IT Project Dashboard
This page is updated at the end of the Fall and Winter semesters. Latest update: May 2024
At a glance: IT Projects on the go
View current IT projects by community. Learn more about IT project management, governance, regulations, and guidelines.
| AUDIENCE | PROJECT PHASE | ||
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| Audience | Preliminary Analysis-Solution Architecture | Design/Construct/implement | Delivery complete as of May 2024 |
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| Research |
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| Academic |
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| Staff (Admin) |
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| All McGill |
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*Although an IT project may benefit multiple communities, each listed here has been classified according to the population that it will predominantly benefit.
View details of current projects by community
IT Projects by community
Student
IT projects primarily benefiting the Student community
Status notes use the following timeframes:
- Fall: September-December
- Winter: January-April
- Summer: May-August
Estimated deliveries are for the stated phase only.
| Project name | Project Overview | Phase / Status |
|---|---|---|
| Student Career Services Management Software | This project aims to provide a University-wide career services management solution to support career counselling, assistance for student job searches, event management, internship, co-op management, and reporting and analytics. The current solution has inadequate integrations, limited mobile and bilingual support, and is missing many capabilities that would enable automation and more efficient process workflow and tracking. The new solution will address these deficiencies and enable integrations with other higher education institutions and the federal government. | Design-Construct-Implement, estimated delivery: Summer 2024 |
| Convocation Management System | McGill developed the current solution used to manage student convocation in 1988 on an antiquated technology stack, which is difficult to maintain due to a lack of McGill and market technical expertise. This project will provide a modern and adaptable solution to support the convocation processes, including the production of all degrees, the management of the convocation ceremony artifacts, graduating student reports, and diploma management. | Design-Construct-Implement, estimated delivery: Fall 2024 |
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eCalendar Replacement (Curriculum and Course Catalog) |
This project will replace the current solution for managing the publication of programs, courses, and other important information for the academic year. The current solution is built on outdated technologies and has high end-user dissatisfaction from staff and students. The project will begin by gathering feedback on current experiences from students and advisors by conducting a solution market survey and a solution benchmarking exercise to prepare for a Notice for Request for Information to the market. |
Design-Construct-Implement, estimated delivery:
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| Student Peer-to-Peer Mentoring System | There are thousands of coordinators, mentors, and mentees across many Peer-to-Peer Student Mentorship programs at McGill. This project aims to implement a comprehensive, integrated, and user-friendly solution for automating, assigning, managing, recording, and reporting these relationships. | Design-Construct-Implement, estimated delivery: May 2024 |
| Student Admission Systems | McGill Enrolment Services, in collaboration with Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (GPS), is replacing all existing solutions with one central system (Slate) that will efficiently support all variations of the graduate and undergraduate credit program admission process. |
Design-Construct-Implement:
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Student Appointment Management |
This project aims to provide students with a simple, easy, timely, reliable, convenient, and intuitive platform to manage their appointment needs. This includes appointment scheduling, queue management, appointment record management, appointment service provision, and post-service experience. There will be two releases:
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Design-Construct-Implement:
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Student Digital Credentials |
Enrolment Services processes student requests (both from current students and alumni) for official documents for third parties (e.g., government officials or other academic institutions). The current process is highly manual and paper-driven, with students being redirected to different systems to make a request. This increases the complexity of the end-to-end process and results in a less-than-optimal student experience. This project will allow McGill to move to a more environmentally friendly, integrated, and secure digital platform where students can receive and share documents with third parties to verify digital credentials. This project will be delivered in two phases:
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Preliminary Analysis-Solution Architecture:
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| Student Recruitment Management | This project aims to provide more streamlined, personalized communications and targeted outreach to prospective students. It offers McGill recruiters additional capabilities for event management, registration, campus tours, and managing all prospect and applicant interactions. It also provides new reporting insight on recruiting prospective students, applicants, and registered students. |
Design-Construct-Implement: Onboarding of additional units (Music, School of Continuing Studies, Law, Medicine) to Slate: Estimated delivery, Summer 2024 |
Research
IT projects primarily benefiting the Research community
Status notes use the following timeframes:
- Fall: September-December
- Winter: January-April
- Summer: May-August
Estimated deliveries are for the stated phase only.
| Project name | Project Overview | Phase / Status |
|---|---|---|
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Hazardous Waste Management Solution |
The Hazardous Waste Management office runs software built by central IT, which manages work orders, billing, and reporting. This application’s most critical use is to produce a report to comply with the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Regulations (TDGR). The current application is end of life; it was built using Visual FoxPro (VFP), which Microsoft stopped supporting in 2015.
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Design-Construct-Implement, estimated delivery: Winter 2024 |
| Core Facilities Project | McGill University is looking for an efficient software solution to support Scientific Platforms in managing and billing their services and instrument bookings/trainings. The software tool should streamline administrative processes (such as booking, training, scheduling maintenance and repairs, and billing), thereby returning valuable time back to scientists and researchers. In addition, the timely and accurate reporting on usage, finances, and assets to the University leadership and to various governing bodies is expected to be greatly facilitated. | Preliminary Analysis-Solution Architecture, estimated delivery: Fall 2025 |
Academic
IT projects primarily benefiting the Academic community
Status notes use the following timeframes:
- Fall: September-December
- Winter: January-April
- Summer: May-August
Estimated deliveries are for the stated phase only.
| Project name | Project Overview | Phase / Status |
|---|---|---|
| Thesis Examination Management |
This project enables students to upload their initial thesis and forms electronically, securely, and consistently. The initial thesis is then accessible to the thesis unit, examiners (external and internal), and the Pro-Dean. This results in a more streamlined and cost-efficient process (from submission through grading, oral defence, final thesis and publication to Library), with centralized access to and traceability of documents. In December 2023, we completed Release 4, containing the uploading and approval of the final thesis, publication to the Library, and decommissioning of Minerva eThesis. The project has recently been extended to include a fifth release, with myThesis in French. |
Design-Construct-Implement:
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Staff
IT projects primarily benefiting the Staff community
Status notes use the following timeframes:
- Fall: September-December
- Winter: January-April
- Summer: May-August
Estimated deliveries are for the stated phase only.
| Project Name | Project Overview | Phase / Status |
|---|---|---|
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Facilities Campus and Security Incident Management System (IMS) |
Security Services presently uses a solution to manage incidents at the Security Operations Center. This solution was not designed for a campus safety operation and has limitations, specifically during major incidents. This project aims to implement a streamlined incident management solution that will document an incident from the initial alert to the final distribution of the reports with reduced processing time and effort. The project will deliver incremental functionality through four releases:
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Design-Construct-Implement, Delivery per releases starting Summer 2024 (June) up to Winter 2025 |
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Expense Management System |
A new travel and travel expense management solution is required as the existing tools in the Minerva system (Advances and Expense Reports) are cumbersome, highly manual, and principally paper-driven, with a substandard user experience. This project will explore the different solution options available on the market, make an acquisition, and deliver an expenditure management tool (expense management tool) that integrates with the tools (Online Booking Tool, Central Airfare Card, and Individual Travel Corporate Card) that are part of the travel management program at McGill. | Design-Construct-Implement, estimated delivery: Fall 2025 |
| Facilities Administration Management Information System (FAMIS) Asset Management Solution | The current Facilities Management solution, FAMIS, is built on obsolete technology. FMAS needs to move towards a modern Asset Management solution. The scope of Release 1 is to replace functionalities of the current solution used by FMAS: inventory management, work order management, self-service, and procurement processes. The scope of Release 2 will include enhanced reporting and analytics, time-tracking capabilities, document management, and utility management. |
Design-Construct-Implement, estimated delivery:
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| McGill Enterprise Integration Services |
This upgrade project addresses end-of-life concerns regarding McGill's installation of IBM's API Connect management platform. This platform supports application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable enterprise application integrations, which are key when off-the-shelf solutions (cloud or on-premise) continue to be privileged over custom-built solutions. |
Design-Construct-Implement, estimated delivery: Summer 2024 |
| Medicine BI (Business Intelligence) and Analytics |
This project aims to build a centralized source of integrated data that will provide an efficient, accurate, and secure platform for reporting and analyzing data about medical students and residents. This foundation will meet current needs and allow for rapid adaptation for future reporting requirements from accreditation governing bodies. |
Design-Construct-Implement estimated delivery: Summer 2024 |
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OpenShift upgrade (Application development and deployment platform) |
OpenShift is an open-source cloud development platform that enables developers to develop and deploy their applications on cloud infrastructure. McGill's current version of OpenShift requires an infrastructure upgrade and additional investment in the evolution of functionality, training, and onboarding of resources to grow the platform's usage. The platform enables self-service for developers to create, modify, and deploy applications on demand, thus enabling faster development and release life cycles. |
Design-Construct-Implement estimated delivery: Summer 2024 |
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BI for Procurement |
No dedicated Data Warehouse (Business intelligence) views exist to support Procurement Services' operational or analytical needs. This project will provide members of Procurement Services the ability to build reports and KPIs, give them visibility of the spending across the University and thus provide opportunities to consolidate spending across different units and negotiate volume discounts, be fully compliant with Act C-65.1 and its Regulations (Act Respecting Contracting by Public Bodies), support strategic planning and decision-making in the short, medium and long term, measure their performance, create process efficiencies, and offer a wider range of services to support their clients. |
Preliminary Analysis-Solution Architecture, estimated delivery: Fall 2024 |
| LMS to Student Information Systems | Holding Tank is a critical integration process for the School of Continuing Studies as it enables the automatic transfer of non-credit course data between the School of Continuing Studies' SIS, Destiny One, and myCourses LMS Service. This integration is at the end of life. This project will replace the Holding Tank data integration and the Banner Adapter data integration between our main Banner SIS system and our main LMS myCourses. | Preliminary Analysis-Solution Architecture, estimated delivery: Fall 2024 |
| IAM Phase 3 - Audit and Compliance | The main goal of the IAM Phase 3 – Audit and Compliance project is to define the governance around application account provisioning/deprovisioning and role-based access management. The project will address several critical business needs related to security, risk management, compliance, and operational efficiency. It will focus on defining the governance around access management and periodic review and validation of user identities, roles, permissions, and policies. | Preliminary Analysis-Solution Architecture, estimated delivery: Summer 2024 |
All McGill
IT projects primarily benefiting the entire McGill community
Status notes use the following timeframes:
- Fall: September-December
- Winter: January-April
- Summer: May-August
Estimated deliveries are for the stated phase only.
