"our Unit" Intranet Suite

Abstract

Management of support functions at large research and educational organizations can be a difficult and time-consuming prospect. Moreover, these functions are often unit-specific and require more intensive, customized support. Web-based systems for providing these services promise efficiencies, reductions in paperwork, enhanced user satisfaction, and cost reductions.

To address these needs, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a faculty, department, or organization-centric suite of applications for the support of faculty, human resources, and administrative functions. The suite can support one or multiple organizations while sharing one server and a local or remote database with customizable page headers and content. The suite is customized for each unit it supports with a simple yet powerful administrative tool. Berkeley's applications suite, One Unit, is written in PHP, uses MySQL, and runs under a Apache 2 web server on a variety of platforms such as Windows, OS X, Solaris, and Linux RedHat.

Applications

Intranets, extranets, research organization management, university management

Advantages

Customized page header
Customized faculty page header and template
Faculty and personal page display with ?Faces? display of the organization
Tools to let faculty and other unit members maintain web pages via forms
Customized and shared news
Customized and shared administrative matters
Repository for financial reports for each faculty member
Summary information about appointments of people working for faculty members
Collaborative faculty recruiting, graduate admissions, and awards tools
Access and page display customized by user role
Online purchasing and reimbursement requests, audit documentation storage
Links to resources
Downloadable forms
Data loading aids for monthly personnel update, initial bulk loading
Human protocol management
Merit case management
Online presentation of merit case material
Online building maintenance and IT help requests