York St John University Registry /
Request for SITSConsultancy (Tribal)

Maintained by: Registry; Last updated: July 2014

GUIDANCE NOTES

The SITS account with Tribal is managed and monitored by the Student Systems and Records (SSR) team in Registry. 15 consultancy days are available for general use annually. Requests for these days should be submitted using this form and sentto . Please provide as much information as possible. SSR will consider your request and get back to you with a decision.

Please note: Major development work or projects should be included in departmental AOP’s. The department should manage the booking of consultancy for these projects directly with Tribal.

1Your Details

Department/Faculty
Name of staff authorising request / Date Submitted

2Details of Request

Please provide details of the required consultancy below:

Scope of consultancy:
(e.g development, system fix, training. Please include system i.e SITS client, eVision, ESD)
Who will participate in the consultancy:
(include staff names and job titles) / When would you like the consultancy to take place
(include month, dates as necessary)
Consultants name (if known) / Number of days requested

2Information from Registry

  • Registry will use the information provided in Section 4 of this document to help prioritise the distribution of

consultancy days across the institution.

  • Registry will contact Tribal to identify the most appropriate consultant to deal with your request
  • Where you have specified a consultant that person will be requested
  • Registry will liaise with you on available dates and book as agreed
  • Where consultancy days have been pre-paid at a reduced rate the consultants expenses will be additional. In

this case your department will be invoiced directly for these expenses; Registry will arrange a purchase order

with you

3Details of booking (Registry to complete)

Date booking made
Date(s) of consultancy
Consultants name
Total days booked by
department
Total Institution days left

4Scope of Consultancy

What are the deliverables of the consultancy?
(What needs to be changed or improved? What benefits will there be i.e improved workflow, reduced resource, more efficient capturing/use of data)
What will the impact be if the consultancy does not go ahead?
(include impact to your department and/or the impact university wide)
How will outcomes from the consultancy be embedded?
(e.g process notes, training manual, cascade training)
Do you require a member of SSR to be involved? If so, please outline support required.
Have ILS been made aware of the work you’d like carried out by a consultant?
(ILS should be involved if changes to the system will require support/upgrades/installation. SSR will look into this further based on the details you have provided in this document)
Will there be a requirement for testing either internally or by Tribal? If so how will you work with Tribal to do this?
(where training is taking place testing would not be expected)
*Do you require any additional outputs from the Consultant?
(e.g report, notes, training manual)

* We require all consultants to complete some form of documentation following a session. Options for this are outlined by Tribal in appendix 1 of this document. Registry will highlight this requirement during the booking process however once contact details have been passed on you should liaise directly with the consultant and agree any expectations prior to the session.

Appendix 1 – Tribal Consultancy Notes

Following feedback from Institutions, Tribal has issued the following clarity which should be considered when booking consultancy days.
When a consultant has a booking to do on site or do off-site work there should be an agreement with the customer at the beginning of the day (or when confirming the day) about the nature of the write up they need. Note: For a larger implementation project this may be part of the project guidelines.
We can offer the following:


  • Make notes during the day – these notes must be sufficient for the consultant to be able to tidy them up in
  • less than 1 hour and give them back to the customer shortly after the session. To do this means writing electronic notes during the session. This may involve slowing the session down and the customer should be made aware that this will be the case. If you don’t think that the notes can be finished with an hour of extra input or you don’t think you want to slow the session down to make the notes then then consider other options.

  • Write a paper / specification/ recommendations to present back to the customer based on the day of consultancy. This would normally be at an extra charge and you would need to make enough notes to achieve this during the session. The consultant needs to make it clear to customers that if they are asking for too much follow up that they will need to book consultancy time to do that. This sets expectation and makes sure there is enough time to complete it (without distractions).

  • Write a brief summary of what has happened during the session (on site or off site) – this would be in a bullet style list with a brief note against each item. It may be a supplement to an agenda that was supplied. This should take no more than 1 hour to complete.

  • Allow the customer to make notes during the session, the consultant would indicate when they wish actions or salient points to be noted and would check the notes after the session, if required. This suits sessions where the consultant needs to do a lot of talking and presenting and the customer wishes to get the most from the consultant. It is unfair to ask the consultant to impart their wisdom for a full consultancy day and then ask them to write detailed notes on everything they have said without aiding that process by either allowing the consultant to stop to make notes or by the customer offering to make the notes.
  • Leave hand written notes or diagrams (get them to photocopy) to allow the customer to be able to continue the work you started during the consultancy.

  • Provision of an XPC of build work we have created with a brief explanation of what it contains and what subsequent work is required

  • Provision of an XPC of build work with full documentation (the time taken to write the documentation should be chargeable and should be able to be complete this during the booked session/s)

It is important to have a record of what has been achieved and what actions have been agreed.
The most important thing is for Tribal to be consistent whilst giving the customers some options. It is important NOT to overload anyone involved in the consultancy session and make sure the expectations are realistic. It is important that notes can be provided in a short time frame after the session so this can only be achieved if realistic goals are set. A customer never wants late notes or no notes because the expectations were unrealistic.

So in summary:

  • Agree expectations at the start of a session (or prior to the session)
  • Meet the customer’s expectations within the chargeable consultancy timeframe (with an acceptable amount of follow up)
  • Provide the notes within an acceptable timeframe after the consultancy (2 working days) or to the agreed timeframe

If you can’t meet expectation:

  • agree extra time
  • reduce expectation
  • agree on revisions

December 2013 (Tribal)