MySaint, the new University portal
This is a guest post from Victoria Davidson-Mayhew who has been working on the Senate Efficiency Review portal project. To find out more, please visit the SER blog.
What is happening?
MySaint, the new University portal, is set to launch on Monday 12 September 2016. Entered via single sign-on, MySaint will work as a central hub for access to the tasks, links and systems that staff and students use every day.
What sparked the idea?
In keeping with University strategy, MySaint was envisaged as a way to simplify staff and student interaction with University functions, allowing them to get the best out of the resources available. MySaint was also planned to provide a future-proof location for the new systems being delivered by the SER programme, as well as any that might be brought in by the University beyond that.
How did it come about? Who was involved?
The delivery of this important new piece of work was led by Victoria Davidson-Mayhew (ITS) and Jacqui Ritchie (Registry) under the umbrella of the SER programme. Extensive engagement was undertaken with staff right across the institution, collecting their requirements to produce the portal in collaboration with our IT developers. A special mention must be made here of Lee Coomber (ITS) for his vital contribution to the development work.
What are the major benefits of MySaint?
- Simplification
- MySaint will be a gateway to a range of systems including Moodle, MMS, e-Vision and others, meaning that one log-in will authenticate you and give you access to all of these functions.
- Visibility and transparency
- MySaint sports the most up-to-date St Andrews ‘look and feel’ and uses the digital pattern library, meaning that you will be able to clearly see what resources are available to you.
- E-enablement
- MySaint has been developed to meet the University’s requirement for responsive design, meaning that regardless of which device you access MySaint from (smartphone, computer or tablet), everything will work perfectly.
- Adaptation and flexibility
- MySaint has a customisable layout, meaning that you can prioritise the information and functions you use most and that when the University adds new services, they can be easily integrated.
What will MySaint look like?
For each role a user has (staff, student etc.), the user will have workspaces corresponding to different aspects of the user’s role including academic activities, admin tasks, wellbeing etc. Each workspace is populated with portlets that contain information, links, news and content.
Next Steps
The feasibility of developing access to MySaint for associates and agents is currently being discussed, but for now, feedback on the system and suggestions for future developments are welcomed by the project team at [email protected]