Hamdan bin Mohammed University was launched in September 2002 as a pioneering institution of e-learning courses in the region is the first of its kind in the world. Today, it is the leading provider of online courses in Total Quality Management (TQM) in the Arab world. It has been recognized by EFQM, a leading European body for quality management, and has been accepted as a key member of the British Quality Foundation.

 

Hamdan bin Mohammed University aims to be the college of choice for Total Quality Management in the Arab world. It provides e-learning programs to private and public sector employees as well as members of the public. Courses include Foundation Diploma in TQM, Excellence Best Practice Series and Certificate in Quality in Policing. Hamdan bin Mohammed University has taken a leading role in influencing governmental stances on quality and its role in society. It has led many initiatives to ensure that quality awareness, education and the dissemination of appropriate knowledge can flourish and reach out at all levels within the Arab World.

 

Hamdan bin Mohammed University wanted more functionalities to the existing portal and decided to upgrade from SPS 2003 to MOSS 2007 (Microsoft Office Share Point Server 2007) adding some more features to facilitate their staff productivity. The portal is the first place that organisation members would think to go to for reliable and critical information, with user-friendly and fast access and hence calls for state of the art features such as provided by MOSS 2007.

 

MOSS 2007, a new server program that is part of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, provides a single, integrated location where members of an organisation can efficiently collaborate with team members, find resources, search for expert information and manage content and the workflow. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports all intranet, extranet, and Web applications across an enterprise within one integrated platform, instead of relying on separate fragmented systems.

 

Hamdan bin Mohammed University opted for ITQAN, a leading SI in the region for deploying the required upgrades to the portals. ITQAN specialises in horizontal solutions such as infrastructure Security, Knowledge management and ERP as well as vertical solutions such as e-Government, Healthcare & CRM solutions has successfully deployed two portal solutions at Hamdan bin Mohammed University in Dubai. Of the two deployments, the Staff portal was an upgrade while the Learners portal / student portal was a completely new initiative.

 

The new upgraded staff portal at Hamdan bin Mohammed University will improve staff interaction and knowledge sharing with the college, departments and peers. The existing portal was migrated to MOSS 2007. The portal provides sub-sites for each department.  The portal also provides ‘My site’ for each member of the staff. The state of the art Student Portal, also based on Microsoft technologies MOSS, is set to improve student interaction with the college, Faculty and peers.

 

The portals are integrated with Active Directory, Live Communication Server plus the customised module for SSO (single sign-on user name) to access multiple resources in the college. Single sign-on helps centralise information from multiple back-end applications through a single portal that uses application definitions.

 

Some of the communication tools featuring in the Portals include Web Mail that is integrated with Exchange, Click to Talk, Click to Meet and Live Communication Server. Features in the student portal include News which is integrated with VLE (Virtual Learning Environment), Announcements (Integrated with VLE), My Calendar which merges Academic, personal and events calendars, Reminders on the Calendar, Discussion Board and more.
 
Benefits

One of the highlights is that integration with familiar Microsoft Office client applications, e-mail, and Web browsers simplifies the user experience. Organizations can easily modify the out-of-the-box processes or define their own processes using familiar Microsoft tools such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 (the next generation Microsoft Office FrontPage) or Microsoft Visual Studio development system.

 

Mohamed Hussein Abdel Hamid, Projects Office Manager at ITQAN says, “The portal deployments have been deployed to meet the requirements of Hamdan bin Mohammed University's staff as well as students. They wanted the portal solutions to feature more collaborative tools that will enhance the workflow and productivity. The deployments were carried over a six-month phase.”

 

The Staff Portal allows each member of the staff to login through the Hamdan bin Mohammed University website and allows them to access the other College applications using SSO. The Staff portal is available in English only while the student portal has a bilingual home page offering English and Arabic. The Student Portal will allow the students to login through the Hamdan bin Mohammed University website and allows them to access the other College applications using SSO. There would be two views for the student portal, Student view and Faculty view and the portal will provide a sub portal for ‘My site’.

 

The college team was involved right through the portal’s development phase. Hamdan bin Mohammed University believes the portals will help realise considerable enhancement in productivity of both the staff as well as the students, once the rollouts are completely executed.

 

For ITQAN, these projects rank as landmarks and reinforce their expertise in portal developments. ITQAN believe this success with the Hamdan bin Mohammed University deployment will help them win more projects in the educational sector.