The Web Transformation team has been providing updates on changes to Macquarie’s public, staff and student websites at regular information sessions. Here are some of the most common questions coming out of these sessions…

Where are we up to with this project?
Transforming the University’s online presence is a complex project involving the Web Transformation team, IT and the University community. Since the new public website went live last October, Group Marketing is now working on improving the content.

The second phase of web transformation is the launch of new staff and student portals, which is scheduled for February next year. To date we have completed extensive consultation with staff and students around content and navigation. Ensuring effective and up-to-date content is a key focus, along with improving how people find information.

The web project blog provides the latest information and project updates. A handy ‘where info goes’ summary has also been created to help staff understand how to publish or locate information.

What support is available for staff who will be producing content for the portals?
We’ve recently appointed three new people to focus on migrating and improving content. We’ve also been rolling out content writing workshops – contact Puja Arora if you want to know more about these workshops. Staff who need general help about content can contact Kris Harrison.

Is the work on the public site now complete?
Work will always continue on both our public and internal sites – the reality of university life is that we’ll always be updating and improving information for community engagement and service. Currently we are focused on improving the content on the public site, with the executive recently approving significant investment in a project to be managed by Group Marketing.

I’m a researcher and my profile/a colleague’s profile isn’t appearing in the site’s search results…
All existing profiles should now have been indexed on the on-site search engine on the public website. If you can’t find a profile, please raise a OneHelp Ticket, select ‘Squiz website’ as the category and supply the profile’s URL. These profiles will remain published until the launch of the University’s new Research Management System.

Tell me more about the new Research Management System – when will this be operational and how will the transition work?
The pilot of the Pure Research Management System with Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences is expected to be complete in October with a rollout to other faculties by December 2016.

This new system will manage the lifecycle of research and provide an outward-facing public portal. One of its main features is an ability to showcase a researcher’s publications, discipline expertise, HDR supervision, grants and projects, citations and other metrics and collaborations that are important to researchers.

For this to be successful, it will be critical that researcher profiles contain up-to-date quality research data. To achieve this we will be asking all researchers to validate their personal data. Training and personal support will be available as we rollout and validate the system with our research community.

All faculty Associate Deans-Research and Faculty Research Managers will be involved in the project. For more information, contact Josef Oduwo, Director of Policy, Compliance and PMO: josef.oduwo@mq.edu.au.

The website is ‘pretty’, but do those beautiful images slow the loading of the website?
Improving load speeds is a goal of IT and our service partner Squiz. While our design features some large impactful images, the average load speed has actually improved on-average. We are also working on other improvements, including more consistent page templates, to facilitate better and more consistent load speeds.

I’m finding the search function somewhat sluggish and ineffective…
Until now, on-site search has not been actively managed or configured, which has impacted the search function, and parts of the new search are not yet live. This work will begin September and will involve working with the University community to identify the known problems. IT is also working with our vendor Squiz to investigate the speed performance issues of search.

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This information has been supplied by the Web Transformation Team, IT and Group Marketing. For more information, contact web.project@mq.edu.au.