There’s been a fair bit of holiday in the team over the past couple of weeks. Those of us left behind have been busy getting batch two sites ready to go live.

Go Mobile programme

Fen has been migrating the Pre-Arrival and Faculty of Medical Sciences websites into T4. They are both at the proofing and editing stage. She is working with the Faculty of Medical Sciences to make some amendments and updates to their content, ready for go live next week.

Fen and Jane met with the Pre-Arrival team – they are delighted with their development site and can’t wait to get stuck in on T4! Fen is proofing the site and sourcing images, ready for go live next week.

Andrew has been editing content on the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences website preparing it for go live next week.

Linda has been doing some prep work for the Services for Business website – which is due to go through the Go Mobile transformation in batch four.

Linda checked in with the Alumni team. They’ve been reviewing their new site only a couple of months after go live! Super keen. They’ve got plans to add new content types and develop some of their messaging.

Lisa has been building, editing content and sourcing images for the new Faculty of Medical Sciences Online site.

Emily has been working on the content and structure for the Accommodation website.

Emma C has proofread the new Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia website which goes live next week.

We’ve been planning the batch three sites, lining things up for audits etc.

Design and technical developments

We’ve imported the following sites into T4:

• Accommodation
• FMS
• NUBS
• Pre-Arrival
• NICR

Custom analytics and Google Ad tracking has been added to the T4 version of the Business School site.

Peter has modified the standard Events list so they can now be added to tabbed pages.

Campaigns and other developments

The Universal Analytics tracking code update for WordPress sites on microsites.ncl.ac.uk has been passed to the Digital Platforms team to implement.

Linda’s been working with teams in Marketing and Newcastle University London to get content ready for Clearing.

Emma C has been making plans for the next Web Editor Community Event. If your site has been through the Go Mobile process already keep an eye out for the invite coming early next week.

Following queries from editors, Lisa wrote a couple of blogs posts around hyperlinks: To Link or Not to Link – When and Where to Use Hyperlinks and A Quick Guide to…Hyperlinks.

Training and support

Linda, Jane and Lisa delivered Planning and Writing Web Content training.

We’ve received 21 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 12 of them.

Plans for the next few weeks

Batch two sites going live in the next couple of weeks:

• Marine
• Numed
• NUBS
• Accommodation
• Pre-arrival
• Civil Engineering
• FMS Faculty
• FMS online courses
• Clearing (1st July)

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It’s been a busy couple of weeks – read on to find out what we’ve been up to.

Go Mobile programme

We’ve been getting the next batch of sites ready to migrate into T4:

• Fen and Emily are ploughing through Accommodation
• Andrew and Steve have been hard at work on pre-migration tagging of Civil Engineering and Geosciences
• Andrew has also done the site audit for the School of Psychology, which is one the sites we will be migrating to T4 in Batch 3 of Go Mobile. He’s also working on the initial site map for the Institute of Cellular Management ahead of pre-migration tagging
• Emma C is tackling the Business School
• Fen and Jane are working on a new sitemap for Pre-Arrival

Lisa is working with colleagues in the Faculty of Medical Sciences (FMS) on a new site for their online courses, while Fen is preparing the current FMS website for migration into T4.

Design and Technical developments

Catherine has been setting up some of the batch two sites in the pre-migration template and has imported the Civil Engineering and Geosciences into T4. She has also been working on colour schemes for the batch two sites.

Campaigns and other developments

Emma C is working with colleagues in Marketing and Student Recruitment to plan homepage messaging for the Clearing campaign. She’s also been helping the Press Office with development of the About the University site.

Training and support

Linda and Emma C ran a fully subscribed day of training on planning and writing web content.

Lisa ran a fully subscribed Website Media Management training session.

This week Anne’s delivered the first T4 CMS Basics workshop in our new training room, and also tested out a new half-day session for Careers staff, which focuses on managing News, Events and Staff in T4.

We’ve received 36 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 6 of them.

Plans for the next few weeks

We will be continuing work on batch 2 sites to get them ready for their Go Live date of 24 June.

Andrew and Lisa are currently preparing to deliver the next Planning and Writing Web Content training sessions.

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Go Mobile programme

We held a ‘Sprint retrospective’ in the team last week. It was an opportunity to review our processes and actions, so we can be flexible during Go Mobile. It means we can improve things we feel didn’t work so well, and check our processes are on track for success.

Fen spent most of this week proofing Marine Science and Technology, and migrating the Student Services into T4 – the latter going live today. She’s now working on the Website Information and Feedback site, which should be ready to go live in Batch 3.

Jane is working with Accommodation, finalising the restructuring of key sections to help people find the things they look for most – quickly. The enthusiastic Accommodation team had loads of great ideas following their Go Mobile training, so Jane has helped work these up. Now we just have to build it!

Steve has been liaising with Civil Engineering & Geosciences to manage the transfer of their site to T4 and working on a few final decisions for content on the Marine and Mechanical Engineering websites.

Catherine and Emily have been working on the final content for the Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia site ready for their editor to start work next week.

Emma C and Andrew have been editing and proofing content on the Geography, Politics and Sociology site to get it ready to go live today.

Emily’s been proofing the Mechanical Engineering site, which will also go live later today.

Jane also met with the Pre-Arrival team, to give them a heads-up that Go Mobile is heading their way – they are scheduled for Batch 2.

