The most common way many of us seek advice from our HEUG colleagues is to post an item to the appropriate HEUG listserv and hope for a response. Thanks to the collegial nature of the HEUG, many of our questions do receive one or more responses. However what if you don’t wish to post a question to the somewhat public Listserv’s or your Listserv post didn’t receive a response?
Did you know HEUG On.Line (HOL) provides a way for you to search for colleagues with specific experience/skills? Did you know you can also search for institutions that have implemented specific modules of Campus Solutions; have upgraded to the latest version of CS and/or PeopleTools; are similar in profile to your institution; etc? These search tools are available via the Groups functionality – click on the Groups menu item on the HOL home page. You will now see submenu items related to groups, ie Group Search, Group Lookup, User Search, User Lookup.
You’ve potentially already accessed User Lookup, to find the contact details for a specific colleague. The more powerful submenu items are the 2 searches. When you click on either of these you will be presented with a set of search criteria, which will allow you to plug in the areas of expertise for the person(s) who might be able to assist you. When searching for users you can apply filters at both the User and Group level. For example,
User Filters
Functional Key Contacts: Student Records
Group (Institution) Filters
FTE Students > 25000
Student Headcount > 35000
Carnegie Classification: Doctoral/Research University
Medical School: Yes
Research University: Yes
The above search criteria returned 12 users. I could now go ahead and reach out with my question. Note that as part of the Search you can specify additional Result Fields rather than just the standard Username and Organisation.
I expected the above search to return more than 12 results. Why didn’t it? Probably because not all HEUG members (individuals) and institutions (groups) complete the full details in their profiles and then keep them updated.
One of the key ways we can derive benefit from our HEUG membership is to be able to reach out to colleagues and seek assistance. This is only effective if all of us ensure we complete our HEUG profiles and keep them up to date. The same applies to the profiles for our institutions. You can easily access your individual profile via My Profile in the My Options menu at the top of all of the HOL pages. With respect to your Group’s profile, only the Group Administrator(s) (GA) can make changes. Refer to your Group’s profile on HOL to see who your GA is and reach out to them if your Group’s profile is out of date.
For more detail on how to update your HOL profile, refer to Kelsy Tibshraeny’s recent article in the Tips & Tricks blog.
How about checking your profile today?