Over 11,000 requests for Nexus mailbox access changes are raised with IT Services by local IT teams each year. That’s 50 requests every day, each one representing a delay for a member of staff or student until the request is completed.
For many years the process required the requestor to complete a form with the mailbox and access changes desired. Details had to be entered correctly, but there was no easy way to spot errors or see existing access rights. IT Services staff verified online that the requestor was the mailbox owner or IT support staff (ITSS), and then manually copied the settings into IT registration for processing on Nexus. Delivery time depended on competing demands for the central IT Services Desk's time, which can be highly variable.
Opportunity for improvement
With a dependency on accurate copying and checking of existing data, plus delays at busy times, this process was an excellent candidate for exploring customer service automation ('the process of addressing customers’ requests with minimal human intervention to enhance the customer experience').
The goal of this work was to enable Nexus mailbox access changes to be faster and more reliable, while also reducing the workload on ITSS and IT Services.
Finding the simplest approach
Although our IT self-service system (OSM) can apply changes directly into Nexus, it doesn’t integrate with IT registration. This is a problem because IT registration holds information that needs to be checked, such as mailbox owners and existing access rights, and an audit log of all changes.
Our Service Desk and Identity and Access Management teams soon established that IT registration was a better starting point as:
- it is already used by ITSS to view and make other changes to mailboxes in their own units
- it already integrates with Nexus to change mailbox access rights
- it can easily update the audit log with any delegation changes.
Making it happen
It took around a month to build and test a fully automated solution. The new solution enables ITSS to view a list of secondary accounts associated with their department or college. They can select an account, view existing access rights, and either select rights to remove or specify new access rights for up to 5 delegates at a time. A confirmation screen provides visual feedback to check that the details have been entered correctly. This greatly reduces the likelihood of errors arising from a mistyped username.
Early wins
Feedback from ITSS has been overwhelming positive, noting that Nexus mailbox access changes are much easier now. The automated solution has been called a 'game changer' on several occasions.
Initial usage measures indicate that both goals (to reduce workload and increase speed and reliability) are being achieved. In the first 19 days since go-live on 11 September 2024:
- 107 different ITSS have used the solution to make 1,468 changes to Nexus mailbox access
- All changes appear to have completed within the target time of 2 hours
- There has been a 52% reduction in delegated access requests to the service desk compared to the 19 days before go-live
Working together on a shared solution is proving beneficial not only to the end users, but to everyone involved in the process.