| Project Name | Project Overview | Phase / Status |
|---|---|---|
| Cybersecurity & Risk Initiative | This project will document the security and risk maturity for all McGill administration units and some research units using the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Cybersecurity Compliance. An external vendor will perform this assessment. | Design-Construct-Implement, estimated delivery: Summer 2024 |
| University Advancement (UA) Customer Relationship Management (CRM) (Alumni and Donor Relations) | University Advancement’s (UA) customer relationship management (CRM) is a critical solution that facilitates stakeholder communications, engagement, relationship management, fundraising, and stewardship. This solution is essential for fundraising and alumni engagement programs, as well as other charitable organizations. The current CRM is built with software nearing the end of its useful life. The project aims to implement a new CRM, improving stakeholder experience with dynamic features that allow UA to automate manual processes and increase productivity while maximizing fundraising and engagement potential. | Design-Construct-Implement, estimated delivery: Winter 2025 |
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Disaster Recovery Plan |
This project aims to move all resiliency currently in place in the Ferrier data center (presently our secondary data center) to a location that will provide redundancy, lower recovery time and recovery period objectives, and mitigate the risk of a potential environmental disaster. The project's scope will cover the primary data center, the wide-area network (WAN), and network connectivity. |
Design-Construct-Implement, estimated delivery: Fall 2024
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| Firewalls/VPN Evergreening | This evergreening initiative will replace the existing infrastructure with new firewall hardware that should last at least 6-7 years. At the same time, we will take advantage of newer technology built into new solutions to create new security rules based on the user's device and identity. This will give users better and more secure access to applications and systems. | Preliminary Analysis-Solution Architecture, estimated delivery: Fall 2024 |
| Retail Solution | This project will acquire and implement a new retail solution for the McGill Bookstore (Le James) and other McGill retailers, such as the Redbird Sport Shop, Shag Shop, ES Online Store, and Food & Dining Services. | Preliminary Analysis-Solution Architecture, estimated delivery: Winter 2025 |
| Hardware Asset Management | IT hardware asset management is the tracking, monitoring, and controlling of assets (e.g., laptops, monitors) through their lifecycles: acquisition, receiving, use & reuse, and, finally, end-of-life management. This project improves and expands on the existing IT hardware asset management process and regulation for all IT hardware assets purchased using McGill funding, including Research funds. The project leverages the existing functionality of ServiceNow; no new software is expected to be deployed. | Preliminary Analysis-Solution Architecture, estimated delivery: May 2024 |
| Network Information Security | The Information Security Project is an initiative to enhance the security and efficiency of McGill’s IT network and support the evolving needs of the University’s research, academic, and administrative community. This project implements industry standards for IT security to secure data on the network further. |
Project completed: Winter 2024 |
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Network Infrastructure Upgrade |
The Network Upgrade is a McGill-wide initiative to enhance the University's IT network by replacing its core technologies and hardware. The upgrade will improve service quality, security, performance, and reliability for the McGill community. | Project completed: Winter 2024 |
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Network Unified Communications |
This project aims to replace our aging telephone system with newer technologies that will seamlessly integrate and improve communication channels between members of the McGill community. It aims to enhance the student learning environment and increase workplace effectiveness by providing a new means of virtual collaboration and communication. | Design-Construct-Implement, estimated delivery: Fall 2024 |
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Banner 9 Functional Upgrade |
Banner is the enterprise database used by McGill University to store all student, employee, and financial data. The Banner 9 Functional Upgrade project aims to upgrade this ERP to the latest version, which uses an entirely new application development framework and technology. This upgrade will provide staff and students with a modern, improved end-user experience. |
Preliminary Analysis-Solution Architecture, estimated delivery: Summer 2024 |
| Service Desk Virtual Agent | This project aims to introduce an IT support chatbot (Virtual Agent) that can scale up capacity to meet the increased demand for IT support. |
Design-Construct-Implement, estimated delivery:
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For more information about the above dashboard or specific IT initiatives, please contact announce.ics [at] mcgill.ca (IT Communications).
Need help? Go to the IT Support site.
