You responded and we listened!

Due to feedback received regarding the changes to the personal web space service originally scheduled for Monday, Dec. 31, the collaboration and web content team will continue to offer the availability of personal web space until further notice. Additional questions or comments may be sent to help@umn.edu.

University of Minnesota Information Technology staff volunteer to deliver meals through the Meals on Wheels program. Generally, people who receive Meals on Wheels are unable to prepare a nutritious meal, and are elderly, homebound, or disabled.

What does volunteering involve?

Working in teams of two, IT volunteers drive to the program site, pick up 8-10 meals, and deliver them to as many residences. It takes about an hour. On average, depending on the number of volunteers in the IT pool, each volunteer delivers meals about once every 5-6 weeks.

The following people make up the current roster of Meals on Wheels volunteers in IT:

How do I sign up?

Interested in volunteering? Send an email to Vickie Sheehan.

IT@UMN relies on talented staff to fulfill our core mission. You are encouraged to share this link with your networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.) to help spread the word about this employment opportunity and others. This position has already been posted through the University's online employment system, the University's Google+ network and other sources. Please "+1" and share this post as appropriate

Customer Service Coordinator
http://employment.umn.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=108268

Roberta Anderson is retiring after 34 years with the University. Roberta's last day will be Monday, December 31. A reception is being held on Monday, December 17 from 2-3PM in conference room 185 of 2218 University. All staff are welcome to come and extend their good wishes to Roberta.

Bob Zak is leaving the University and his last day will be Tuesday, December 18. We wish Bob the best and thank him for his 19 years of service with the University.

Heather McLaughlin joined IT@UMN as a Salesforce.com Product Owner.

Mark McKay joined IT@UMN as an Academic Technology Systems Analyst.

Welcome Heather and Mark!

Personal web space is scheduled to be decommissioned on June 30, 2013. In preparation for the decommission, new personal web space folders no longer will be created, effective Dec. 31.

Continue reading "Personal web space to be decommissioned" »

The annual data center maintenance outage is scheduled for 6 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 5, with restoration scheduled to begin at 6 a.m. Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. It is expected that all affected services will be restored by noon Sunday.

Continue reading "Annual data center maintenance; service interruption scheduled for Jan. 5-6, 2013" »

The Office of Information Technology relies on talented staff to fulfill our core mission. You are encouraged to share this link with your networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.) to help spread the word about this employment opportunity and others. This position has already been posted through the University's online employment system, the University's Google+ network and other sources. Please "+1" and share this post as appropriate

Tech Stop Coordinator

New Hires:
Tina Sommervold joined Application Development this week as the Senior Manager for Custom Solutions.

Rebecca Immerfall and Tom Kautz are new Desktop Support Professionals with Onsite Support.

Welcome to OIT, Tina, Rebecca, and Tom!

The effective use of knowledge and data enables smart and strategic decision making, an essential component to advancing the University of Minnesota's mission. A few years ago, the University recognized that to stay competitive with our peer institutions, we needed more robust data management and reporting. As a start, we purchased a new tool that held the promise of vast improvement in data management performance and reporting usability; we called that tool BI. Time and effort went into getting the tool's infrastructure in place and a pilot program was run. You may be wondering what has happened to BI since the pilot.

Continue reading "Update on UMN Business Intelligence: From BI to EDMR" »

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) has scheduled an Application Security (AppSec) conference for 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 29, in the University of Minnesota St. Paul Student Center.

Continue reading "Nov. 29: OWASP Minneapolis/St. Paul 2012 Conference " »

The modules included in release 1 for the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC), and Controlled Substance (CS), of eProtocol, the University of Minnesota's new web-based compliance solution, are now live, effective Nov. 12.

Continue reading "eProtocol update" »

Technology Training Services invites University IT Training and Support Professionals to attend a Windows 8 Technical Briefing webinar. A Microsoft representative will present an overview on Windows 8. Topics will include Windows 8 Security & encryption, Windows 8 To Go, Group policy management with Windows 8, etc.

Two sessions are scheduled:

• Monday, November 19, 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, January 23, 1 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.

Get more information and register on the Technology Training website.

