Purpose of the document
The service management plan (SMP) is the single, formal and updated document outlining how Enterprise and the WatRooms service are to be managed, delivered and controlled. It defines overall service governance and related management plans, procedures, timelines and the methods and accountabilities for service delivery, change management and decision making.
The SMP also defines a roadmap for the development and change to the service ongoing, and as such is expected to be updated and changed to reflect the current and planned future states of the service.
Definition of the service
Scope of the service
Enterprise is a web-based application through which classrooms are booked. The application has two components:
A restricted application used by the Registrar’s Scheduling Office to book approximately 130 centrally-managed classrooms for both courses and academic events and to schedule remaining course work into classrooms managed by various academic departments. The Bookings Office also uses this restricted application to book non-academic events. (Note that academic departments use various methods to schedule ad hoc bookings into their own rooms.)
A view-only portal called WatRooms is used by academic and academic support staff to view room characteristics and availability
As of March 2019, Infosilem Enterprise/WatRooms has been deployed to meet the room scheduling needs of the RO Scheduling Office as well as the Bookings Office. In the future, this service may be expanded more broadly across the University to support scheduling activities for rooms managed by various Academic and Academic Support units.
This SMP reflects the current Infosilem Enterprise/WatRooms application environments. The SMP will need to be reviewed and updated should its user group be expanded beyond the RO Scheduling Office and Bookings Office.
Roles and Responsibilities
There are a number of stakeholders who use the WatRooms scheduling service and/or the services with which it interfaces. They are noted in the chart below along with their responsibilities.
Stakeholder team | Responsibilities | Contact information |
Registrars Scheduling Office |
| Charlene Schumm, Director, Scheduling & Examinations
Tanya Pompilio, Scheduling, Examination & Resource Specialist
Elysia Gallinaro, Scheduling Specialist, Process & Data Analyst
|
Bookings Office |
| Donna Schell, Bookings Office |
Registrar’s Office, Information, Technology & Analytics |
| David Bean, Director
Sheila Brubacher, Business Systems Analyst (Records)
|
Information Systems & Technology, Student Information Systems |
| Daryl Dore, Director, Enterprise Resource Planning Systems
Alan Dye, Information Systems Specialist
Vivienne Ballantyne, Manager, Student Information Systems
Chris Voutsis, Information Specialist, Enterprise Resource Planning Systems group
|
Information Systems & Technology, Instructional Technologies & Media Services (ITMS) |
| Andrea Chappell, Director, Instructional Technologies & Media Services
Marcel David, Manager, Presentation Services
|
Deputy Provost, Space Planning |
| Scott Nicoll, Manager Space Planning
Amy Bender, Space Planning and Classroom Management Specialist |
Campus scheduling representatives and other support staff |
| Various contacts in Academic and Academic Support Units across campus |
Plant Ops |
|
|
Governance
There is a Student Information Systems (SIS) steering committee that has oversight to review enhancement requests, project ideas, upgrades and critical patch updates for the various systems used to deliver services to students and determine the priority of the work. As part of the student services delivery “infrastructure”, Infosilem Enterprise/WatRooms work will be reviewed, prioritized, approved, and scheduled within this existing governance model.
Should the Infosilem Enterprise/WatRoom service be expanded to other areas of campus, the governance process would need to be reviewed.
Management of the service
Process documentation
IST maintains documentation showing the overall architecture for the Infosilem Enterprise/WatRooms service. This documentation shows the flow of data between the various systems involved in delivery of this service for the RO managed rooms. This documentation will be updated by the Enterprise Architect in IST when a material change occurs to the service. A material change would include expanding the service beyond the RO/Bookings Office or consolidating all the room attribute and technology information into one system such as Archibus.
The RO Scheduling Office is accountable for creating and maintaining end user documentation required by their team. This documentation will be revised in the event of any system updates that result in a material change in usability from the end user’s perspective. This documentation is stored by the RO Scheduling Office.
The RO determined that end user documentation for Infosilem Enterprise/WatRooms Portal wasn’t required because the system is very intuitive. Basic instructions are provided to new users. These instructions have proven to be sufficient.
Change requests
Change requests may originate from any of the stakeholder groups (see below) and must be submitted by RT or through email. Changes are evaluated by representatives of the Registrars’ Scheduling Office and the business analyst from the RO Information, Technology & Analytics team in consultation with representatives from IST Student Information Systems. Changes will typically be deferred until one of the two annually scheduled upgrades occur unless there is a compelling reason to implement the change sooner, as a one-off.
