Monday, May 20, 2013
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Architecture and solutions

Network drive folder self service

 The help desk received many requests every day to add permissions to a group to allow a member of staff access to a folder in a restricted area.  These requests were often sent by email and took time to process and often caused delays to the business.  Furthermore, these permissions often remained in place even after the staff member has left the organisation or moved to a different role.  We developed a web based tool that would allow a nominated ‘folder manager’ to control this access instantly.  The folder administrator can see immediately who has access to the folder and can easily remove or add staff members’ accounts instantly.  There is now a reduced need to contact and wait for the help desk to action and the folder administrator can view and control exactly who has access to the data. 

 

The feedback has been very positive and in response to requests the web based tool will be further developed to allow for multiple folder administrators and nominating temporary administrators as and when required.

Patient IT access at Parklands Hospital

laptop keyboard The Hampshire IT solutions team have been involved in a project to enable service users at Parklands Hospital to access the Internet.

Increasing numbers of services are provided via the Internet by a vast range of agencies. Key examples include health, government and banks.

Following consultation with service users, managers agreed that access to the Internet was important in enabling individuals to maintaining of aspects of their lives during a stay in the Parklands Hospital residential units.

In order to comply with NHS Policies, a dedicated internet connection was installed which was routed to the required PC location.

Service users undertake a risk assessment prior to being allowed access to the PCs. The machines were configured with security software to prevent access to inappropriate sites, so provide a 30 minute session and to reset and remove user changes and input after each session.

Lastly, to prevent access to PCs without staff knowledge we went low tech - the machines are housed in lockable security cages.  

SAC tool

 We looked at the process of creating a new user account and worked with the help desk to develop a tool with some intelligence that could automate the process and in turn reduce the current amount of time to create an account.  With the complexities of multiple user organisations and a separate resource domain for exchange email this wasn’t going to be an easy task.  The current process involved the requesting manager completing a paper form and faxing or posting the form to Hampshire IT solutions.  When the form was received a member of the help desk team would then need to process the form and determine the next available login name for the target active directory.  For example, John Smith’s username would become SmithJ but there may already be many SmithJ usernames in the active directory and they would need to identify the next available number to append to the logon name.  As well as identifying the next available username they would need to find the appropriate organisational unit and a file server location for the account’s home drive.  Then the helpdesk staff would need to login to the separate exchange resource forest and repeat the task to find the next available email address for that trust to assign to the new account.

 

The whole process was time consuming and sometimes typographical errors would happen simply because of the human element.  The total time estimated to create an account was in the region of 45 minutes.   An online form was developed for requesting the new account and the information could simply be transferred into the tool.  The SAC tool required just the surname, first name, organisation and work base and from here it would find the next available username, create the user account, setup the home drive and assign the correct NTFS permissions and add the account to the security groups relevant to that trust.  It would then interface with the Exchange servers and create the resource account, a new mailbox, assign the permissions and add it to the appropriate distribution groups and this whole process from start to finish would take just seconds.

Co-Location of health & council staff

business people talking The Hampshire IT solutions team have been involved in a project to bring the NHS and Council services together in shared office locations facilitating the closer working relationship at the heart of local policy.

Specifically a direct network connection has been configured, with appropriate security features, between the Local NHS network and the Council one.

Services have then been configured so that staff working in the shared Council location can access their NHS data shares, email and national clinical applications whilst operating on a Council PC and having access to the Council system and printing solution.

The project has enabled changes in working practice to develop “hot-desking” and “smart” working practices for the NHS staff with their Council Colleagues using the IT facilities provided.

The project has involved much innovative development and collaborative working with the IT departments of HITS and HCC in addition to the user departments concerned.

Future enhancements are being considered for scheduling including configuring the NHS Smartcard authentication systems to work on Thin-Client devices in addition to PC’s.