New Portal Solution and Collaborative Environment Empowers Teamwork and Increases Productivity across Vanderbilt University Law School Community

New Portal Solution and Collaborative

Environment Empowers Teamwork and

Increases Productivity across Vanderbilt

University Law School Community

Overview

Country: United States Industry: Higher Education Customer Profile

Vanderbilt University Law School (VULS) is one of the nation's leading institutions of legal education. Located in Nashville, TN, VULS is ranked 17th in the top 100 law schools by US News and World Report. Business Situation

VULS needed to replace its disconnected intranets, streamline content management, consolidate academic and business data sources, and enable more efficient collaboration.

Solution

VULS deployed a unified portal and collaboration solution based on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003, Microsoft Windows® SharePoint Services, and the Microsoft Office System. Benefits

„ Reduced administrative support „ More efficient collaboration and document version management „ Support needs reduced 60–75 percent „ Positive ROI in less than one year

“With cost savings, more efficient collaboration, and

reduced administrative overhead, the Microsoft

solution has more than paid for itself. We’re very

pleased.”

Todd Scot, Assistant Director for Information Technology, Services, and Solutions, Vanderbilt University Law School

Vanderbilt University Law School (VULS) needed to replace its

intranet, enable more efficient collaboration, streamline content

management, and consolidate academic and business data

sources. In three months and with only three staff members, VULS

deployed a unified portal and collaboration solution to 800

members of the campus community. Based on Microsoft

Office

SharePoint

Portal Server 2003, Microsoft Windows

SharePoint

Services, and the Microsoft Office System, the new portal delivers

role-specific content, eases collaboration with enhanced document

version control, and provides a simplified VPN-free remote access

solution. Benefits include reduced administrative support needs,

more efficient collaboration, 75 percent fewer remote access

helpdesk calls, and a 60 percent reduction in content update

requests, resulting in a positive return on its portal investment in

less than one year.

Situation

Vanderbilt University Law School (VULS) is one of the nation's leading institutions of legal education. Located in Nashville, Tennessee, VULS is ranked 17th in the top 100 law schools for 2005 by US News and World Report. The law school is well-known for its rigorous intellectual environment and its quality teaching.

Intranet Limitations

VULS had developed an intranet to connect campus community members with each other and with the information they needed to conduct daily activities at the university. Faculty, staff, and students needed access to different information. This led to separate Web environments for each group: an intranet for students called Virtual

Community, a faculty and staff intranet, and an external Internet site. After more than five years of use, these systems were no longer meeting the growing demands for information access. With no enterprise-wide search capabilities, finding information was time-consuming. Electronic collaboration proved cumbersome, and a growing number of remote access users experienced connectivity problems when working off-campus. As demand for online information grew, the cost of supporting the VULS intranet was projected to increase substantially. Todd Scot, Assistant Director for Information Technology, Services, and Solutions (ITSS), was authorized to design and deploy a new intranet and collaboration environment for VULS. Scot and his team first conducted a comprehensive needs analysis and developed this list of priorities:

„ Consolidate Data Sources and Web Sites VULS had a traditional intranet from which individuals had to “pull” information. As the volume of data grew and more campus systems came online, finding the right information quickly became challenging.

Scot explains, “We had disconnected ‘silos’ of information—files on PCs and in file shares, data in formal paper documents and on scraps of paper—feeding into three disconnected Web sites, with virtually no way to report on or display [the

information]. We needed to consolidate campus and Law School data into a centralized data warehouse, and find a better way for community members to find and share the specific information they need.”

„ Improve Collaboration

VULS faculty members frequently collaborate with colleagues around the world on research, writing, and teaching. Improving the environment for more efficient teamwork was a top priority. Since files resided mainly on individual

workstations or on file shares, basic document-management capabilities such as version control were lacking. Suzanna Sherry, Professor of Law, co-authored a casebook with two faculty members at other universities. She describes a typical collaboration experience without these tools: “It was difficult and time-consuming. We had to ship our documents back and forth by e-mail. I overran the quota on my mailbox, and the authors lost track of which was the most recent draft.

