on track with things that we still need to accomplish.”