Design and Technical developments

Catherine has started creating colour schemes for the Batch 2 sites and did some browser testing on the search facility for the new Clearing website.

Peter has been setting up some of the Batch 2 sites in their pre-migration template ready for the content team to start tagging them for migration into T4.

Google Tag Manage has been updated to send event tracking information for the T4 buttons (both action and link types) and scroll tracking. It’ll show how far people will scroll down a particular page.

Campaigns and other developments

Emma C met with colleagues from the Loyola Center to discuss adding information about their programme to the Study Abroad and Exchanges website.

Fen shared a list of content experts to follow on Twitter, and some tips and tricks for using bold text.

Training and support

Anne delivered another T4 CMS workshop this week (we’ve been running this session for a whole year!), and is preparing some bespoke training for 2 June.

We’ve received 31 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 15 of them.

Andrew has been working on news slides for the T4 media management training, looking at the optimisation and use of PDF documents.

Plans for the next few weeks

We’re starting work on our next batch of sites, moving from the planning phase to assessing the audits, restructuring and preparing for migration into T4.

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Go Mobile programme

We’ve welcomed Fen Felton-Pitt to the team as a Web Content Officer. Everyone’s been involved in her induction. We’ve thrown her straight in to work on the Go Mobile programme, beginning with auditing sites for our next batch.

Jane had an initial meeting with the working group from Accommodation. There was lots of discussion, ideas and interesting proposals. We’re looking forward to seeing how the plans develop.

Linda met with the Business School to kick off plans for their Go Mobile development.

Catherine organised an intense two days of training and meetings while the NUMed staff were in the UK. And Emily’s been busy getting their site ready for migration into T4.

Emma C has done pre- and post- migration checks on the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology site. It’s now ready to hand over to the School’s web editor to work on the content.

Lisa carried out an audit of the Faculty of Medical Sciences website.

After a week enjoying the sunshine in Devon, Andrew has been doing a bit of restructuring of the Mechanical and Systems Engineering website as part of its T4 post-migration process.

Design and technical developments

We’re coming up with some designs and working prototypes for the Clearing site. This covers a course search and a way to highlight which courses are in Clearing.

The Google Analytics tracking code has been updated to Google’s latest version, Universal Analytics.

Catherine has been looking at the technical requirements for the first batch of sites to make sure we can accommodate all of their content needs.

Campaigns and other developments

Linda attended a half-day demo of a new system that the Advancement Team are investigating to manage events and alumni information. There will be some implementation on our website a bit further down the line.

Lisa wrote a blog post on our standards for using expandable content on websites.

Gareth met with Bill Chaudhry to scope out a new website for the Cardiovascular Research Centre

Training and support

Some lucky Training Team members (Anne, Emma, Linda and Lisa) can now use the Training and Events Management module in SAP. This means we can manage our training requests more effectively.

Jane created some bespoke Writing for the Web training for Careers editors. Who will only be focusing on News and Events.

Emma C ran another Media Management session. Following up on feedback from the attendees she is producing a guide of image specifications for photographers.

Emma B created and delivered a half-day training session for the team on Agile/Scrum project management methodology, which was more fun than it sounds! We’ll be thinking hard now about how to adopt some of the principles into our work.

Anne delivered a Contribute workshop, and also did some bespoke T4 training with Fen, our new Web Content Officer.

We’ve received 31 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 19 of them.

Plans for the next few weeks

We’re halfway through our current batch of Go Mobile sites. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be supporting web editors in schools and services as they work on their content. By the time of our next update, we’ll have a handful of shiny new sites to show you.

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Go Mobile programme

Project manager Jane was elated to see the new Careers and Careers Occupations websites go live – marking the end of a six-month project.

It was a massive achievement by our team (it did involve most of us) and Careers, which has significantly improved a vital University service online.

Lisa wrote up specific handover notes to help Careers manage their busy events schedule in T4.

Both Lisa and Andrew were on hand for go live, giving Jane smelling salts/support/sugar when needed.

Lisa also set about auditing the Medical Sciences site before taking a well-earned holiday.

Catherine, Emily and Emma C met with NUMED colleagues to talk through proposed updates to their site.

Emma C is working with Marketing and Student Recruitment on a new process for making student profiles re-usable across different sites and in different contexts.

The Alumni, Giving and 1834 Fund websites have merged to become a brand new site for Alumni and Supporters.

Andrew audited sites for Mechanical & Systems Engineering, Pre-Arrival, the Northern Institute for Cancer Research and Civil Engineering & Geosciences.

Design and technical developments

The team is currently working on the requirements for MyImpact profiles in T4.

They have further developed the course search and identifying courses in Clearing and Adjustments on the UGP website.

They have created pre-migration templates for batch one websites:

• NUMed
• Marine
• GPS
• Accommodation
• Medical Sciences

Training and support

Jane and Emma C ran sessions on planning and writing web content for editors with sites currently going through Go Mobile.

Anne ran a T4 CMS Basics workshop and bespoke T4 session for editors with sites going through Go Mobile. This week she’ll deliver a session for Careers staff looking at news, events and staff lists in T4.

We’ve received 30 support requests through NU Service Helpdesk and resolved 21 of them.

Plans for the next few weeks

We’ve got a Media Management training session next week.

Jane starts her next Go Mobile project. Look out Accommodation, here we come!

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