Harvard’s cloud-based Connections internal directory, managed by the Identity & Access Management (IAM) program, is the easiest, most up-to-date way to find contact information for anyone in the Harvard Community — but sometimes it’s important to have the phone book as, well, an actual book. The Harvard Law School is no stranger to this need — it produces an annual printed “facebook” of faculty and staff to be used as a quick-reference internal guide — and when Connections went live earlier this year, HLS contacted IAM about using the always-up-to-date information in Connections to drive their own internal print directory.
“Once the Law School identified this as a need, we could see that it was a feature that would also be useful to users across Harvard,” said Greg Freiter, IAM software development manager. “Many users rely on Connections as an on-demand directory that’s always available in their browser, but having the ability to create clean, easy-to-read printouts of directory information is also important when it comes to creating quick-reference resources for new employees and similar groups.”
In previous years the Law School had manually pasted records from Connections’ predecessor into a print-ready document, a cumbersome and time-consuming process. To make the new feature as simple to use as possible, the team agreed on implementing a printer-friendly layout that's automatically invoked when the user selects “Print” in his or her browser, ensuring that directory entries flow cleanly across page breaks and stripping away the Connections website’s search interface and menu options. Additionally, the printer-friendly layout adds page numbers, as well as headers and footers reminding the user that Harvard directory data is for internal use only. While the printer-friendly feature was added to meet HLS’s needs, it’s available to anyone with access to Connections — simply choose “Print” from any search results screen at connections.harvard.edu. “We’re now able to print our staff directory in just a few minutes — a process that used to take many hours across several days,” says Keith McCluskey, Senior Director of Online Strategy at Harvard Law School’s Office of Communications. “We’re very, very happy with the result.”
To learn more about how other projects from the Identity & Access Management program at Harvard are making computing tasks simpler, easier, and more secure, please visit the IAM website at iam.harvard.edu.
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