Network Coordinators' Meeting Notes

October 1, 2008; 9:00 AM
Durham Center 206

Announcements

Laptop Encryption Solution is Coming

• this is getting ready to be rolled out next month - it will be rolled out in tandem with ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO4)

• the vendor technology involved is called McAfee endpoint encryption

• it's for PCs only now, but there will be a version for Mac available from the vendor in the future

• there will be a one-time charge of $34.50 for the software (Bland)

Web-to-Host-2007 Early Announcement (Mark Bland)

• works with IE7 and Vista… there are some quirks, and we are hoping to fix them

• working with folks on testing

• the plan is that it will be rolled out by the end of the year

Office 2007 - Excel bug fix

• see notes for Office 2007 under the Presentation section below

SharePoint pilot in ITS (Dan Carlile)

• SharePoint is a tool for developing workflow applications, such as a document needing to travel along a certain path… it can facilitate online work teams… essentially, it facilitates collaboration

• internally, IT Services has gone through a series of briefings on Sharepoint with a partner called Inetium … they have offered to partner with ITS do a SharePoint pilot

• the Sharepoint pilot will last for about 90-120 days in ITS beginning in the next 45 days

Radmin v3.2 rollout is beginning

• right now, the version being used is 2.2… support analysts use that tool to help folks remotely via the network… there is a new version that has been acquired through an upgrade… it allows support analysts to support Office 2007

• ITS has just acquired version 3.2, and it will be rolled out very, very soon

• it will be trialed with a couple of departments so it can be used in a live environment… this will enable folks to obtain the best possible support through the network

• Poduska stated the current Radmin tool also does not work well with dual monitors, and it doesn't allow multiple people to share the same set of screens, and Radmin v3.2 resolves both of those problems, too

Presentation

Office 2007 rollout update (Dan Carlile)

• Carlile is the project lead. … the project couldn't move forward because there was a bug in Excel… for people with host data, it would store that password in a way that could be recovered, and it was something we were well aware of from the outset… Office 2007 has been out for 18 months, but it has not been offered to Administrative clients because of this issue… the fix was obtained recently from Microsoft… so, now we can offer Office 2007 to everyone

• Carlile reviewed the work breakdown structure including the tasks needed to roll out Office 2007 to a particular department or work area

• there is a no-charge training session available to highlight the differences between Office 2003 and Office 2007 which lasts for 1.5 hours

• the upgrade will happen over the network at night to ensure maximum availability and minimal disruption

• Sherry Berghefer, EH&S, some issues were encountered when Office 2007 was rolled out in her unit… staff needed to stay logged in for it to work…. there was a machine that it didn't work on, but that was an issue particular to that machine… the training session was a good way to introduce staff to it… even with that, staff were in shock… and they didn't know what to do the next day… there is still a little bit of cursing about it

• Berghefer said it helped her department to send around a signup sheet to ensure the version change wasn't going to happen at an inconvenient time, so this allowed folks to choose an alternate day

• Mike Lohrbach, project team member, said the installation takes on average 20 minutes, but it has taken up to 40 minutes and occurs when staff log in to the computer the next morning

• Carlile said departments are in the drivers' seat for the upgrade… scheduling and timing is driven by the clients

• the overall goal is to minimize disruption, and the process can be changed or tailored as needed to fit business requirements, which are identified as part of the preplanning phase of each area's implementation

• one issue to be aware of is that there is a new document format (DOCX vs. DOC)… Lohrbach stated for folks using the old format, the Office compatibility pack has been installed on supported machines to enable interoperability between versions

• Carlile stated it is now ok for folks to come forward and request the installation after consulting with their departments or units… again, folks are in the driver's seat in terms of the timetable… there is a constraint in terms of the number of installations that can occur at a particular time, if multiple departments would happen to choose the same day, for example

Data Warehouse project status and demo (Lynn Miller)

• Carlile stated this will have limited impact in the short-run, but in the long-term, it will have big impact on the university

• as a proof of concept (POC), Excel pivot tables were published on the web to build cube structures, and that was a fairly successful project… as a POC and with those tools, it did not have the robustness or flexibility required to function as a data warehouse

• the proof of concept evolved into an RFP, and what we needed that the original POC didn't provide was reporting capabilities… you could drag, drop, twist, and turn the data, but like with pivot tables you only have very basic print capabilities and reporting, and we wanted robust reporting capabilities

• the RFP went out to look for business intelligence tools in the late summer of 2007… there were three vendor presentations, and in the end the Cognos tool set was acquired… Cognos is business intelligence software… it is not a warehouse structure… it's a toolset to do analysis and reporting of data

• the decision was made after the POC that the data would be located in SQL server, but it could come from anywhere, and we could build departmental applications as well, such as Access databases, etc.

• for the most part, our data will be considered institutional data and will include host applications and transactions… SQL server is where the data will reside… the Cognos tools were installed in December 2007… the installation went well, but there has been a long learning curve, and we are at least there to a point

• today, we have an application… the data warehouse is formally known as eData… people will login to Access Plus and see an item under eData and it will be seen under the eBusiness tab

• Cognos, instead of running inside the AccessPlus whitespace, it will open up a new browser for the Cognos logon

• access, permission, and rights are done in two ways… Cognos knows about groups of people and roles, but the groups themselves and those roles have names and those are defined in the campus Active Directory (AD), and the assignment of people to role groups is done through AD… we don't manage and administer people themselves in Cognos

• the data warehouse is still totally focused on one application, and that is supporting the Resource Management Model (RMM), the new budget model… there are 7 data sets and cubes they can work in… everything that's in there today entails RMM

• in terms of when are we gong to get more information, such as student information… it is planned, but it's a matter of resources… he has 2 people working in the project, not 20

• this has the potential to be the primary reporting repository for all institutional data… financial, student, faculty, HR, etc… there are a couple different leadership groups dealing with those issues, and right now we are the people responsible for getting it rolled out ,and direction is being set by other groups

Items from the floor

Open floor for extemporaneous items of interest to the group

• Previously, it was suggested by Clare Smith-Larson that meeting notes be posted… it is planned that this will occur starting with this meeting

• Someone suggested that meetings should be held more often and have times, locations, and agenda information posted in advance… for example, perhaps a meeting placeholder could be located on the calendar, and cancelled if there is nothing to discuss… Carlile stated that he encourages a dialog and conversation so that meetings are not simply IT Services pushing out information to folks, but that folks come to meetings expressing needs or other issues

Copyright © 1995-2008, Iowa State University of Science and Technology. All rights reserved.

• ISU INDEX
• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• X
• Y
• Z