Occasionally, more than one of us would be editing the same draft at the same time, and somebody would then have to reconcile [our edits].”

„ Streamline Content Management

Web site support and content management for the VULS intranets was a critical bottleneck. All Web content postings and updates were driven through one webmaster. Inundated with more than 1,000 requests per year with data diskettes, phone calls, paper documents, and e-mail messages, this individual could no longer provide the rapid response the

"We needed to

consolidate campus and

Law School data into a

centralized data

warehouse, and find a

better way for

community members to

find and share the

specific information they

need.”

Todd Scot, Assistant Director for Information Technology, Services, and Solutions, Vanderbilt University Law School

VULS community needed. Unless the content-management process was streamlined, more costly resources would be needed to accommodate higher data volume and the growing demand for intranet responsiveness and information accuracy.

„ Improve Remote Access

Working remotely was costly and became increasingly unproductive. VULS deployed a VPN (virtual private network) remote-access solution to support off-campus work. This required substantial information technology (IT) support since VPN software had to be installed and configured on all remote workstations and laptop

computers. Substantial help desk support was needed to solve ongoing connectivity and mapped drive issues.

„ Simplify Access to Campus Data Sources and Business Processes

There was a need for single sign on access to more aggregated information resources. In recent years, additional data—room and course schedules, class rolls, event notices, and human resources forms— became available electronically. As these sources came online, access became complicated by multiple logins and inconsistent user interfaces presented by the supporting applications.

„ Minimize Cost of Change

While its intranet had become outdated, VULS did have fundamental Microsoft® desktop and server technologies in place, including Active Directory® directory service, the Microsoft Office System, and Microsoft Windows Server SystemTM integrated server software. With a limited budget and modest IT resources, VULS needed a cost-effective solution that utilized existing technologies and enabled a reduction in the projected growth of intranet support costs.

Solution

VULS deployed a comprehensive portal and collaboration solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003, the Microsoft Windows ServerTM 2003 operating system with Microsoft Windows® SharePoint Services, and the Microsoft Office System. The new portal, named VULS Intranet II, reaches 800 individuals in the VULS community, including 600 students and 200 faculty/staff professionals. The new campus portal benefits from a range of supporting Microsoft desktop and server technologies--including the Microsoft Windows XP Professional operating system, Active Directory directory service, the Microsoft .NET development environment, and Microsoft Office Project Server 2003.

Decision for Microsoft

The decision for a Microsoft solution was based on several key factors, including the ability to reduce cost by utilizing existing Microsoft technologies. For example, tight integration of SharePoint Portal Server with previously deployed Active Directory enables information to be targeted to individuals based on roles, using existing “Users and Groups” administration services. In addition, tighter integration among SharePoint Portal Server, Windows SharePoint Services, and Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 promised increased productivity through easier access to SharePoint workspaces directly from within familiar Office

Professional 2003 programs. The Microsoft solution was compelling. Says Scot, “There were simply no other products that could meet our requirements.”

Fast Deployment

Scot and his team deployed the new solution quickly and efficiently. The equivalent of three full-time team members—Project Manager Chris Bransford, Contract Developer

John Mott, Systems Administrator Jason Bradley, and Web Designer Annabelle Leiserson (the last two team members were half-time)—deployed the campus portal in only three months. The team’s productivity owed much to the ease of deploying SharePoint Portal Server 2003. “We were pleased by how smoothly this project proceeded. Out of the box, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is easy to deploy,” says Scot. Audience Targeting Enables One Site, Different Views

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 replaced separate Web sites for students and staff with a single VULS campus portal. Once an individual logs on, the portal determines his or her group designation—for example, faculty or student—through Active Directory directory service. While the overall look and

functionality of the portal home page remains uniform, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 delivers specifically tailored content best suited for the individual’s role through audience targeting.

