Parabola implement SharePoint 2010 in time for re-launch of Reading College
A new SharePoint 2010 Staff Portal has gone live at Reading College on the same day as the re-launch of the college. Reading College was previously part of Thames Valley University until a decision was made to separate the FE element and create a new college. Parabola was commissioned in July to support the new college launch with a SharePoint implementation.
Parabola's team had just two months to plan, design and create a Portal, to be ready before staff arrived on 1st August.
The new College management felt it was essential to have a functioning Staff Portal on Day 1, as they worked against the clock to build a new organisation with a new brand image. They needed to be able to communicate quickly and easily with staff, to update plans, and to allow the staff to organise and communicate between themselves. At the same time, with the large amount of information being handled, the ability to target relevant information to busy staff, was also seen as very important.
Parabola proposed that a SharePoint 2010 Portal would be the ideal way to managing the short term transition requirements, as well as being an extremely flexible infrastructure capable of offering many other possible future applications at low cost.
Developing a portal for a College before it had even opened, however, was an unusual and demanding challenge for Parabola. Changing priorities and delays in the arrival of network and hardware infrastructure added to the complexity. Close liaison between the Reading College team and the Parabola project team helped to ensure that on August 1st, staff were greeted with a fully branded, operational Staff Portal, capable of keeping them fully informed of all the new policies, procedures and other information.
SharePoint 2010 provided an ideal platform for developing the solution rapidly. Easy-to-use List and Announcement Web parts allowed news to be uploaded to the Portal home page without delay, whilst a Blog page gave the Principal a voice. Permissions within SharePoint were used to allocate access to a dedicated Manager's site where on a Calendar meetings were pencilled in and meetings pages automatically created to manage the meeting documents. Documents libraries could be easily created for storing and sharing documents.
In the future workflows will be used to manage feedback and approval processes. Permissions also allowed key managers to easily take ownership of sites within the portal and to build and update content rapidly and flexibly. They will also be used for targeting specific news and announcements to departmental teams within the new college structure. The new Profile Sync features of 2010 enabled a powerful and accurate Staff Directory application to be delivered.
Chris Meunier, Director of Curriculum Development at Reading College commented; "Parabola were proactive and courteous partners who rose to the difficult challenge we set them, and were flexible enough to ensure we could deliver our short term goals whilst opening our eyes to the wider possibilities of SharePoint longer term."