Brandon McHugh is transitioning to the CRM team as a Salesforce.com Product Owner. Congratulations, Brandon!

Mary Crimi is leaving the University of Minnesota and her last day will be Friday, November 16. Please join us in thanking Mary for over 18 years of service to the University of Minnesota. We wish her the best!

New Hire:
April Wood rejoined OIT starting Monday, October 29 as a PeopleSoft Developer. Welcome back, April!

Since the beginning of fall semester, the use of Gopher Conferencing has increased dramatically. Because we are nearing capacity with the existing conferencing tool, Voice Network Services is planning to upgrade to a new web and phone conferencing application in the upcoming months.

Continue reading "New phone and web conferencing tool planned" »

New Hires:
Andrew Flugaur joined OIT on October 22 as a Service Desk Consultant. Welcome Andrew!

Andy Wattenhofer was hired as the Manager, Database Administration, to fill Mark Powell's role, as Mark will be moving to the Enterprise System Upgrade Project. Congratulations Andy!

The Research Administration Services team welcomes Travis Noll to the team as the new service owner.

Continue reading "Research Administrative Services welcomes new service owner, Travis Noll" »

The Computer Management service team plans to decommission Folder Redirection and Roaming Profiles on OIT Windows computers effective 9 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 30. Approximately 50% of PCs used by OIT staff will be impacted by this change and those employees have been contacted directly.

This change is a first step in moving OIT data to Enterprise Network Attached Storage. Briefly, Folder Redirection redirects the path of a local computer folder to a share location, automatically backing up your computer data. Roaming Profiles backs up your computer settings so that you can receive the same background and settings on multiple computers.

If you would like more information regarding this change, please reference this guide. And, as always, you can contact the service desk with any questions.

New Manager for Service Quality Assurance in OIT Application Development
Bruce Karpenko has joined the Application Development group this past Monday as Service Quality Assurance Manager. Bruce brings considerable experience in management and quality assurance to his new role. He is located on the 5th floor of WBOB in 523A. Welcome Bruce!

Shannon Gibson has been serving as interim Service Quality Assurance Manager for the past few months. After helping Bruce transition into his new role, Shannon will be moving to the Enterprise System Upgrade Project, where she will manage the application development team. Thanks and congratulations Shannon!

Senior Manager for PeopleSoft Solutions in OIT Application Development
John Colosey has been serving as interim Senior Manager for PeopleSoft Solutions for the past few months. After a competitive search process, John has been selected to fill that role. Congratulations John!

The Enterprise System Upgrade Program (ESUP) Kickoff drew more than 300 participants (in person, via ITV, and online) on Tuesday, October 18. If you missed the kickoff event and would like to learn more, visit the ESUP blog.

A Microsoft representative is scheduled to be on the Twin Cities campus to introduce Microsoft's newest operating system, Windows 8. Sessions are planned for 1-3 p.m. Monday, Nov. 5, and 9-11 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 9 in Walter Library 101. The intended audience is IT training and support professionals.

Continue reading "Windows 8 Training for IT Training and Support Professionals" »

New Hire:
Laura Farvour joined OIT this week as a Service Desk Consultant. Welcome Laura!

Departure:
Dave Espenson will be retiring from the University after more than 8 years of service. Dave's last day will be Friday, November 2. We wish Dave the best!

Users have experienced sporadic performance problems with Moodle over the past several weeks. Early last week, performance was severely degraded to the point where some users were unable to complete their work. While Moodle has been performing well after recent system updates, service degradations like this are unacceptable and the Academic Technology Tools service team is committed to resolving this issue. An ongoing investigation into the cause of the problem has revealed several contributing factors:

Continue reading "Update on Moodle Performance Issues" »

Effective Nov. 1, prices will be reduced for department- and collegiate-level ArcGIS software licenses made available through a contract partnership between the University and MnSCU. The decrease is made possible due to increased usage and decrease in annual license fees.

Continue reading "ArcGIS license prices decrease effective Nov. 1" »

New and updated content has been published on the OIT site about UMContent, the University's web content management system, including guides for content contributors. See Website Content: UMContent.

Effective Monday, Oct. 22, the UMContent support site URL will transition from umcontent-support.umn.edu to its new location at www.oit.umn.edu/umcontent. Please update your bookmarks accordingly.

