What’s changing in February 2013

On 4th February 2013, the IDINA team will be releasing various changes to our applications. A summary of the changes follows:

• UPI: The final part of the work we’ve called “Main Source” will be put live. This code is used to determine which Primary System record[1] will be used as the origin of the person data UPI makes available. At the moment, this is based on a hierarchy of systems but doesn’t take into account how current or active a record is (and therefore how up-to-date it may be). The change will mean UPI always presents the most appropriate active record.
• UPI: We’re introducing a set of Archive tables. These will store information from the legacy UPI system and allow us to improve the quality of data by excluding incomplete records and making more information available to search functions within UPI.
• Computer Reps Tool: A new version of the tool is being released. This will add new features to allow Computer Reps to see role accounts for their departments and to query membership of permission groups; and allow users to contact reps in a more secure way (rather than just have a published list of e-mail addresses).
• Interfaces: a new interface to the Research Publications Service will allow UPI data to be combined with important additional information for REF2014.
• Interfaces: changes to the interface to CMIS will allow more consistent display of names on the Online Timetable and Room Bookings systems.

How the data will change:

Associations: The “Main Source” changes rely on accurate data about a person’s associations with UCL so, in order to implement this work, we’ve added more association information.

• An additional 10,000 ‘cancelled’ applicants will be brought in from Portico. These were previously excluded but, as they do have UPIs allocated, it’s important that they’re visible.

• Data from the legacy UPI system will be included in core UPI views and processes to make sure we use all information we have for the main source calculation. This will add

• 66,500 alumni associations.
• 24,500 staff associations based on data from the old staff systems.
• 43,500 student associations based on data from the old student system.

People: The Services System, since its introduction, has acted as the Primary System for registering and storing Visitor details. It was also a repository for legacy data from the previous version of UPI. This was very much a compromise as the new UPI system needed to know about people but the records weren’t stored in the HR or Student systems and were not proper visitors. There are about 78,000 Person records that will be moved to the Archive tables.

Now we are introducing the Archive, we have a proper place to store these old records so they’ll be removed from the Services System (unless, of course, they do have visitor records).

Main Source: We have done some analysis of how UPI data will change when the Main Source changes are applied. Of 623,000 UPI People records:

• 15,000 records will have a new source database, using the system with the most current record.
• Of these, around half (7,500 records) will show different details (only c 2,150 of these are current people).

[1] The 4 “Primary Systems” that store Person records are: ResourceLink for Staff records; Portico for student, applicant, external examiners and some alumni records; the Services System for visitors; and the new Archive for records from legacy systems and alumni.