November 8, 2007
Online directory: It’s your job to keep entry up to date
Hey, when’s the last time you checked your information in the UW online campus directory?
Is the information in your entry correct and up to date? Does it reflect that last promotion, transfer or appointment? You can correct it yourself, you know.
The online directory got its start in 1992, as part of the text-based campuswide information system UWIN, the precursor to the current UWIN Web navigation page, said Ian Taylor, manager of the Security Middleware unit of Computing & Communications.
C&C oversees the online directory function but does not set administrative policy for its use, Taylor said. Employees are free to edit their information or remove themselves entirely, if they wish, for reasons of their own. And many do take that option.
Still, there’s an awareness at C&C that some entries are not as current or correct as they could be. “We are in the business of information, and it grieves us deeply when someone is not in the directory for no good reason,” Taylor said. The concern, he said, is when people are not listed due to “omission rather than commission.”
He added, “And it’s not just whether they’re present in the directory but whether the information is accurate. And since it’s a free-form entry, errors can easily creep in.”
Eccentricities creep in, too, it seems. A few employees have added nicknames or odd titles to their online directory information, using the public editing process for a bit of private humor. The trouble is, rather like with a silly telephone message, such jokes don’t stay funny for very long — especially when people look to the directory for reliable, accurate information, not comedy.
Employees get into the UW campus online directory in one of two ways after being hired by the UW or an affiliate agency, Taylor explained. Either their departmental payroll coordinator enters them or they do it themselves, through the Employee Self Service portal of www.myuw.com.
In decades past, payroll coordinators did all of this clerical work on behalf of both new employees and those whose position or title had changed. But with the advent of the MyUW page and the convenience of the online Employee Self Service function, more employees have been entering the information for themselves.
That’s good, but it has also left a sort of gap. Information for some staff is not being updated or corrected, perhaps because people don’t know whose job it is to do so.
“Anecdotally, we know that people neglect to get entered,” Taylor said. “It’s an opt-in system, there’s no default entry in the directory. If the payroll coordinator does not make the entry and the employee does not make it through ESS — they are not in the directory.”
According to C&C, there are 39,404 employees at the UW; 27,617 (about 71 percent) of them are listed in the online directory and 11,787 (about 29 percent) are not.
The online directory was revised recently to make it more efficient, and it now responds more flexibly to name searches. Taylor said that while updates now take overnight to become effective, there is a plan to make them effective in real time, right as employees make changes online. “But in our business there are always future prospects for improvement,” he said. “They depend on priorities and resources.”
Way back when, the UW printed what amounted to its own telephone book every other year. The Campus Directory listed all faculty and staff, their addresses and affiliations and even, years ago, their home phone numbers.
Times, of course, have changed. A hard-copy directory is still created every other year, but since 2004 it no longer contains individual faculty and staff listings. Copies of this directory cost $7.50 each and you can order one at www.pubserv.washington.edu. So far, only 1,772 copies of the 2007 printed directory have been sold. The 2008 edition will be out in February.
But as for the online directory, Taylor hopes the message is clear: “We’d certainly like to encourage people to check their directory entry and update it through Employee Self-Service at MyUW.” And if you have any problems, you can e-mail help@cac.washington.edu for assistance.
