Portico Functionality for Programme Approval and Prospectus Copy Calls

Background   

The aim is to use Portico as the ‘single source of truth’ to capture programme information at the point of programme approval or amendment, and for outputs like the prospectuses and public facing websites removing the duplication of information.  Updating programme information once and repurposing the information will save staff time, provide students with consistent information, and help UCL adhere to the requirements of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). 

Programme Summaries – Prospectus Copy Call live in Portico! 

Portico is now being used to maintain and edit information for the PG prospectus for 2022-23 entry.  Data has been migrated from ReportLab into Portico and the new workflows to edit the data went live in July.  Communications and Marketing (CAM) are managing the training and rollout.  They have setup this site with support materials.  New programme pages have been designed and will be available to preview before the end of August. 

Testing is underway on the processes to propose, amend or withdraw programmes in Portico as well.  Testing on the amend process has raised a few issues which need to be addressed which will delay launch into the start of term.  Once launched all programme amendment processes will be managed in the same part of Portico. The student lifecycle team will access approved changes all on the same workflow. Once the changes are actioned these will be visible to departments, hopefully ensuring the process is more transparent.  

Academic Services is aware that some information in the programme summaries that is not in the prospectus needs to be updated and reviewed as there is a gap between the initial data collection process that took place for 2018/19 entry and the entry cohorts being considered by the new process.  We will aim to input the known changes, but some fields will also require review by departments and faculties before the information can be shared with prospective and current students.  As soon as a launch date is known for the approval processes, we will be in touch regarding the plan to update and review the remaining information on the programme summaries. 

Next steps 

Please engage with the copy call review and editing as instructed by CAM. Please address any queries on the information being displayed to CAM in the first instance.  We will follow up with more specific details once we know more about the outcomes of the remainder of the User Acceptance Testing. This will include a plan for training on using the system and validating the data that has not previously been maintained through ReportLab or Portico. 

Contact email for further information:  academicmodelproject@ucl.ac.uk