Time Allocation Survey¶
This page gives an overview of Time Allocation Survey, describing its current status, where and how it's developed and deployed, and who is responsible for maintaining it.
Service Description¶
The University undertakes an annual Time Allocation Survey (TAS) which involves asking University academic staff whose duties include Teaching and Research to estimate the time they spend on these and other activities. The purpose of the TAS is to attribute costs to these activities.
The results are then used (in conjunction with other cost drivers) to ascertain the costs of Teaching, Research and Other activity by the University and to calculate the University’s Research full economic cost (FEC) rates.
Service Status¶
Time Allocation Survey is currently live.
Contact¶
Issues discovered in the service should be opened as a support ticket in HEAT, either raised there directly or via email to UIS ServiceDesk, specifying Time Allocation Survey as the service and providing all relevant details for further investigation by an engineer listed below.
New feature requests should be discussed with the Service Manager listed below, who can liaise with the listed engineers in the DevOps team who owns this service.
Source Code¶
Source code for Time Allocation Survey is located in a common Gitlab Group.
Time Allocation Survey consists of 3 webservices: TAS, TAS CMS and TAS Questionnaire.
| Repository | Description |
|---|---|
| tas | Time Allocation Survey Management System (TasMS) |
| tas-cms | Time Allocation Survey Content Management System (TasCMS) |
| tas-questionnaire | Time Allocation Survey Questionnaire (TasQ) |
Technologies Used¶
The service is built on the following technologies:
| Category | Technologies |
|---|---|
| Programming Language | Java/JEE |
| Templates & Configuration | HTML & XML |
| Frameworks | Spring, Spring MVC, Quartz, Jersey, Jackson, JPA and Hibernate |
| Application Servers | Apache Tomcat mounted on Apache HTTP Server |
| Databases | MongoDB (dedicated), MySQL (dedicated) & Oracle (CHRIS HRDB integration) |
Environments¶
The Time Allocation Survey is currently deployed to the following environments:
| Name | Webservice Links | Supporting VMs |
|---|---|---|
| Production | TAS, TAS CMS, TAS Questionnaire | sanders (primary), timmons (failover) |
| Staging | TAS, TAS CMS, TAS Questionnaire | jackson.internal.admin.cam.ac.uk |
Databases¶
CHRIS Integration (HR Database)¶
Projects TAS & TAS Questionnaire communicate with CHRIS (HR database) using the Oracle JDBC driver to perform data import of staff member information such as CRSID & Email address.
- HRREPT is a nightly copy of CHRIS HRLIVE db and is the live reporting database.
- HRREPD is the same nightly copy and a development reporting environment.
- Custom view TAS_POSITIONS is available in both HRREPT & HRREPD to expose select data.
- That custom view is used by TAS & TAS Questionnaire.
Dedicated Databases¶
Projects TAS & TAS Questionnaire use a dedicated MySQL database to store user data, survey data & more besides.
Project TAS CMS relies on a dedicated MongoDB database to store user-created dynamic content.
The Production databases run on dedicated servers, while the Staging databases are hosted on the same server as the webservices.
| Environment | Database | VMs |
|---|---|---|
| Production | MySQL, MongoDB | tatum + wright (primary + failover) MySQL DB: webdb4.internal.admin.cam.ac.uk |
| Staging | MySQL, MongoDB | jackson |
Operational Documentation¶
The following gives an overview of how the Time Allocation Survey is deployed and maintained.
How and where the Time Allocation Survey is deployed¶
TAS is deployed in both the Staging & Production environments listed above.
Deployment is done via Ansible. See the TAS Admin project README for details.
Using the Ansible deploy role provided, a one-line change can specify a new version,
then the rest of deployment is fully automated to staging and/or production.
Under the hood, that process reinstalls Tomcat management scripts, then runs the relevant "cold deploy" Tomcat management script with the fresh WAR file, for each of the 3 WAR files copied by Ansible to the target servers (one for each TAS webservice):
/home/tas/tomcat-scripts/<service-name>-cold-deploy.sh /path/to/the-tas-webservice.war"
Service Management & Tech Leads¶
The Service Owner for the Time Allocation Survey is Arianne Abouzar.
The Service Manager for the Time Allocation Survey is Andrew Crook
The Tech Lead for the Time Allocation Survey is Nick Brown
The following engineers have operational experience with the Time Allocation Survey and are able to respond to support requests or incidents: