A D RUPAL C O N S ESSION P ROPOSAL 2017 This Staff Profile is the - PDF document

A D RUPAL C O N S ESSION P ROPOSAL 2017 This Staff Profile is the only one you need to showcase your Staff B Y : N ISHAN R AMPERSAD , C ONTENT M ANAGEMENT S YSTEMS A DMINISTRATOR , T HE U NIVERSITY OF THE W EST I NDIES

Table of Contents About the author .................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 4 Solution ................................................................................................................................................... 4 Impact ..................................................................................................................................................... 5 Benefits ................................................................................................................................................... 5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 5

About the author My name is Nishan Rampersad. I am the Content Management Systems Administrator at The University of the West Indies. Within the Web Team I hold a Drupal Site Developer role. I regularly conduct training and/or orientation sessions with small groups of staff, generally 3-7 persons. Volunteering as a part of an outreach initiative, I talked to students in primary and secondary schools about using technology safely and responsibly to ensure their privacy and security. The following are examples of my presentation and/or public speaking events: Title of Event/Presentation Audience Group size Cyber safety Presentations Students in primary school and Various. secondary school Primary school: around 30 persons Secondary school : Two sessions for the National Library and Information System Authority – a group of around 40 persons a group of around 8 persons SharePoint Faculty of Social Sciences Board around 20-25 persons Meeting chaired by the Dean, Mr Errol Simms SharePoint and Drupal Training Staff members Can be between 3-12 persons Introduction to Drupal Department of Management around 5-8 persons Studies staff Demonstration of SharePoint Academic Board Sub around 6-8 persons Committee On Student Matters (ABSCOSM) Meeting

Introduction It started when a lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities and Education wanted to highlight the research being done at the School of Education. She wanted to put the staff information and research interests on the website to highlight the work done by a particular group or member of staff. Her pain point was that staff and their research were not as visible as it can be. The University of the West Indies websites use Drupal as the Content Management System, thus a Drupal solution was desired. On analyzing the request, it was determined that this is something that would be experienced by other Faculties, Departments, Offices, Centers, Units and members of staff. Also, it would not only be the academic staff but also the other categories of staff. As such, this means the solution would be applicable to every member of staff. Therefore the solution must promote that staff member, a group of staff and their work, whether it is research or professional experience. This goal was achieved by using Drupal as the platform for the information, communication and marketing of staff, their areas of research and expertise to showcase The UWI capabilities to an international audience. Solution The modules on Drupal.org did not meet our requirements and so a custom module was needed. A Staff Profile module was created and scaled using the Drupal Features module. The first step in this process was to determine what the information to be highlighted is. This was done by looking at the Curriculum Vitae of various members of staff. Professor Dave Chadee profile was extremely broad covering popular areas like Experience and Research Interests but also Public Service and Honours and Awards. Once the Staff Profile structure was analysed and the fields identified, a content type was created to make it easy to store the information. By customizing the Drupal template files, the staff profile page was displayed in a certain user-friendly way that highlighted the staff member information. To get to a staff member profile, relevant views were created to display the aggregation of staff profiles with an attractive, user-friendly and responsive design. Improvements were made and the Staff Profile module was updated. The update brought the use of a NodeQueue to show the Management Team in a certain order above the staff members. Given our Drupal multi-site setup, by updating the module once, the changes would be visible to all the sites. This provided the power and flexibility we required. The solution will be shared with the Drupal Community. Our website implements the solution and can be seen at http://sta.uwi.edu/cits/staff. My staff profile can be found at http://sta.uwi.edu/cits/staff/mr-nishan-rampersad

Impact Staff members can enjoy increased visibility of their research, professional work and profile on The University of the West Indies official websites. This feature is currently being rolled out, as applicable, when sites are created or migrated to Drupal. By highlighting the staff members, their research and/or professional work, an international audience can gain an understanding of The UWI capabilities, areas of research and expertise. Thus, the solution is achieving The UWI Strategic goals and objectives. Benefits The solution is also much simpler, easier and far less tedious to manage. By having more information about staff on the website, it becomes more personal for those staff members as they can identify with their page. A benefit would be the contribution to the motivation and empowerment of the staff members. For example, the Webmaster signature links to his UWI staff profile page which has links to his Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. This further cements his professional connection to The UWI. Conclusion The power and flexibility of Drupal allowed us to develop an innovative solution, which is aligned to The UWI strategic goals and objectives that can be scaled out to many sites while providing a simpler administration process.