The slides from the presentation held at the Engage.ug conference, May 23, 2018, in Rotterdam (NL) by Sandra Bühler and Roberto Mazzoni

1. IBM Connections ready for
students at University of Zurich
Roberto Mazzoni, University of Zurich, IT
www.zi.uzh.ch
Sandra Bühler, Belsoft Collaboration AG
belsoft-collaboration.ch

2. Agenda
• The speakers
• The University of Zurich
• The collaboration stack of the University of Zurich
• IBM Connections
• a long, long journey
• what we did wrong and what works now
• How students have been embraced
2

3. Sandra Bühler - Introduction
sandra.buehler@belsoft.ch
@SandraCH
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandrabuehler
3

4. My office…
as often as I can
4

5. Roberto Mazzoni - Introduction
roberto.mazzoni@uzh.ch
@davoser
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mazzoniroberto
5

6. Not far from Sandra’s preferred office ….
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7. The University of Zurich - Introduction
http://t.uzh.ch/100s 7

8. University of Zurich – Top 100
8

9. University of Zurich – People
People – including guests approximately 40,000 members
9

10. University of Zurich – Structure
Decentralized and self-governed
• 130 institutes (675 professors)
• numerous associated institutes
10

11. IBM Collaboration Software @ UZH –
History and Today
• 2005
• The university's IT strategy retains the evaluation of a groupware containing
the usual suspects: email, scheduling, contacts, tasks, mobile synchronization
• Opting for document management, synchronous communication, workflows
• Replacing the old solutions for approx. 35,000 users (email only, some
scheduling solutions)
• 2007 - 2009
• Open tenders
• End of evaluation, final decision done by the university management
• Internal “Going live” with IT services
• 2010
• Official “Going live” and migration of the 40'000 users (yes, we found some
more...)
• 2011
• Sametime Standard with Sametime Meetings
• Connections - adoption only by IT department
11

12. IBM Notes® @ UZH – History – Open tender
• 2008
• Open tender
• End of evaluation, final decision done by the university management
• 2009
• Internal “Going live” with IT services
• 2010
• Official “Going live” and migration of the 40'000 users (yes, they found some
more...)
• 2018
• What would be the result?
• Who is offering the solution on premises?
12

13. Facts & Figures: email is not dead -> at all
• 590’000 internal emails daily
• 280’000 emails received from Internet daily
• 190’000 (68 %) classified as SPAM
• 61'000 sent to Internet daily
• 131’000 email addresses registered for 50’000 persons or
functions in the Domino Directory
• E-Mail Quota: 20 GB, also for students
With 20 GB quota (and additional 20 GB per person freely
distributable within your organization), the UZH offers more
email storage than most big providers do. That was
unthinkable a few years ago and is still not achieved in many
companies.
13

14. Facts & Figures: IBM Domino/Notes – daily
access by email clients
2015 2017 20182014
iOS
74%
Android
23%
Windows
3%
Traveler: 3160 Devices
1 % Blackberry
14
2016

15. IBM Connections – the next step in
collaboration
15

16. IBM Connections – a long, long journey
• 2011: IBM Connections kicks in
• Licensing support by Belsoft
• Missing Management Support
• First rollout within IT Service
• Connections 3.0
• We did wrong what can be done wrong
• No management support
• No plans which component should be used in which manner
• No community manager established
• Nevertheless: IT department employees won’t miss it after
short time of usage!
• Upgrade to 4.0
• Ask the experts: Simon Vaughan (@SimplyS1mon) to mention one who really helped to fix it
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17. IBM Connections – a long, long journey – 2nd
Glance
• Combination of two no-no’s
• No management support and no Community Managers established
• The role of HR
• Let’s have a minute of silence…
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18. IBM Collaboration Software @ UZH –
History and Today - Connections
• 2011
• Connections - adoption only by IT department
• 2013
• Connections for projects and pilot groups
• 2014
• Preparing Roll Out for all employees
• 2015
• Starting Roll out
• 2016
• 2017
18

19. IBM Connections challenges – Change the
behavior of the users
• It is a great platform - can be spread even if
your management does not promote it
• Show the features people always missed for
their work
• It is not “normal” to work with a Social Business environment
• It is not a matter of age !
• People like email, they used it for years
• People are shy (you won’t have digital natives in your
administration)
• People can’t distinguish between privacy and transparency
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20. IBM Connections – Integrate to your
environment
• Make IBM Notes/iNotes and IBM Connections one
experience if you have Notes
• Add IBM Connections to Notes
• Easiest way to get rid of attachments in emails
• Get your tasks from your activities to your calendar
• Show up your community calendar in Notes
• Get the profile pictures back to Notes through Sametime
• IBM Connections Desktop Plug-in
• Replaces your File Shares with much more
benefits (Versions just to mention one)
• Yes, the OS X Finder integration is
different
20

