The University’s IT Services – in one easy to find location

Have you accessed the University IT Service Catalogue yet? With a new design and URL, the Service Catalogue will be coming to you soon.

The Service Catalogue enables all University staff and students to identify IT services provided centrally by UIS and, where added, by local departments and institutions. Following a successful rollout to the School of Arts and Humanities and the UAS, the Service Catalogue will now be made available to the remaining Schools, Non-School Institutions and Colleges. The Service Catalogue also has a new look and new URL to reflect that it is a University-wide catalogue.

The Project:

In 2014 UIS embarked on a pilot project with the School of Arts and Humanities (SAH) to introduce a Service Portfolio and Catalogue. It was the intention that the facility would, in time, be made available to all areas of the University. Phase 2 of the project, which involved rolling out the Service Catalogue to the whole of UAS started in November 2015 and finished at the end of June 2016.

Phase 3 of the project now sees the IT Service Catalogue being rolled out to the wider University.  Our aim is to roll out the Service Catalogue to the 5 Schools, 31 Colleges and 8 Non-School Institutions that were not included in Phases 1 or 2.

Work has begun with interviewing those Institutions that do not currently have a Service Catalogue of their own, with the aim of adding them and any local or third party services that they provide to the catalogue by Michaelmas Term 2016. Work will also begin with interviewing those Institutions that currently have their own Service Catalogues in place.

New design features

Following user feedback from across the University the catalogue homepage, icons and content have been enhanced to help improve your interaction with the catalogue.

• Eight service ‘category’ icons have been redesigned to help users identify and become familiar with the eight core service categories. The new icons have improved the content structure and have separated different services with much more clarity. The icons now look modern, professional and are representative of each category.

“The new design is really great. It is professional, consistent and much more responsive so it works great for tablet browsing, which I do frequently due to being off-site so much for meetings.”
User Experience interviewee

• The icon categories are introduced as a theme throughout the service catalogue. For consistency, we have improved the representation within each category so that service categories are now easier to browse and select.

• Each category is split into accordions with services inside. This makes browsing the catalogue a more seamless experience.
• We have also reviewed, refined and edited the content within the catalogue. The language is consistent and user friendly, and the services are populated with up-to-date information.
• You will be able to find new style accordions in place within each service. The new accordions act as drop down menus, and when selected, information will be presented.

“I really like the accordions. As well as introducing the service icons consistently throughout the catalogue, they present the information in a much more user friendly way. I can quickly identify the key information that I need through summarised headings, rather than spending time that I don’t have reading everything on the page to get to the information that I need”.
User Experience interviewee

With these changes a comprehensive menu of IT services offered from across the University, including local, UIS and third party services, can be presented in the most professional and consistent way possible.

To reflect the release of the catalogue to the wider University, you can now find the University IT Service Catalogue at its new address: www.itservices.cam.ac.uk.

Work will continue on the catalogue to ensure it is delivered to the University smoothly and professionally. Further information can be found on the project website here http://www.catalogue-project.uis.cam.ac.uk/.  If you have any questions about the project, please contact Colette Reap, Senior Project Manager.