Positive Feedback from WebGIS Rollout.

WebGIS the evolution of ArcGIS

For several years now, MSIS has helped support the space planning activities of the School in partnership with facilities and the space planning & analysis office. The application suite that was used was ArcGIS which is more or less a gold standard for GIS work.  It involved a bit of a clunky support setup of a hand loaded application and a file service to be manually mounted in order to use the maps and embedded information. UMMS WebGIS looks to replace that function and bring it to a web platform instead which will be in many ways an easier and more accessible way to manage the capability.  Thanks go out to Sue Boucher for helping get this project completed. It does raise a question as to how we support this capability in an ongoing way. As it stands we do not really have a formal Business Administration Portfolio owner, service manager, or product & application manager. I have been focusing more on the research and learning domains with our managed service delivery model . However with WebGIS and our ongoing development of MSpace (another application that supports the space planning & analysis capabilities) it is something that has to be addressed. I only mention it since it could be helpful to you to know where we have purposefully implemented the managed delivery model as well as where we have yet to.

What it does: It provides space information on the buildings of the School and NCRC to different authorized user groups across the Health System. This information is used for productivity calculations and physical space planning.

Who is it for: The user base for this capability is growing beyond just department administrators and facilities staff, but traditionally it is used by staff who have regular need to review physical space attributes.

Where did it come from: The UMMS Space Information, Analysis & Planning Support unit  (part of the Office of the UMMS Chief Administrative Officer) requested this product be implemented as a replacement to the traditionally deployment of ArcGIS which is supported by Solutions Center Support Delivery. This increases the system administration and service delivery effort but should in turn reduce the device support effort required as it is web based rather than a fat-app with file server dependencies.

How does it fit in with us: You know... I'm not entirely sure yet. This is a matter that I will look into, but it is a seemingly wise tactical improvement opportunity even though I have yet to determine the way to best manage the investment within services delivery.

Why oh Why?: This was one of those rare situations where technology improvements alone really helped the accountable product owner and the customers. With this web application the School can now deliver this capability with fewer single points of technology failure and reduce the support burden to the device support agents.

Freezerworks and you!

We have a project in motion right now that is of interest to me for a couple reasons. If you want to know more details that what I have provided here please check with Millard Elder (Product & App Manager) or Debra Haslam (Service Manager).

What it does: Freezerworks is a commercial piece of software that helps organize biological samples (bits of goo technically speaking) that are used in the School's research endeavours. Typically the goo is stored in freezers, you know those freezers that the hallways of MSRB 1,2,3 and Med Sci 1 & 2 etc have all over the place? They are full of very valuable (academically speaking) goo. This goo needs to be cataloged so investigators and their laboratory staffers know where the goo is and what the goo is.

Who it is for: Researchers and their lab staff.

Where did it come from: It's been around for awhile and is somewhat popular with researchers as it is somewhat easy to use and is cost effective for a limited scope. MICHR has been running it for sometime, but recently we negotiated migrating it's management over to MSIS so we can leverage it with the BioRepository Service we are working to spin up.

How does it fit in with us: We are going to try and design the BioRepository Service to have two managed products. One is the LabVantage product which is a large investment and a full bore laboratory management system for goo, while Freezerworks is a more easy to use but feature limited product. These fit within the Research IT portfolio that John Brussolo is accountable for within MSIS.  Below is a picture that maybe helps visualize it. It's not set in stone, but I hope it helps. The pink colored shapes outline the investment along with some other investments in that portfolio for context. You'll note that we have different PAMs and Service Managers working within the research portfolio depending on their speciality and availability.

This is our service delivery model in practice. Neat huh?

Why oh why?: Why have two managed products? Well ideally I'm not sure we would and in fact, Freezerworks may be quite temporary while we as an organization determine the best way to leverage the LabVantage product. However for the time being, we get requests to facilitate Freezerworks and I wanted to avoid many many instances of Freezerworks. It is a well engineered product with a strong internal userbase we will be working with. I want to contain our Freezerworks instances, curate the business needs of the customers for biorepository purposes and help navigate them to the appropriate tool for their needs. It is not an exact science, but having the two managed products being serviced by a cohesive team is a step in the right direction.

Kaschwang! the MSIS Roster

Happy to report that the MSIS Roster v1.0 is deployed. Good work and kudos to Gray Carper for bringing this adventure to a successful close and congratulations to the Solutions Center Service Quality group for all their assistance. The roster is located here: http://www.umms.med.umich.edu/roster . Please take a moment to appreciate and ensure your information and that of your team is correct.

We should really be doing more comics. Comics are cool. 

updates to our support tracking system

Kudos to Tony Markel and those involved with getting the updates to ZenDesk implemented. We have a new look and feel to work with as well as some added functionality that will help facilitate our procurement processes. This was an upgrade that we attempted earlier but the feedback from the staff was that it was not ready for our use yet. Working with the vendor and through our prioritization process we made headway and are happy to have the new underpinning framework in place to help ongoing efforts.  Detailed release notes on this can be found in our documentation . It is always an under appreciated project that has to touch on both process development and technologies but this is looking good on both. Thanks.