In early October, the Request Tracker (RT) users group met in the newly renovated Engineering Room 023 for an informative session on RT’s upcoming features and overall integration within UMBC. Over 35 people from various departments attended the lunch and learn and an effective practices interactive panel provided key insight into RT’s best uses.

The panel consisted of Kena Jackson of Enrollment Management, Shahid Mokal from the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS), Ken Schreihofer from Student Affairs, and Brian Thompson from the Office of General Counsel (OGC).

Starting off the session, Joe Kirby, Assistant VP of DoIT, gave a brief overview of upcoming features for RT version 4.4. The new version will offer selectable multiple files, drag and drop attachments, and inline previews for certain file types like images. For a complete list of upcoming changes, check out the release notes here.

Andrea Mocko then gave a presentation on campus use of RT based on the FY 16 User Support. In short, the department of Academic Affairs has the highest use of RT by division and the top referring sites and the volume of TSC phone calls has gone down significantly. For a more complete picture, you can check out the FY 16 Review here.

The panel then went through what it was like implementing RT into their respective departments, starting with what the initial problem was before implementing RT.

Jackson described life before RT as challenging and the inability to keep track of everything was not ideal with their goal of providing excellent customer service. “There would be people stopping at the desk for on the cuff technical support.” said Jackson.

Shahid had similar problems to Jackson. Schreihofer ran into workflow problems, and wanted to be consistent and automated every time when responding to a ticket. Thompson had no central way of receiving or tracking incoming tickets. 

These were all major issues the panelists described, until they remedied it by implementing RT into their departments. 

RT will be 8 years old on February 23, 2017. Kirby said “I have realized over the years it was not me getting [users] to buy in, but rather [users] sharing their needs and willingness to work with us.”

You can see this type of collaboration with all of the panelists who attended the lunch and learn. Each one of them found ways to integrate RT into their department, and customize it to suit their needs.

Schreihofer for example looked into canned responses for web forms, which would then go on to be implemented in the Technology Support Center (TSC). “RT does all the heavy lifting, and gets it done.” said Schreihofer 

Thompson implemented RT as a way to replace paper processes within his department as well as improving workflow within the OGC. You can check out more about Thompson’s implementations here. After implementing RT, Thompson says he gets several questions from institutions outside of UMBC. “Other Universities point to what we have and say ‘I want that’” said Thompson. 

One of Kirby’s favorite quotes that describes RT and implementing it at UMBC comes from computer scientist and Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, who said “The most dangerous phrase in our language is ‘We’ve always done it that way.’” 

Brian Thompson, Assistant Dean of the Graduate School and an affiliate member of the Office of the General Counsel (OGC), had a problem. The 8 year old OGC website just wasn't doing its job of effectively providing information and establishing communication for visitors. 

It wasn't until Joe Kirby, Assistant Vice President of Business Systems for DoIT, would soon introduce Thompson to all sorts of tools to use on the website. “The world we live in right now is self service,” Kirby said. “We can’t deliver fish anymore, we have to teach them how to fish.” 

What needed to happen first was a new redesign, so Kirby suggested moving to the WordPress platform. This gave the OGC site a much needed refresh, as well as providing a more mobile friendly website. 

After just a couple hours of tutorial, Thompson ended up redesigning the website himself and even added a new public info requests tab to the site. Information was further streamlined with contact information always at the bottom of any tab or page while navigating the site. 

General counsel employees received their own tabs within the website, compared to the old website where all employees were just listed and lumped into one tab. 

Next up was integrating BOX into the site. Thompson could now link to BOX files on the new site, and update these documents automatically without having to go back to the OGC website and update the links making it less of a hassle to manage.

Another addition was RT support in the form of electronic requests. Before, email requests for public info could get lost or would have multiple people working on the same request. 

Thompson was able to experiment with a lot of different tools without worrying of breaking something somewhere else. “I think that what DoIT does, it creates an environment where you don’t have to be afraid of failure.” said Thompson. 

One thing the old site didn't have was an RSS feed. “Let’s just say, the old site had a news tab that wasn't the most current,” said Thompson. “A RSS feed seemed like the perfect compromise.” The RSS feed is always accessible as it consistently appears on each of the tabs on the new general counsel website.

Overall, the entire experience of overhauling the site was great for experience. “Having an environment where you don’t have to worry about failure is very empowering.” said Thompson. 

The partnership between DoIT and OGC lead to a practical solution of the necessary technologies to be implemented rather than applying the latest and greatest tools to a site. “We would like to let people know who aren't technical that they can do this.” said Kirby.