Open University Career Links System
The Open University had an existing service which it provided to current students and alumni. The purpose of the service was to pair a user interested in a particular career path (a "seeker") with a person already active in that career (a "helper"). The main problem with this service was that it required a significant amount of user intervention, particularly in the manual matching of seekers to helpers, which was performed through exchange of e-mails.
OCC were asked to redevelop the service, principally to improve the efficiency, as the costs being incurred in administering the manual process could no longer be afforded.
Reducing costs and improving workflow
To help reduce the costs, we provided web-based tools to assist with the matching process, and which improved the general administration of the system. Establishing a match between a seeker and a helper is effectively a workflow process that needs to be monitored and supported. Tools were provided to record and control this workflow, enabling administrators to track the progress of matching, and to obtain overall statistics on the number of matches made and the number of match operations in progress.
By replacing a paper based form filling system with a web based system, we were able to streamline the task of acquiring needs from potential seekers.
The system was built in PHP and MySQL in order to fit in with the architecture of the Open University's existing Careers Service website. The system was required to integrate into the Open University's SAMS authentication system, and needed to be delivered for installation onto the Open University's public facing internet.
