eDev@lse

Reset Forgotten Password - Enhancement

The self-service reset forgotten password feature has been enhanced, adding the option to have have a link to the reset password page sent to a pre-registered email address.

This option provides an alternative to the existing ‘memorable date’ challenge step, acknowledging the fact that it isn’t always easy to remember a particular date without a prompt to jog the memory. The ‘memorable date’ challenge is however retained as an option for users who don’t have a private non-LSE email address.

Once on the reset password page you will still have to answer your pre-set personal security question to be able to reset your password.

To use this new option with an LSE Network Account it is first necessary to register a
non-LSE email address against your account. This is done using the ‘Everyone > Account Management > Update Security Questions’ option in LSE for You

Once an email address (and security question/answer) have been registered you can
make use of the reset forgotten password feature here:

https://lfylive.lse.ac.uk/lfy/cl/lfypa/resetPassword.html

For LSE Public Accounts (as used by alumni and applicants in particular), the username is a non-LSE email address, so holders of such accounts are able to make use of this functionality straight away. The link is sent to that address.

Self-service address maintenance for Graduate Applicants in LSE for You

The self-service address maintenance applications in LSE for You have been published to Graduate Applicants. Allowing them to ensure we always have their correct address and enter new addresses in advance.

LSE for You - version 2.5

Work continues on re-working the back end of LSE for You.  Our Project Board have recently approved using a light-weight portal framework from JBoss to implement the infrastructure for our new portal.   Also we now have a draft of what the new version of the portal will look like.  The draft has some notes which explain why we’ve chosen this particular design.  We see this as in incremental step between the existing user interface and a future re-vamp.  It is a work in progress in so far as there may be some other widgets to add, for example it hasn’t currently got a ‘help’ link.  We hope that this modified user interface offers an improvement on the current one without presenting a major leap to the existing pages:  but please let us know what you think using the Suggestions Boards.

News in LSE for You

The Press Office will no longer be publishing news in LSE for You - news for students and staff is now on the School’s intranet.

PhD Log - Document attachments

A new version of the PhD Log application has been deployed in LSE for You today. This version adds attachment funtionality to the Communication Log and Annual Review and Upgrade Panel processes. All parties (Student, Supervisor, Doctoral Programme Director) can now attach documents (e.g. PDF or Word files) to their entries, which once published can be downloaded by other relevant users.

Student Information/Photoboards - Academic Advisee Timetables

Academic Advisors may now include their Advisees’ timetables as an additional link in photoboards (see the options on the first page of your photoboards).  This enhancement was suggested by the Departmental Tutor’s Forum.

Student Information/Programme Photoboards - limit your search by name

The Photoboards for Programmes of Study, which are available to Departmental staff, now include the ability to filter your search by student name.  So if you want to search for John Doe, who was in the General Course in 2007/8, then select 2007/8 and General Course and then enter ‘DOE’ in the student name field.  The search is ‘loose’ so if you enter ‘D’ you will get all students whose surname starts with a ‘D’.

This enhancement is in response to suggestions posted in the LSE for You Suggestions Board.

Student Information/Photographs now include Academic Advisors

In response to a request from the Departmental Tutors’ Forum the Student Information/Photographs pages in LSE for You now include the email addresses of students’ Academic Advisors.  There is a new option in the ‘Display Options’ of the first pages of Photoboards which allow you to choose whether or not you want this information to be displayed.  Student Information/Photograph pages are available to Academics and staff in Academic Departments/Institutes.

LSE SU Elections

This term’s Student Union Elections were run exclusively on-line using software developed by the eDevelopment Team.  The Student’s Union report a record turn-out.

Future development work - LSE for You

We start a new round of development work in November.   Our Project Board has made our first priority the replacement of the ‘back end’ of LSE for You.  The infrastructure behind LSE for You is a few years old now and has recently been showing signs of strain.  We hope to put a more robust framework in place, one which will allow us to seperate the framework, which assembles the pages in LSE for You, from the content, which is delivered by the framework.  This should allow us to refresh the content without having to reboot the framework, something which we hate doing but have to do at the moment whenever an application needs to be changed.  There will be a number of other advantages such as having a more transparent, monitorable service and support for more sorts of content.

What will this mean to our customers?   We hope that you will get a faster website with hardly any downtime.   We hope to minimise the visual impact, i.e we want the website to still be recognisable to our current users:  we think that re-working the navigation and page layout is another project.  However we hope to take the opportunity to consider how the work which Website Services have been doing in their Review of the LSE website might be incorporated into LSE for You, for example we will be looking to see whether the templates which they have produced for their project might fit with LSE for You.