NextGen enabling process automation

17 October 2024

Since 2008, University Office has been working collaboratively with Murdoch University while it has delivered 'world-class' research. University Office has provided timely support and innovative solutions, helping Murdoch to implement improved research management processes. University Office have established a trusted relationship through consistently delivering excellent support outcomes.

Over this time, University Office has helped Murdoch to successfully implement IRMA's Framework, Contract and Grants, Publications, Animal Ethics, Human Ethics, HDR, ERA, Workflow, Researcher Profile, and Reporting modules, in combination with additional components including Competencies and Snapshots.

Murdoch has participated and benefitted from collaboration with universities across Australia that are involved in the IRMA user group. Contributions towards enhancements that deliver value to all user group participants are reciprocated through freely available enhancements made available to Murdoch. Improvements made to IRMA by University Office are critical to this partnership continuing to deliver value and University Office provide innovative enhancements every year that can be implemented easily through a mature build and change management process.

Throughout 2024, University Office have provided additional support and consultancy services to assist Murdoch University as it implements enhanced IRMA NextGen functionality that will provide Murdoch with many new opportunities to increase levels of workflow automation, streamlining research management processes for researchers, HDR candidates, supervisors, committee members, research support staff, executives, and other research stakeholders internal and external to Murdoch.

If you would like information relating to our Integrated Research Management Application (IRMA), please email sales@universityoffice.com.au.

Trusted Partner Implements NextGen

11 September 2024

Since 2009, University Office has been a trusted partner of Southern Cross University which has been achieving world-class results in research, rankings, and student satisfaction. University Office has consistently delivered high-quality support and innovative solutions that align with the University's goals. This longstanding relationship is evidence of University Office's ongoing commitment to excellence.

In 2024, University Office played a critical role in supporting the implementation of newly available IRMA NextGen HDR coversheet functionality, a project critical to streamlining higher degree research processes and significantly enhancing administrative efficiency. This has included rapid prototyping of customisation and enhancement requests to meet University specific requirements.

University Office have simultaneously supported a complex deployment of IRMA’s Animal Ethics functionality in 2024, including NextGen coversheets and animal usage reporting, helping to address complex compliance requirements with minimal need for customisation.

University Office's understanding of higher education research management requirements and proactive approach are key enablers of these initiatives. The partnership continues to deliver value through effective collaboration with a healthy roadmap of opportunities to realise in the years to come.

If you would like information relating to our Integrated Research Management Application (IRMA), please email sales@universityoffice.com.au.

IRMA Unified Meetings

1 February 2024

University Office is please to announce the release of Unified Meetings in our Integrated Research Management Application (IRMA), introducing the ability for committees to consider any record type at a meeting, including HDR students, Grants, Contracts, Human Ethics, Animal Ethics, Publications, Competencies and Projects. There is also the facility for records from an external system to be displayed in IRMA using an API, and have these records considered in the meeting.

IRMA already provides highly customisable committees and meetings in the Human and Animal Ethics modules. This functionality provides the ability to define as many committees as required, define meetings for these committees to consider ethics applications, and then manage the entire meeting process within IRMA. The existing functionality has a committee and meeting structure for each module, considering applications from either Human or Animal ethics, reflecting the requirements of Animal Ethics (AEC) and Human Research Ethics Committees (HREC).

Meetings in IRMA provide a record of all items considered at a meeting including:

   
• Meeting metadata
   
• Attendance
   
• Agendas
   
• Minutes
   
• Outcomes for each record
   
• Reviews of records

These provide a complete record of the activities of committees, ensuring universities can meet their record keeping requirements.

The new functionality takes this same flexible structure and introduces cross-modular meetings, meaning records of any module can be considered by one committee. Each committee can be configured to allow one or more record types, for example an AEC might just be permitted to consider Animal Ethics applications, while a faculty research committee may be able to consider records from any module. Unified meetings has introduced a number of additional features including the ability to define for each committee:

   
• The record types to be considered
   
• What committee feedback is required for each type
   
• What reviewer feedback is required for each record type, with no limitation on the number of reviewers for each record

Unified meetings is available in the IRMA NextGen interface and leverages the many benefits this provides, including answer comparison tools and annotations against records to facilitate committee discussion outside the meeting.

If you would like information relating to our Integrated Research Management Application (IRMA), please email sales@universityoffice.com.au.

University Office extends

HDR functionality

1 November 2023

University Office is pleased to announce the extension of functionality available in the Higher Degree by Research (HDR) module in IRMA. This new development in the HDR module provides customers with the means to design forms to capture HDR information with complex logic, and to then obtain approvals and committee consent.