Types of changes may include but are not limited to:
Stakeholder team | Change request type |
Registrars Scheduling Office | Configuration, enhancement request |
Registrar’s Office, Information, Technology & Analytics | Configuration, enhancement request, upgrade, CPU installation |
Information Systems & Technology, Student Information Systems | Upgrade, CPU installation, interface enhancement due to a change in a system to which the service interfaces, security access requests for staff |
Information Systems & Technology, Instructional Technologies & Media Services | Enhancement to accommodate change to the ITMS dbase that provides technology information about rooms managed by the RO |
Deputy Provost, Space Planning | Enhancement to accommodate change to the SPO dbase that provides room attribute information Or Enhancement to accommodate a change to Archibus that provides room attribute information |
Maintenance and Release Management
Maintenance of the Enterprise / WatRooms service will be based on the vendor releases which are provided twice a year in February and August. The University typically will only install the February release unless there is a feature in the August release that is desired. Below is a chart summarizing the activities completed for implementing the annual release and who is accountable for each part of the process.
Release activity | RO BA | RO Scheduling Office | IST Developer | IST App Admin | SIS Team | Comments |
Install |
|
|
| X |
|
|
Evaluate | X | X |
|
|
|
|
Modify/Enhance |
|
| X |
| X | Other integration partners may have enhancement work as well. |
Test | X | X |
|
| X | Regression test with other SIS applications |
Sign off | X | X |
|
|
|
|
Deploy | X |
| X | X |
| RO’s role is to provide communications and/or training as required for users of the service. In addition, they provide sign off that the system is ready for deployment. |
Service Support
Hours of Operation
The Enterprise / WatRooms service is typically available 24X7. Stakeholders in the RO and Campus will be made aware ahead of time if down time is required.
Support staff in IST are available during University office hours (8:30-4:30, Monday to Friday).
Infosilem (vendor) support is available from 8:00am-5:00pm, Monday to Friday.
Monitoring and Event Management
Another maintenance activity is the monitoring of the system. The Application Admin team in IST is responsible for daily monitoring of the interfaces to ensure they run as expected and/or to trouble-shoot if necessary. Additionally, the Application Admin team monitors the health of the application. The Window’s team (IST) monitors the health of the virtual server(s) on which the service resides to ensure there is sufficient space.
The Registrar’s Office, Information, Technology & Analytics monitors the Quest interface to ensure it completes its daily update. If there are issues with this interface, the Information Systems & Technology, Student Information Systems team is made aware so they can address the problem.
Service Support Model
In support of the service, the following responsibilities and escalation paths apply:
Support role | Responsibilities | Personnel |
Tier 0 support |
| NA |
Tier 1 support |
| Registrar’s Office, Information, Technology & Analytics |
Tier 2 support |
| Information Systems & Technology, Student Information Systems |
Tier 3 support (vendor) |
| Enterprise |
Point of Contact with IST
Representatives from the Registrar’s Office, Information, Technology & Analytics team will liaise with IST to jointly ensure the service meets the needs of the RO and other end users.
Point of Contact with Vendor
Both the Information Systems & Technology, Student Information Systems and the Registrar’s Office, Information, Technology & Analytics have responsibility for liaising with the vendor. IST will access the vendor to help trouble-shoot technical issues as required and will partner with the RO technical team to explore questions about enhancement requests and/or new functionality. The vendor contact information is: support@infosilem.com / 1 866 420 5585. Normally no other groups will contact the vendor.
Key performance indicators
Key performance indicator | Planned measurement | Frequency | Responsible |
Availability | System availability | Annually | Daryl Dore, Director Enterprise Planning Systems |
TBD | TBD | TBD | Charlene Schumm, Director, Scheduling & Examinations |
Dependencies
The Enterprise /WatRooms service is dependent on the data provided by interfaces with Quest, the ITMS dbase, Archibus, and an application updated by the Space Planning Office. How the data for each of these applications is maintained is noted below.
Quest
The various scenarios that would impact the Quest interface and, as a result, the information in Enterprise / WatRooms and how these situations would be handled are noted below.
Scenario | How the scenario would be addressed |
Quest upgrade or CPU patch required (2 times per year) |
|
Timetabler upgrade or patch | |
Enterprise / WatRoom update | |
New / inactive building update (Note: usually there would be a lot of lead time given about this type of change) |
|
Enterprise / WatRooms identifies a requirement for additional Quest data |
|
Quest configuration change requested |
|
RO needs to stop the Quest interface from running |
|
Issue identified with Quest data |
|
Space Planning Office (SPO) – Room Attribute data
The various scenarios that would impact the Archibus and SPO app interface are noted below as well as how WatRooms would be impacted:
Scenario | How the scenario would be addressed |
Updates to room attribute information in Archibus |
|
Room attribute updates (E.g. black board replaced with a white board)
(Note: change could be Plant Ops or RO initiated) |
|
Planned significant issue with a room (E.g. renovations)
|
|
Unplanned minor issue with a room (E.g. professor reports missing or broken equipment) |
|
Unplanned major issue with a room (E.g. flood) |
|
Instructional Technology & Media Support – Room attribute data
The various scenarios that would impact the ITMS interface are noted below as well as how WatRooms would be impacted for each:
Scenario | How the scenario would be addressed |
Technology and Media attribute updates (Ad hoc, minor changes such as broken equipment) |
Important note – there is an ongoing expectation that email and phone updates will also be provided when there is urgency to address a change. |
Technology and Media attribute updates (Planned major changes such as installation of new equipment) |
|
Contracts
The Infosilem contract is maintained by the Contract Management team in IST. The key contact for contract information is Sandy Laughlin. The contract is renewed annually and runs from May 1 to April 30 each year. The IST approval contact is Daryl Dore.
Risks/Observations
The main areas of risk for this service are the quality of the room attribute data and the reliance on immediate notification by phone or email if a localized failure will require rescheduling classes.
Room attribute data in the current configuration is provided via interfaces from three different data sources (Archibus, ITMS dbase, SPO app). The interfaces are used to provide a daily compare of the room attribute data in Enterprise/WatRooms. When the data has changed, a summary report of any change is provided the RO Scheduling Office staff so they can take whatever action may be required.
The issues with the current state are that the interface source data isn’t maintained regularly. For example, a short-term emerging issue (E.g. a projector needs repair) may not be entered in the system. In this type of situation, an update will be provided to the RO by phone or email. The players involved in the Enterprise/WatRooms service are aware of this risk and comfortable that the right people are being notified when changes occur. If this service is expanded to a broader group on campus, this practice may no longer suffice as it will be more complex to determine who to notify when a short-term emerging issue occurs.
Opportunities to enhance the quality and timeliness of the data in Enterprise/WatRooms include:
Consolidating all room attribute in one system such as Archibus (Note: Archibus would need to be enhanced to support the capture of all room attribute information currently housed in three systems). This approach reduces the points of failure and provides one “go to” system for all room information.
Build in processes to ensure room attribute information is kept up-to-date in the system. (E.g. update the systems with both short term issues and longer term so it is a single source of the truth rather than rely on person-to-person notifications.)
Enhance the integrations to be run more frequently vs. daily.
Service Reviews
This SMP should be reviewed and updated, as required annually or if/when any of the following changes occur:
Additional user groups beyond the RO Scheduling Office/Bookings Office are added to the Service
The data sources (interfaces) are changed (E.g. additional room attribute data is collected in Archibus thereby eliminating the need to interface with the ITMS dbase and/or the data collected by the Space Planning Office.
Service Roadmap
Ideally the Enterprise/WatRooms service will be expanded throughout campus. See Appendix C for an architectural diagram that reflects the roadmap. In the meanwhile, the Enterprise/WatRoom service will be incorporated in the Student Information System road map.
Document version control
Document version | Date of Change | Description | Change made by |
1.0 | May 9, 2019 | Draft SMP | W. Hague |
2.0 | May 16, 2019 | Updated SMP based on feedback from A. Dye and S. Brubacher | W. Hague |
3.0 | May 28, 2019 | Updated to include current and future state architecture | W. Hague |
4.0 | August 16, 2019 | Final updates based on feedback from Mary Lynn Benninger, Charlene Schumm, and Tanya Pompilio | W. Hague |
Appendix A: Service ownership roles
Role | Responsibilities | Person/Team |
Service Owner |
| Charlene Schumm, Director, Scheduling & Examinations
|
Service Manager |
| David Bean, Director, Registrar’s Office, Information, Technology & Analytics |
Appendix B: Current and Future Architecture
Current state (as of May 2019):
Future state (proposed) as of May 2019: