Future heidi development

Heidi 4 development

Since the release of heidi3 in the autumn of 2009, development has focused on the fourth major version of heidi (heidi 4), scheduled for release during the first quarter of 2011. heidi 4 intends to deliver significant usability improvements largely derived through a re-design and re-write of the system interface, based on feedback received from heidi users;

• Enhancements to the user interface:  Development is currently being undertaken to enhance the usability of heidi by improving the user interface.  A number of focus groups have been held to capture views and ideas with respect to making heidi easier, quicker and ultimately more intuitive to use. We have also gathered comments from other heidi users, from heidi training seminars and from the heidi User Group. This development will primarily concentrate on improving existing functionality.

New usability features will include:

• Reducing the number of user actions necessary to undertake common operations
• Provide a useful, intuitive and customisable home page
• Provide better guidance for new or occasional users
• Reduce page content to avoid clutter
• Provide the facility to create a basic report in a single report design window
• Provide better use of screen space by providing extra windows that can be shown or hidden with ease
• Return the user to the area of a window from which they initiated an operation and thereby significantly reducing the amount of scrolling and navigation required
• Better overall system aesthetics.

• Re-write heidi using the latest appropriate web application development technologies:  The usability improvements are being incorporated as part of a major re -write of heidi using many of the latest web development technologies. These technologies make it possible to provide the usability improvements that have been requested by heidi users and will also provide a firm foundation for more rapidly and effectively improving heidi during future development cycles.

For the benefit of those with a technical bias, heidi 4 is being written using .NET technologies with C# as the principle programming language. Heidi 4 will also incorporate features provided by technologies such as Ajax and jQuery which are proving to be the key to a much improved and up to date user interface. Additional benefits from the heidi re-write will include better performance and greater stability derived through improved diagnostics.

• Data architecture review:  The structure of the HESA data within heidi will be reviewed and re-developed with the intention to increase the number of fields within each dataset that can be analysed against each other. This will provide a much greater level of flexibility in cross-tabulation for users and greater scope for more sophisticated benchmarking.

• New functionality to support the inclusion of Estates Management Statistics (EMS) analysis within heidi:  Development will be undertaken to include new functionality in heidi 4 to support the inclusion of EMS data within heidi.  This will include;

• Provide five years of historical EMS data and ratios, accessible through the heidi data explorer
• Provide two new chart types - a scattergram to display the correlation between two columns of data and a Distribution chart that will display median values for a peer group of institutions against results for an individual institution
• Provide two new aggregate row types - ‘Difference between highlighted institution and median' and ‘Number of results'
• Provide a new derived column type of ‘Percentage change' to simplify calculating percentage changes between two columns of data.

Please note that use of this functionality will not be limited to analysis of EMS data.

• Additional data:  The following new data will be included in heidi during this development cycle;

• Addition of three years of historical data for each equality dataset in heidi (2003/04 to 2005/06).
• Student standard registration population change bridging data
• Student FPE for all years by Highest Qualification on entry
• Student FTE by level, cost centre and domicile
• Key Financial Indicators - numerators and denominators
• Earlier release of Performance Indicators - to coincide with official release dates.

Previous heidi development

heidi 3.1 released

heidi 3.1 was released on Friday 30 October 2009.  This new release introduces the following new features:

• Large reports - increase to the number of columns that can be downloaded to Excel and XML from 24 to 80
• Increase in number of visible columns in reports viewable within the browser from 24 to 36
• HE Institution short names - ability to change the way that HE institution names are displayed in reports and charts
• Data explorer enhancement - hover over facility to view unabbreviated text
• Finance data adjusting years for 2006/07 and 2007/08

More information about the new functionality

For information about the previous release of heidi 3 in September 2009 please see heidi 3 new functionality

heidi 3.0 released

During the 2009 annual development cycle the project team will be focusing on providing the following new features in heidi. These features will be released in heidi 3.0 during September 2009:

• Geo-demographic mapping facility: Incorporating geo-demographic mapping into heidi. The emphasis within the heidi3 cycle will be to undertake extensive analysis and design and there by establish optimum and durable solutions that can be incorporated and expanded in future development cycles.

• heidi data explorer configuration and customisation enhancements:
  • Provide the facility to choose whether year or data category appears first within the data explorer, to assist in the location of data.
  • Provide an additional categorisation of data within the data explorer to assist the user in locating data (i.e. all student data may appear beneath a data category called ‘Student data').
  • Provide a facility to conduct a key word search through the explorer based on the fields/field categories
  • When selecting a column, provide a facility to select additional column(s) for all other available data years
  • Display the data explorer navigation state based on the selection of one of the existing report columns
  • Provide a facility to describe data in full as alternative to abbreviated descriptions
  • Investigate enhanced re-sequencing of columns to require a single user action (i.e. drag and drop)

• General report design enhancements
  • Enable a report to be saved to the database without navigating away from the current page by. introducing a ‘Save' only facility in addition to ‘Save and close'
  • Increase the number of report columns allowed when a report is intended for download only (not viewable in a browser)

• Group specification enhancements:
  • Enable a user to select a group to act as the default group for all new reports
  • Enable a user to define the sequence of group members, for example a user may wish for a specific HE institution to appear first

• HE Institution short names: Provide users with a mechanism of including HE institution short names in reports and charts.