With audience targeting, each campus member receives an uncomplicated home page and quick access to frequently needed information. Figure 1 shows an example of the new portal’s home page for Scot. In addition to calendar and lists of student organizations that are part of a staff member’s home page, the portal delivers content targeted to senior ITSS staff members: Help Desk, public folder administration, server statistics, and ITSS training classes. A customizable Quick Links section provides single-click access to frequently needed information. Other links point to e-mail (including Web access for Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client), News for You (a customizable news feed), network drives, and PECO, a set of personnel directories and course information. My Site, a customizable personal Web site that comes standard with SharePoint Portal Server 2003, allows each individual to post personalized information, share announcements, and create collaborative workspaces.

Students receive a home page with a similar appearance and functionality but different content. For example, course schedules, required materials, and a calendar

automatically display information on classes for which a student is registered.

Search Capabilities, Push Technologies Help Find Information

VULS is aggregating all law school data into Microsoft SQL Server TM 2000 databases, where it can be accessed by dataview Web Parts and displayed in a targeted manner. (A Web Part is a customizable, reusable component used to display specific information on a Web site.) When specific information resides in an unknown location, the portal can help find it. Campus members can conduct enterprise-wide searches using the powerful search capabilities of Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Sources

Figure 1. In an example of audience targeting, the home page for IT professionals at Vanderbilt University Law School displays content tailored to their position. Quick Links to frequently needed information can be customized by administrators on the home page, and by all individuals on My Site.

include portal content, external Web pages, network shares, Human Resources databases, My Sites, Microsoft Exchange public folders, and more. The portal’s search engine can search many file types, including all Microsoft Office documents, .pdf, .zip, and .wpd. Since title, metadata, and content of a document are all indexed, the search engine is fast and comprehensive. New features of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 improve productivity when searching. For example, once a search has been designed, alerts can be set up to automatically notify the individual by e-mail when results change.

Search alerts are but one example of information “push” technologies. Instead of searching for specific information from a growing body of disconnected data, information “finds” each community member through services that recognize group membership and interactively adapt to the individual’s work habits. Other portal content can also be customized, including news, links, and applications.

Content Management Streamlined Content management has been simplified. No longer does every Web site update request require the intervention of an IT professional. To the extent possible, content publication has been delegated to

departmental content owners. Managing team documents is also easier: team sites through Windows SharePoint Services can be provisioned directly through the portal or from Office 2003 applications. Personalized information on My Site can be updated directly by the individual.

New Collaboration Environment

Powerful integration between Microsoft Office 2003 applications and the new portal enhances collaboration. Eliminating e-mail as a standard process for editing and approving documents has solved problems of

uncoordinated editing and versioning that

plagued the previous system. Now, team members can save documents directly to a Windows SharePoint Services site (a server-based, Web-accessible collaborative workspace) from within Microsoft Office Word 2003 or Microsoft Office Excel 2003. Once documents are posted on a team site, document version control features of Windows SharePoint Services—including versioning, Check-in/Check-out, change alerts, and approval routing—enable more efficient teamwork.

Enhanced integration of Windows SharePoint Services with Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 encourages team members to use collaborative workspaces. When an attachment is sent to multiple recipients, the sender can create a workspace and automatically assign the recipients as authorized users. “You’re off and running in a collaborative environment, right from Office Outlook 2003,” says Scot. “This is the highest level of integration yet between Microsoft Office and Windows SharePoint Services.” Team sites based in Windows SharePoint Services support collaboration in other ways. For example, team calendars,

announcements, events, task lists, and links to external Web sites are accessible by team members at any time, through a secure Web connection.

VPN-Free Remote Access

The new portal with secure login through Active Directory eliminated the need for a VPN solution. To enable VPN-free access to information that has not yet been fully migrated to central repositories, VULS deployed a solution that provides access to existing mapped drives and e-mail. Based on Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV), a set of extensions to the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), this solution includes custom Web Parts working with the portal to enable information

“You’re off and running

in a collaborative

environment, right from

Outlook 2003. This is

the highest level of

integration yet between

Microsoft Office and

Windows SharePoint

Services."

Todd Scot, Assistant Director for Information Technology, Services, and Solutions, Vanderbilt University Law School

management on drives mapped by Microsoft Windows. By simply logging in to the portal, individuals have access to their mapped drives, complete with file creation, editing, and deleting privileges.

