Managing It At Ub

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Upgrading to Office

The University wants to upgrade from office 2010 to 2013. It was already a big leap when the university switched from office 2007 to 2010. The software is going to be available on classrooms and labs for the fall 2013 semester.

The university wants to keep up with the technology and provide their students with the latest technology to learn and be able to provide to their students the most advanced technology available.

Agenda of the Case:

The background of the case relates it to the Cisco VOIP implementation project where more than 7000 VOIP phones were installed across the campus. That implementation was supposedly easier than the current case at hand, Upgrading from office 2010 to 2013.

This upgradation would take a lot of planning to do since we are talking about more than 2000 computers that shall be upgraded. These would have to be carefully researched upon like the previous time with the Cisco VOIP. But that project saved a lot of money and headache since it unified 80 different phone systems into one.

The current situation of upgrading from office 2010 to office 2013 poses a few problems:

Compatibility issues:

Will the new office Suit run on the old machines comfortably?

Will the new office suit be compatible with all the systems operating systems?

Technical issues:

With the new upgrade, with the older systems have enough processing power to handle all the new features and run everything comfortably?

Rollout time:

Will it take long to rollout the upgrade? Will the upgrade be implemented before the fall semester starts? The professors were concerned whether if they’ll be teaching office 2010 or 2013 during the semester.

Users:

The users were having trouble getting used to the previous upgrade where they had trouble getting used to the ribbon navigation. It was a pretty big leap already. Now with the new upgrade, will the users face the same kind of issues that they previously faced?

Changes in the new version of the office suit

Access Data Projects completely removed and replaced with Access 2013 SQL based databases. For this the users will have to convert the ADP to be able to run onto Access 2013 SQL based databases.

Pivot Charts and Pivot Tables are removed with no support for office web components any more, this would mean that the users who are used to Pivot Charts and Pivot Tables will have trouble getting used to the new charting capabilities in Excel.

dBASE support also removed from Access, now the users cannot connect to any external data dBASE database.

No more toolbars and menus in the new MS Access 2013, this might be a big change for users. People will need to get used to this which might take some time.

The full excel for creating chart in word has been modified. Previously, when the user wanted to create or edit a chart in word he would have to open excel to do it, in 2013 when the user does so, a smaller version of excel opens up to do so.

There are a lot more big and small changes that were made in the new version of the office suit and all of them have to be looked around for and planned for before being implemented.

Benefits of upgrading to Office 2013

Active Directory-Based activation:

When then office 2013 is run on specific Operating Systems the Active Directory based activation uses the current active directory infrastructure and activates all clients.

Apps for Office:

it is a webpage that is hosted inside an application of the office client to be able to increase the functionality of the document.

Click to run:

It is a technology that reduces the time taken to use the office product because of downloading it by streaming it.

Co- Authoring

This feature lets multiple users to work productively on the same document. Through this the users can work on the same document and edit it without making any intrusion on any other users work.

Office Web Apps

Office web apps provide the users the ability to access and make changes to their documents through a supported browser.

Security

There are major security changes in the new office suit, now there is no need to provide the password multiple times for normal business.

Monitoring the Progress

For monitoring the progress of the process, each employee will have a timesheet and computers assigned to them. They will have to fill out the timesheets with their individual progress and their comments on the upgradation of the system.

These timesheets would be digitally stored in a database from where the progress of each employee in the team could be monitored easily. By simply looking up for the data entry by the name of the employee or they system name in the lab or classroom number.

Contingency

With every project there are risks associated with it. A risk is an unfavorable happening that may take place that we want to prevent. But in case of any such events taking place, we need to have a follow up plan to still go on with the whole process so that it does not do more damage than it has already done.

CONTINGENCY TYPE

LIKELINESS OF OCCURRENCE

IMPACT

FOLLOW UP PLAN

Incompatibility

High

Medium

Check out the incompatible device or software and fix

Users having problem coping up with change

High

Low

Teach them about how to move on to the new office suit

Failure

Medium

Medium

Try implementing the application again

Skilled employee leaving the work

Low

Medium

Finding another skilled Employee

Incomplete knowledge

Low

Medium

Train the employees to work better

Timeline

Initially the Office Suite shall be tested to be compatible for the different types of systems that we have at the University. This shall be started from 15th of march and is the first phase of the implementation process. After the testing is successful, the team shall start implementing the Office Suite to all the other computers across the university Starting 1st of April which shall be the second phase. If there are compatibility issues in the testing phase the team shall start finding the ways by which the upgrade can be implemented.

Phase Number

Phase Description

Starting Date

Completion Date

1.

Testing the Office Suite across different systems

15th March

22nd March

2.

Dealing with compatibility issues

23rd March

31st March

3.

Implementing the upgrade

1st April

15th April

4.

Testing the implementation for errors

16th April

21st April

So by the plan, the complete implementation of the office suite shall be done by 21st of April 2013. Which means that the professors shall teach the Office 2013 in their classes to their students.