Additionally, notes from the most recent UMContent site developers meeting held Sept. 17 are available at www.oit.umn.edu/umcontent/meetings/index.htm.

Questions should be directed to the technology service desk at (612) 301-4357 (1-HELP on campus), or help@umn.edu.

Interested in motion graphics?

Whether you are a motion graphics beginner or George Lucas; use AfterEffects, Motion, or Maya3D; a graphic designer or in communications; or just interested in learning more about motion graphics, please join us.

WHO: First Friday MOGFX Users Group
WHEN: First Friday of every month
TIME: 3-4:30 p.m
LOCATION: Blegen 90

Next Meeting: Friday, November 2

Our agenda is to learn from each other by sharing projects we are working on (or want to work on) in an informal setting. If you are going to share, please bring your own machine.

If you have any questions or comments, contact Kevin Charles or Paul Pecilunas

Departures:
Liza Furr is leaving the University. Her last day will be Friday, October 19.
Nishat Shaikh is also leaving and his last day will also be on Friday, October 19.

We wish both Liza and Nishat the best in their future career endeavors!

Video and Conferencing Service Owner, Mike Williams received the following feedback regarding David Lindeman.

Hi David and Mike,

I want to take a moment to tell you how much I appreciate having David do the video shooting for the two interviews today. It was a huge deal not having to cancel them. And it was a pleasure to work with David. He was not only an expert in video shooting but also a great host to the talents we were recording. Huge thanks to David!

Celina
========================================
Celina Byers, Ph. D.
Technology Enhanced Learning Coordinator, CLA

On Monday, October 8, undergraduate students attended the Mobile App Challenge kickoff meeting. Students enjoyed pizza, received Mobile App t-shirts, and had an opportunity to network and strategize with other undergrads interested in taking part in this year's challenge. Students also heard from presenters about what to expect, deadlines, and tips on what a successful team might look like and how to stay on track.

The Mobile App Challenge is sponsored by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) and the Office of Information Technology (OIT). It gives undergrads an opportunity to work in teams to develop a mobile app, engage in a simulated entrepreneurial process, and win prizes. We'll keep you posted on this cool program over the course of the next two semesters. Please point any interested students to the Mobile App Challenge website to learn more. Teams are still forming!

We are pleased to announce Matt Nuttall will be joining OIT on Monday, October 15 as Sr. Manager of Proactive Support. Matt has worked at the University of Minnesota for over 12 years, and brings proven leadership and strategic communications experience, as well as extensive management experience with a strong focus on a customer service environment. Please welcome Matt to the IT team!

We thank Susan Tade for filling the Interim Sr. Manager for Proactive Support role. In support of President Kaler's initiative to provide support for Academic Technologies, Susan will be helping to expand two of our service teams: Video and Conferencing Services and Educational Technology Services. Susan's video background experience, expertise, and passion will greatly assist expanding those services. In the coming weeks Susan will work with Matt to ensure a smooth transition.

University of Minnesota faculty and staff are eligible to participate in Microsoft's Home Use Program (HUP), enabling those who use Microsoft Office for their work at the University to purchase one licensed copy per platform of Office (for Windows or Mac) to install and use on home computers, for work and personal purposes.

Continue reading "Microsoft Home Use Program Now Available for Faculty and Staff " »

David Rosen and Nick Rosencrans of the Training and Usability service team, in collaboration with CLA writing studies professor Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, gave a presentation at the recent 2012 Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC) annual meeting.

Continue reading "Kudos: David Rosen and Nick Rosencrans " »

On Monday, October 1, a new tool called Schedule Builder went live to all University of Minnesota students. With this tool, students can create class schedules based on selected courses and scheduling preferences. The tool has also been integrated into Graduation Planner, the University's online degree planning tool.

Continue reading "Schedule Builder Now Available " »

Kristin Jones, manager of billing and administration in the OIT business office, received the following feedback regarding Mary Herheim.

Hi Kristin,

I wanted you to know that Mary Herheim was responsive and attentive in helping me today. On very short notice, Mary made a purchase (with the proper approvals) for a project I am working on. When she needed more information, she followed up with me and guided me through the process. Further, she called the vendor to ensure that purchase was made correctly. She was professional, kind, and quick. She is wonderful.