The functionality added includes:

   
• Questionnaires - logic driven questionnaires designed by each client. The logic may be simple branches based on a single answer or complex logic based on the answers to multiple previous questions. This ensures a student or researcher answers only those questions relevant to their application. As many questionnaires as required may be designed and linked to form templates, supporting bespoke questionnaires for each form template
   
• Committees and meetings - HDR committees can now be created in IRMA and linked to meetings. The meeting structure is then used to record the agenda and minutes for each form considered at the meeting and for general items discussed
   
• Form approvals - Each form template can now be configured to require approvals, these may be requested of researchers involved in the project and also from roles defined by the University in IRMA, for example deans or heads of school for the HDR student

This work extends the utility of the HDR modules and is already available in other modules including the ethics and grants modules.

If you would like information relating to our Integrated Research Management Application (IRMA), please email sales@universityoffice.com.au.

IRMA to Record ROR IDs

7th September 2023

University Office is pleased to announce our first steps integrating Research Organisation Registry (ROR) identifiers into IRMA, recording the organisation IDs against data within the application.

Customers are now able to record ROR IDs in IRMA against:

   
• Organisations, to record their ID in the ROR, and parent ID(s) where appropriate
   
• Internal and external users, to record their affiliations with organisations
   
• Publications, to indicate associations with organisations in addition to the authors associations

We have also updated our ORCID integration to ingest ROR IDs from a researcher’s ORCID profile when validating their ORCID ID.

University Office looks forward to working with customers to identify further opportunities using ROR IDs to improve data accuracy and improve the flow of organisation data between systems within the University.

If you would like information relating to our Integrated Research Management Application (IRMA), please email sales@universityoffice.com.au.

Coversheets Available for IRMA

Research Outputs Module

7 July 2023

University Office is pleased to announce coversheets are now available for the Research Outputs (RO) module.

These configurable forms allow universities to create templates to capture research outputs data, including to allow researchers to provide additional information for existing publications, such as associated research activity, ANZSRC codes, impact evidence for research impact, or a print version of the output.

IRMA coversheets in ROs provide the ability for researchers to create and amend data in the publications module while adding a low-effort administrative layer between a request to create or change a record and the actual updating of that record. The level of approvals and administrative oversight for each coversheet type can be individually configured, so a form to report linked funding might automatically update the publication record on submission of the coversheet, while a coversheet to report a new Non-Traditional Research Output (NTRO) might involve several layers of approvals or certifications and a check by an administrator.

ROs coversheets provide an alternative mechanism for the capture of RO data, allowing the bulk of the research outputs collection to be collected automatically using publications harvesting, while providing a channel for research outputs that are not available through the indexing services to be reported by researchers. This is of particular value in NTROs where establishing the research value of an output or portfolio of outputs can be complex and require significant input from the researchers. Coversheets allow researchers to report their NTRO’s, articulate the research content, establish a portfolio of works, provide additional documentation and provide certifications from the researchers themselves and expert peers if necessary to asses the research output. Once a coversheet has created a research output in the RO module, the extensive functionality in that module can be used to verify the publication’s compliance with internal and external guidelines using a standard list for the publication type, obtain additional expert assessments of the research output, link the publication to other research activity in IRMA and send notifications to interested parties.

If you would like information relating to our Integrated Research Management Application (IRMA), please email sales@universityoffice.com.au.

University Office Releases

Questionnaire Annotations

23 May 2023

University Office has introduced a new feature to the IRMA Questionnaire, user friendly annotation functionality. This new feature enables reviewers to comment on questionnaires, and to allow researchers and administrators to respond to these comments. Using a familiar interface similar to widely used messaging apps, annotations allow multiple users to review and comment on questionnaire answers at the same time. This will benefit researchers in easily seeking peer or administrator review of applications prior to submission, administrators will benefit from higher quality submissions, and committee members can collaborate to provide consolidated feedback on an application.

The IRMA questionnaire is key part of IRMA forms in the Animal Ethics, Human Ethics and Grants modules, and will be available soon in the HDR module. Features of the questionnaire include:

   
• Questionnaire designer with configurable logic
   
• Text comparison tool that allows for easy comparison of answers to questions
   
• Document linking to provide supporting documentation to question answers
   
• Progress bar to provide aggregate questions in logical sections and to indicate progress

The annotation functionality builds on the IRMA questionnaire to facilitate collaboration and review by all involved parties.

If you would like information relating to our Integrated Research Management Application (IRMA), please email sales@universityoffice.com.au.

University Office Helps

Increase Researcher Happiness

2 December 2022

The rise of home working during the pandemic has bought a number of changes to the way we work. One negative impact from these changes is the rise of workplace communications outside business hours. University management are recognising that they have a part to play in reducing the volume of out of hours communications for the wellbeing of their employees. To assist them in this change of culture, University Office has introduced functionality that prevents automated emails being sent during weekends.

IRMA regularly sends emails to researchers reminding them of upcoming responsibilities, or notifying them an approval is required from them. The volume and wording of these emails are configured by customers. A simple configuration change now means automated emails to researchers will be held back until Monday morning.

If you require further information relating to the IRMA research management system please email sales@universityoffice.com.au.