Closure Report
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Project Summary
Background
In a normal year, the University of Edinburgh staff would have approximately 12,000 mentions in the media. These mentions are manually updated in PURE - the University's Current Research Information System (CRIS). Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the mentions for University of Edinburgh staff in the media has increased dramatically. In addition, Communications and Marketing (CAM) consolidated several methods and platforms for monitoring media coverage into one via the purchase of Signal AI. As a result, 12,000 mentions were identified in March 2020 alone. This makes the manual update process infeasible.
This project takes an CSV output from Signal AI and convert this into an XML format that can be uploaded into PURE.
Scope
The Scope of this project was -
- The development of an application to load information produced by Signal in PURE
- The application will use APIs for pulling in information from Signal and PURE, and as such can be updated should either system change in the future
Out of scope
- A fully automated process
- Mentions from any other source than Signal
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: End of Planning - 100 days
Revised Estimate during project - 75 days
Staff Usage Actual: 108 days
Explanation for Variance
This project was delayed significantly due to key resource being moved onto higher priority projects. Due to the delay, more significant testing than was initially planned was carried out by the Research Information Systems team and a number of academics. There were some minor changes to the export as a result of this, however this will be beneficial to the end users of PURE ensuring the required information is displayed on their profiles.
Additional security was also requested to ensure that only specific users can access the system. Whilst the risk of any malicious use was low the additional security is in line with similar python-based applications
Outcome
Objectives
| ID | Description | Priority | Delivered |
|---|---|---|---|
| O1 | Application to take data from Signal AI and convert into format fit for upload into PURE | ||
| O1D1 | Import CSV file from Signal | Must Have | Yes |
| O1D2 | Read People and Publishers from PURE API | Must Have | Yes |
| O1D3 | Match People and Publishers by name | Must Have | Yes |
| O1D4 | Create PURE XML Upload file | Must Have | Yes |
| O2 | Establish regular upload cycle to PURE | ||
| O2D5 | Provide monthly XML files to PURE for Upload | Must Have | Yes |
| O2D6 | Produce Success/Failure Report to identify any cases for manual update | Must Have | Yes |
| O3 | Agree support for API | ||
| O3D7 | OLA | Must Have | Yes |
Key Learning Points
- When resource was moved onto the University strategic priority project - People & Money - , a decision should have been taken to suspend the project until resource was available. This would have kept the timelines for the project clearer for everyone involved. The stop/start nature of the project meant momentum on the project was difficult to maintain
Outstanding Issues
- The delay in completing the project has meant the News team have a signifcant backlog to work through. This will be handle by the News team as part of their business as usual processes
- The application requires the upload CSV to be in UTF-8 format. Direct exports from Signal are in this format, but if the export is edited the default save from Microsoft Excel is not in this format. Users have to select 'CSV UTF-8 (Comma Delimited) as the file type. The business are aware of the need for the export to be in this format.
- Applications Management have assisted the business with an upload issue relating to invalid characters, this was resolved between the business and Research Information Systems