IT Services Launches Redesigned Home Page and New Searchable Catalog
by Dave Ream
Tired of looking for a needle in the haystack of service and order links on the IT Services web site? Wouldn't a searchable catalog make things easier? During Spring Quarter, that's just what the University's central IT provider organization introduced -- along with a reworked home page that emphasizes quick access to help resources and ways to order services. The site is located at:
http://it-services.stanford.edu/
Service Catalog
The service catalog is available to anyone for browsing and searching services and related links. A link on the home page labeled "Browse, search, and order services" directs visitors to a complete A-to-Z service list headed by easy-to-use search options and controls.
To make the catalog more powerful for Stanford users, designers have made use of WebAuth and the University's central directory: a database back-end powers an option to login and view a service list tailored to the user's primary Stanford affiliation of staff, faculty, or student -- or to a more specifically defined role. Defined roles currently include Local Network Administrator, Resident Computer Consultant, and Department Contact with OrderIT site access.
For each service on the listings pages, the catalog displays a brief description along with links to more extensive documentation and to the tool or site used to order that service. For services obtained via the OrderIT Web site, these links change dynamically in the "tailored" view based on whether the user is a Department Contact or not (Contacts link directly to OrderIT while others access a help page that explains the OrderIT enrollment and authority process).
Other New Features
Following are a few other features that were added to the IT Services Web presence last spring:
- Five content boxes on the department home page group high-profile service links into categories. Clicking the "more" link at the bottom of any of the boxes directs the user to a separate catalog page listing only services in that category.
- The top bar of links common across most IT Services pages now includes a drop-down search box and a "quick links" menu of often-used sites and applications.
- The designers have updated the HTML and CSS code that control the site's page layout and text styles in order to comply with Universal Accessibility guidelines and current Web standards.
For More Information
You can find more information about the new site here.
