he next version of Staff Hub is due for release Thursday 16th August.
Features:
- Greater prominence to key functions like ‘Find a staff member’
- ‘Predictive’ search results for top 50 staff search terms
- Re-introduction of the password countdown timer
- Re-built personal Bookmarks feature
- Consolidated News widget, including What’s New, CSU News, Yammer, Events, all on the homepage
- Refreshed list of ‘Quicklinks’ available from every page of Staff hub
- Blog and social media feeds
- Improved visual design
Background
Phase 1 of Staff Hub went live June 2017. This release laid the foundations for the Staff Hub website with a vision that we would build this site to be a one-stop-shop for staff to complete tasks and access relevant news and information.
Under Phase 1, the Web Office conducted significant user research and engagement with staff to create a themed, task-based information architecture. This user research work identified 5 key user stories that were to guide the features to be delivered in the Staff Hub however due to time and technical constraints, the Phase 1 release only supported these user stories in very limited ways.
Since the release of Phase 1, we have received 692 pieces of staff feedback. Much of this feedback initially related to issues that were fixed as part of the Phase 1 defect period. General feedback and feature requests have been grouped and themed, and have been used to inform the scope of work for Phase 2.
The Staff Hub feedback mechanism also includes a feature that lets staff give the Staff hub an overall score. Phase 1 of Staff hub has received an average score of 2.1 out of 5, suggesting Phase 1 has failed to fully meet staff expectations.
Scope
The Web Office has developed the scope for Phase 2 based on:
- outstanding items from Phase 1
- consolidated feedback from staff
- general areas for improvement
The general scope for Phase 2 is:
- Rebuild of Staff Hub as a Squiz CMS site, enabling core functionality such as Edit+ and HTML/CSS/JS component-based design and build
- Move away from compiled Angular JS code
- Complete visual redesign of staff hub to align with current CSU web templates, ensuring consistent user experience and maximising opportunities to re-use web components
- Integration of additional technical pieces of work excluded from scope of Phase 1, including:
- Password countdown timer
- Rebuild of Bookmark functionality native to CMS
- Update of What’s New data to improve presentation
Full list of new or improved features
| Item | Category | Phase 1 (current) | Phase 2 |
| Personalised news subscription | Key user story | No personalised news.
Very basic static embedding of existing CSU news sources with clunky user interface (UI). |
Personalised Yammer feed
Consolidated News widget including What’s New, CSU News, Yammer, Events on homepage |
| Centralised area with quick links | Key user story | ‘Top staff links’ menu on homepage
Existing bookmarks functionality embedded with clunky UI. |
Introduction of ‘Quicklinks’ menu into main navigation.
Each landing page features its own custom quick links. Rebuild of bookmarks functionality so that it’s native to Staff hub. Replicate existing functionality but improved and more flexible UI. |
| Centralised staff contact directory | Key user story | “Find a staff member” available below-the-fold of the homepage | Redesign of ‘Find a staff member’ UI to improve its user friendliness and increase prominence above-the-fold. |
| Centralised, consolidated calendar | Key user story | Existing Principal Dates feed from CMS via JSON file. Clunky UI.
|
Improved JSON data integration allowing us more flexibility to extend date data sources in future. Improved UI.
|
| Centralised communication channel | Key user story | Very basic static embedding of existing CSU news sources with clunky user interface (UI).
What’s New email links to old staff portal. Basic VC blog embed. Basic stackla social media embed. |
Consolidated communications widget including What’s New, CSU News, Yammer, Events on homepage.
What’s New email links to Staff Hub, creating more consistent integrated staff experience Dynamic VC blog integration Continue stackla social media embed. |
| Password countdown timer | Feature | Not available | Included and integrated into UI |
| Bookmark functionality | Feature | Embedded old application in an iframe with clunky UI | Rebuild of bookmark functionality to a native Staff Hub application, utilising Student Portal API as data source. |
| Predictive site search | Feature | No predictive functionality | Predictive search results for top 50 search terms |
| Site management | Feature | Built outside CMS. No ability to create and edit content pages within site. | Full site management through Squiz CMS. Full ability to create and edit pages using full CMS functionality. Edit+ enabled. |
| Technical framework | Technical | Built using AngularJS, compiled and stored in CMS as JS files. Requires specialised front-end development skillset to edit. | Native Squiz CMS website using HTML/CSS/JS and existing standard CMS web components. |
| User interface | UX | Custom UI, inconsistent with CSU website designs. | Complete visual redesign, using current CSU web template, consistent interface and functionality with rest of CSU web. |
| Accessibility | UX | 54% | 70% ATM |
| Layout/design | UX | Very generic page layout for landing pages. No page hierarchy or visual clues for prominence etc. | Improved layout for landing pages with custom content on each landing page to better guide user, feature key content etc. |