Documentation Portal Becomes IT Center Help
The documentation portal has served its duty. After many years of good service, the successor is already in the starting blocks. (doc.itc.rwth-aachen.de)
Source: Own illustration
What began a good six years ago is now taking on a new form. Join us on a short trip down memory lane – and back on the road to the future.
What has happened so far…
At the beginning of 2013, Prof. Dr. Matthias S. Müller took over the management of the former Computing and Communication Center of RWTH Aachen University. In the course of this appointment, the name was changed to IT Center, a short and easily remembered name. Under the motto “Preserving what is good from the past and combining it with something new so that the IT Center can master the challenges of the future”, the redesign of the former website of the institution followed very quickly.
The basic idea then, and now
With the new name and corresponding logo of the IT Center, the website was also to be modernized. This included the change to the central content management system (CMS) of the RWTH Aachen University as well as the division of the web presence into two areas:
Here you will find primarily static, centralized information about the IT Center, peppered with a target group-oriented navigation and a uniform presentation of all the services we offer in our service catalogue.
- A documentation portal:
Up-to-date information that may change dynamically, such as instructions, FAQs, configuration notes, announcements and the like. The orientation was also based on the services of the IT Center – each service had its own area with the same structure.
It was important to ensure a uniform layout of both websites to the outside world in order to present a sense of togetherness and increase recognition.
New model, original parts
In order to be able to provide service-relevant knowledge optimally and, above all, sustainably, we have decided to use new software at the IT Center that guarantees exactly that. For the concentration of all support- and service-relevant information, a new system is now being used, which brings many advantages for you, our users, both, in terms of internal knowledge management and public documentation. But, don’t worry: the proven content from the IT Center’s existing and established documentation portal has been migrated to the new system.
The migration of such a knowledge base not only includes the move, but also the restructuring of the information provided in order to prepare it more intuitively for you and to adapt it to your needs.
The result is the new website IT Center Help. Here you will find all information about the services of the IT Center. Helpful information and instructions are centrally maintained and made accessible here. The IT Center Help website obtains its content via the interface to the knowledge management database, the same software that is also used in the IT-ServiceDesk to support you in case of support.
Your feedback from our user satisfaction surveys also played an important role in the creation of the new website and the structuring of its contents. Since 2014, we have been asking you every year how your satisfaction is doing. We are paying special attention to user-friendliness and accessibility when developing IT Center Help.
We have tested before it is called “Raising the Curtain for IT Center Help!
We wanted to know exactly whether we had managed to provide a better prepared user documentation of the IT Center. That is why we asked you and had the prototype tested in advance by volunteer friendly users. We took a close look at whether the more transparent presentation and comprehensible wording really did help users find information faster, whether they could find their way around and how they liked the new look.
Thank you once again for your support and all the constructive hints and suggestions that we have taken into account in the further processing.
You are already curious now? Convince yourself on July 23rd,2020, and don’t forget to adjust your bookmarks and favorites accordingly when it’s said:
“Bye, bye doc.itc – hello IT Center Help!”
Responsible for this article are Nicole Filla and Tanja Wittpoth-Richter.
