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Hot Topics
e-KSF Future Release Plans
"e-KSF is an evolving tool. We decided early on to use a prototyping approach to system development, which gives us a greater opportunity to respond to changing service and user needs. We listen to your feedback, whether you send that via email, tell us face to face, or pass it to your KSF lead to feed back through the KSF networks. We then talk to the UK KSFG about priorities for development – we have a limited about of items we can develop, of course, so we need to decide with them what to do first - and roughly twice a year, we launch a major update to e-KSF.
Version 5.1 included major enhancements to the post outline creation and review management side of the system - thank you for your positive feedback about those changes.
Our priorities since 5.1 have been to develop the links between e-KSF and other national HR systems - ESR in England and Wales and SWISS in Scotland. We've also been working on a large number of behind-the-scenes and minor improvements to the speed and ease of use of e-KSF.
The ESR and SWISS work means that we have to move our plans for the next major release back into 2007. We'll have more details on the exact release date, nearer the time. The good news is that we'll be able to increase the amount of new features we can pack into the next release, so we're going to "jump" over 5.2 and go straight to version 6.0 as our next release.
The main development in version 6.0 from a user point of view is that ability for one person to have multiple post outlines - with multiple organisations and reviewers too, if necessary. This allows e-KSF to deal with the small but important number of staff who have two or more part-time jobs.
We'll also be launching a 'My Alerts' function. This will allow e-KSF users to see at a glance their "KSF to do" list, based on existing e-KSF data (for example, planned review dates). E-KSF administrators will also be able to tailor emails to their staff.
We have over 80 significant enhancements to e-KSF planned for version 6.0 - we'll make sure you know about the changes in advance of the actual launch date, so you can decide whether you'd want to take advantage of the change to change any of your existing activities, or include these new features in future e-KSF training.
Please do keep your ideas coming! We really need your feedback on problems, frustrations and ideas for e-KSF, as you're the person who knows best what you need the system to do to be an effective tool to support staff development. Let us know by clicking the 'support' button on e-KSF, or by feeding ideas back to your SHA KSF lead."
Kubair Shirazee (Technical Project Manager UK) |
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