21. IBM Connections approaches – Integrate
people with their projects
• Identify stakeholders that will help spread the word
and help them with their projects
• Integrate in working environment
• show advantages and simplifications in the daily work
• Find teams that cross borders
• Adopt communities to their needs
• University Management
• University Crisis management group needs to collaborate with all other
departments
• Main library wants to collaborate with all department libraries
• Faculty projects need collaboration tools (Physics Olympiad 2016 and European
Girl’s Mathematical Olympiad 2017) 21

22. Simple but effective
Folder Access for Files
• University Management
• Grants access to stakeholders to minutes of meetings with
Connection Files
• Reuse Notes Groups for access management using folders only
• Flexibility of different access models
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23. Be prepared for hazards
• University Crisis management group
• Scenarios in case of hazards ready to use (selection)
• Radiation Protection
• Biological Safety/Security
• Fire Safety
• Chemical Safety
• Hazardous Waste Management
• People from different departments involved in associated
communities
• Subcommunities for handling diffent hazards
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24. Be prepared for hazards
• Content “private” only
• Yes, it’s fine to keep Communities restricted
• ensure that members gain confidence
• also social business must be learned
• prepare content for later public access
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25. Private Communities 2nd Glance
• Yes, it’s fine to keep “some” Communities restricted
• ensure that members gain confidence
• also social business must be learned
• prepare content for later public access
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26. Enable collaboration
• Main Library
• 1 public library (not only University Library, Zentralbibliothek)
• 1 main library for science
• 1 main library for medicine
• 50 libraries spread across the city
• one library system hosted by Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
for all
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27. Enable collaboration – 2nd Glance
• Main Library
• 60 libraries spread over the campus
• Within the 130 departments, with great
attention for 675 kingdoms
• Who could spread the voice better ?
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28. The role of HR – or forget the minute of silence
• If you want to forget your minute of silence…
• Identify the needs HR has
• Find stakeholders willing to optimize processes
• And now the voice is spread over 130 units by more than 600 people!
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29. Managing Workflows with Subcommunities
• Evalulation process for Institutes
• Goal: reduce email without introducing new tools
• One Connection Community with all information for all evaluations
• One Subcommunity for each evaluation
• Managing Workflow by changing access rights during evaluation
process
• On Cummunity member level
• On File access right leve
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30. Rollout for 12’000 people in 2016
• Most of them will not play an active role
• Prepare the rollout and spread the voice
• YES, HR can help!
• Units want to use it!
616 Communities (+ 71%)
2669 Activities (+34 %)
643 Forum (+80 %)
438 Wikis (+ 16%)
225 Blogs (+ 55%)
30
2017:

31. Sharing knowledge
31https://youtu.be/yEYCWkK-iEk

32. Sharing knowledge
• The video idea was born at engage.ug two years ago
• User groups make the difference
• Video shots on site within two months
• Early adopters within the University were happy to
contribute
• HR department
• Association of doctoral students, postdocs and scientific employees of
the University of Zürich
• Others willing to contribute
• Connections rocks!
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33. Seasons greating from our president 2016
33

34. Sharing knowledge – the IT contribution
• The Connection rollout to all employees of the University
was the contribution of the IT
• Should Collaboration address students also?
• Of course!
• Licensing for all campus members was an issue before April 2016
• UZH has his own learning management system (https://olat.org)
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35. Students – we are ready for you!
35
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F96sCdoO0xo

36. From fall semester 2017: access for students
• Upgradet to Connection 5.5
• had to migrate first from SuSE
to RedHat ...
• The entry hub for collaboration
• Students have been integrated since autumn 2017 without
further ado
• Institutes use Connections as a documentation (especially
Wiki's) and collaboration platform for students
• Students open their own communities
36

37. Workshops for future “Community Managers”
• Rollout is not a technical challenge !!!
• It’s a organisational one
• Prepare units to be aware of it
• Community Manager
• There is no technical role for it
• People need to be enabled for it
• Workshops
• Your users know what they need
• Let them find out and assist them
• IT will be critical: loss of control
37

38. Workshop for future “Community Managers”
• Workshops are open for students
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39. It’s open – let it open !
• Let them use and show them all options !
• Notes integration
• Desktop plugins
• Mobile Apps
• If you miss it: they will found out!
• You can’t loose control – you never had!
• It’s social !
• It’s open, let it open
• The only way they can contribute their own ideas and are also
prepared to rethink their own processes
• People need to learn and will learn to handle it
• Discuss consequences of errors
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40. Thank you for your attention
40