Software Center Improves Software Delivery

This information was emailed on December 15, 2016, to members of [email protected].

On November 18, MiWorkspace debuted the new Software Center, an app store for MiWorkspace, on all Windows machines. The Software Center allows faculty and staff to browse a catalog of free and university-licensed software they may choose to install without requiring additional approval or administrative access. The experience is similar to the Managed Software Center on MiWorkspace Mac computers.

Based on the analysis of 8–12 months of data, the self-service method of software delivery was designed to improve the software request and approval process. Service ticket data showed that the service spent nearly 10,000 hours every month navigating the approval process—65 percent of that time was passively spent waiting for approval for free or university-licensed software titles.

By making these free and commonly requested software titles available in the Software Center on both Windows and Mac platforms, faculty and staff are able to have quicker access to tools they need, and simultaneously reducing unnecessary overhead. The app stores allow further standardization of the MiWorkspace environment while also enabling faculty and staff to customize to meet their needs.

Office 2016 for Windows was the first major software title available in November via the Software Center for many faculty and staff members. About 57 percent of units chose to make the newest version of Office available to their faculty and staff on November 18. Other units decided to wait until a more convenient time. As of December 10, 532 faculty and staff have used the Software Center to install Office.

We are looking forward to using service data to identify future improvements to MiWorkspace in the new year.