• Investigate retaining page locations and focus between user actions: Subsequent to a user undertaking a specific action in heidi, return the user to the location of the page on which they were working and thus avoid excessive scrolling. This will be subject to constraints imposed by existing technologies.

• Local administrator and general user enhancements:
  • Provide the facility for heidi local administrators to change roles without having to log out of heidi
  • Allow heidi local administrators to be assigned to all their HE institution's roles
  • Provide the facility whereby users are notified by Email of any heidi amendments and data releases etc. Providing them with the option of opting in and out the service via user preferences.

• Provide the facility to store user preferences between user sessions:
  • Store the number of items shown in each manage list
  • Store whether users wish to be notified of heidi news via Email
  • Others to be established...

• Provide and maintain a heidi change log: Provide and maintain a change log detailing all data and system updates and provide a link to this document.

• Provide a time-out warning: Provide a warning that heidi is about to time out, if existing technologies facilitate this.

• Provide usage statistics: Provide the facility for heidi local administrators to gain access to a summary of heidi usage statistics for their HE institution both within the system and via Email (subject to a selected user preference).

• Facilitate nested rows: Undertake detailed analysis of how nested rows could be provided in heidi reports.

• The expansion of existing HESA datasets: Following user feedback, the following data will be added to heidi (in addition to the regular annual updates to datasets);
  • Student FTE by HE institution, level of study, and subject of module
  • Additional age group including mature age groups for student data
  • Staff data by academic employment function, cost centre and HE institution
  • Academic staff (excluding atypical) FTE by HE institution, cost centre, academic employment function , terms of employment and source of basic salary
  • Students Entering Further study by JACS Principal Subject
  • Finance Statistics Return data - enable this data to be rolled between years

• Provision of additional HESA data as part of the project with ECU: The addition of new data to existing datasets (to be specified)
  
  

heidi 2 released

During the 2008 annual development cycle the project team will be focusing on providing the following new features in heidi. These features will be released in heidi 2.0 during August 2008:

• Increasing the number of visible report columns to an anticipated maximum of 24: This will provide the capability to produce larger and more sophisticated reports and builds on the staged increase that will commence with heidi1.2 where it is intended to increase the number of columns from 8 to 12

• The introduction of aggregate report columns: This facility will enable 2 or more compatible data columns to be aggregated within a new column and will also enable ratios and percentages to be generated based on the aggregate columns.

• The introduction of report column nesting: This facility will enable automatic grouping of columns that share common elements of their definition. The shared definition elements will not be repeated across these columns resulting in tidier and more readable presentation of tabular data more in line with the hesa publications.

• Improved organisation and management of lists: This will be achieved by providing a folders structure and a search facility and will make it quicker and easily to locate and view reports and groups.

• Restructuring of reports and charts by introducing the principle of 'Report Views': This concept is based on the notion that data displayed in tabular form and the range of chart types will be considered and treated as just alternative views of the heidi data. This will enable charts to be both created and accessed more efficiently as all the report views will be displayed as links in the report lists.

• Enhanced user and role permissions management: New facilities will be included in heidi to enable non admin users to grant their colleagues permissions to view and manage their reports and to enable permissions to be granted to report groups. This will make the sharing of data easier to achieve.

• The incorporation of Taylor Squares statistical analysis techniques: These techniques were developed at the University of Bath and provide simple yet powerful graphical means of presenting HE data.

• The incorporation of Universities UK Patterns data representations: The functionality to recreate similar charts to those identified in Section B of the UK Patterns Report (Patterns of HE institutional diversity).

• The expansion of existing HESA datasets: Following user feedback, the following data will be added to heidi (in addition to the regular annual updates to datasets);

• Student staff ratios by cost centre & HE institution
• Student FTE by domicile, fee status and fundability code
• Student FTE by mode, domicile and level
• Staff FTE by academic employment function
• FE student qualification obtained data
• Improvements to JACS Principal subject and cost centres

• Performance Improvements: In addition to the new features that will be incorporated into heidi, considerable effort is also being made to ensure that heidi responds faster to user requests and/or that no performance denigration becomes apparent as the number of heidi users increases significantly

heidi v1.2 released

heidi v1.2 is now available. This new release offers enhanced functionality to users, including the ability to adjust the year of data displayed within a report forward or backwards and the re-introduction of the rolling report facility.

In addition there has been an increase to the number of columns that can be visible within a heidi report, from 8 to 12 columns.

Free public access for a limited amount of data, enabling universal use of a range of standard reports, is still available. Online registration as a public user is available from https://heidi.hesa.ac.uk/ via the 'register here' link.

heidi v1.1 released

heidi v1.1 was released on 8 August 2007. heidi v1.1 included all the data from heidi v1.0, including: the main HESA datasets (student, DLHE, staff and finance); UCAS - applications and accepted applicants; performance indicators; estates management statistics; Key Financial Indicators; and Funders Forum Metrics (aka Sustainability Metrics).

On top of all this, heidi v1.1 offered enhanced functionality to users and provides additional data from UCAS, GTTR and NMAS data 2005/06, National Student Survey Data 2004/05 - 2005/06, Higher Education Management Statistics 2001/02 to 2004/05 and results from the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise

heidi v1.1 also provided free public access for a limited amount of data, enabling universal use of a range of standard reports. Online registration as a public user is available from https://heidi.hesa.ac.uk/ via the 'register here' link.

heidi 1.0 Closure Report

heidi 1.0 was released on 16 April 2007. The heidi 1.0 Project Closure Report is available here .