Streamlined Access to Campus Data Systems Since not all campus information sources are integrated with the portal yet, connectivity to external databases is critical. The previous intranet provided connectivity, but users were often frustrated by multiple logins required by each supporting application. Through Web Parts and integration with Active Directory, individuals can now access a variety of these databases securely and with single sign on convenience.

Benefits

Since deploying VULS Intranet II as the integrated campus information portal and collaboration solution, the law school has realized a number of substantial benefits. Administrative Support Reduced The ability to centralize the university’s critical information and distribute it in a targeted manner conserves professional resources. As more information is first aggregated and migrated to Microsoft SQL Server databases and then indexed, individual VULS community members can use the powerful search capabilities of

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to find information themselves. This relieves administrative support personnel of time-consuming information searches and frees them to do more value-adding activities. New Collaboration Environment Eases Teamwork

New collaboration tools and shared document libraries benefit faculty members as they team up on projects. Windows SharePoint Services was deployed about half way through Sherry’s collaborative casebook

project, and the benefits were immediate. Sherry explains, “The SharePoint document libraries simplified our project tremendously. We eliminated e-mail document distribution, and we now have access to our work at any time, from anywhere. The version history feature enabled us to always know which draft was the most recent, while maintaining access to earlier drafts if needed. The check-in and check-out feature prevented simultaneous edits of the same document, and we had an online record of who was responsible for different parts of the document. I certainly plan to use SharePoint every time I co-author a document.” Cost Savings from Streamlined Content Management

With publication delegated largely to departmental content owners and team leaders, the number of Web site change requests fell by 60 percent. The remaining workload was distributed to four systems administrators, sharply reducing the content-management bottleneck.

Improved Reliability, Reduced Support Costs for Remote Access

Remote-access reliability has improved with the new portal and WebDAV technology. Help-desk calls for connectivity and mapped drive issues are down 75 percent, and the cost of installing and supporting a VPN solution on every remote workstation has been virtually eliminated.

Fast Payback on Investment

The investment in Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 has been recovered in less than a year through quantifiable cost savings from streamlined content

management and reduced support for VPN. The payback is even greater when productivity improvements and high satisfaction with the new portal are

considered. “With cost savings, more efficient collaboration, and reduced administrative

“The SharePoint

document libraries

simplified our project

tremendously.…I

certainly plan to use

SharePoint every time I

co-author a document.”

overhead, the Microsoft solution has more than paid for itself,” says Scot. We’re very satisfied.”

Microsoft Office System

Microsoft Office is the business world's chosen environment for information work that provides the software, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact. For more information about Microsoft Office System, go to:

www.microsoft.com/office

SharePoint Products and

Technologies

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 enables enterprises to deploy an intelligent portal that seamlessly connects users, teams, and knowledge so that people can leverage relevant information across business processes to help them work more efficiently. Windows SharePoint Services allows teams to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration, benefits that help increase individual and team productivity. For more information about Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, go to:

www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:

www.microsoft.com

For more information about products and services, call or visit the Web site at: For more information about Vanderbilt University Law School products and services, call (615) 322-2615 or visit the Web site at:

www.law.vanderbilt.edu

© 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Active Directory, the Office Logo, Outlook, SharePoint, Windows, Windows Server, and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Document published September 2004

Software and Services

„ Microsoft Office System

− Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003

− Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 − Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 − Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal

Server 2003

„ Microsoft Windows Server System − Microsoft Windows Server 2003

Enterprise Edition

− Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 − Microsoft SQL Server 2000

„ Microsoft Windows XP Professional

„ Technologies

− Microsoft .NET Framework − Microsoft ASP.NET − Microsoft Active Directory

− Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services

Hardware

„ Dell PowerEdge 1650, 1.4 GHz Xeon, 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM, 72 GB RAID5 (Web Front End, Search)

„ Dell PowerEdge 4600, dual 2.8 GHz Xeon, 4 GB RAM, 109 GB (total) RAID1, 219 GB