Thank you!
Kellie Greaves

As a reminder, please be advised that OIT discontinued the Certified Laptop Program as of September 2012. An evaluation of the service revealed that less than 20 percent of incoming University of Minnesota students took advantage of the program.

Students who purchased an OIT certified laptop are still guaranteed to receive the program's services for the duration of their time as a student. Additionally, OIT is committed to providing a high level of support for any device students purchase and bring to campus. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact technology help.

Beginning Saturday, October 13 at 6 p.m. PeopleSoft Campus Solutions (Student Admin and HRMS) and PeopleSoft Financials will be unavailable for use due to a planned upgrade. It is intended that full functionality will be restored by 2 p.m. on Sunday, October 14. During this time, access to all of the PeopleSoft core applications, as well the many other applications that depend upon them such as One Stop self service and employee self service, will be unavailable. This outage is necessary for an upgrade to PeopleTools version 8.52. Please plan your work accordingly. Updates will be posted throughout the maintenance window on the system status page. For more information, see the PeopleTools Upgrade page or contact technology help.

Google Groups, a tool for a team of users to quickly collaborate with one another either via email, or any of Google's various applications, is now available with Google Apps for the University of Minnesota.

Continue reading "Put Google Groups to Work for You" »

Senior Manager hires:
Mark Hove - Senior Manager, Onsite Support
Kris Adelmann - Senior Manager, PMO
Jim Nolan - Senior Manager, Operations

Email services will undergo maintenance between 9 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, and noon Sunday, Sept. 30, to move bulk storage from end-of-life hardware to new bulk storage hardware. (Refer to CHG0032315).

Continue reading "Email services maintence planned for Sept. 29" »

The Analytics and Reporting Service welcomes a new service owner, Ben Cashen.

Ben has more than 15 years of experience working with data and reporting, and has been at the University of Minnesota for the last seven years. Initially, Ben worked as an analyst and developer at the College of Continuing Education, where he and his team created an innovative online reporting solution. Ben then moved to the Office of Information Technology where, for the past five years, he has been the lead analyst on the Business Intelligence team (now Enterprise Data Management and Reporting, or EDMR). In that role, Ben has been working across the University to create a standardized vision of reporting, leveraging the University's new UM Analytics toolset. While working at the U, Ben finished his MBA from the Carlson School of Management, becoming an official University of Minnesota alumnus.

In the coming weeks, the former service owner, Joe Sullivan, will work with Ben to ensure a smooth transition. Our thanks go to Joe for his leadership with this service. Joe will continue to be an valuable member of the IT team!

Congratulations and best wishes to Ben as he takes on this new role.

Every fall, the Student Unions and Activities Board invites student groups, as well as University of Minnesota (UMN) colleges, departments, and units to paint the Washington Avenue bridge, connecting the East and West Banks of UMN's Minneapolis campus.

Continue reading "OIT at Paint the Bridge 2012" »

Congratulations to Jacob Krotzer, CBCP, for passing the qualifying Certified Business Continuity Professional exam. Kudos, Jacob!

John Snider, CBCP
Disaster Recovery Services (DRS)

On Friday, September 28, 2012, OIT will update the University of Minnesota sign in page.

Due to feedback from the University community, we are changing the guest account creation and student account initiation links to instead send users to a new page that provides more detail about how to choose the proper account.

Continue reading "U of M Sign In Pages to be Updated September 28" »

Departure:
Mark Ledermann is leaving the University of Minnesota. Mark's last day will be tomorrow, September 21. Please join us in thanking Mark for his 14 years of service to the University of Minnesota. We wish him the best!

ESUP implementation partner on-site; project officially underway
CedarCrestone (CCI), our implementation partner, is now on-site, marking the official start to the Enterprise System Upgrade Project (ESUP). The University's Board of Regents approved CCI as our implementation partner in July, and the contract was signed at the end of August. CCI was on-site with us for a few meetings last week, and are working full-time on the project as of this week.

Continue reading "ESUP is underway" »

Logging in to NetFiles just got easier.

Continue reading "NetFiles migrates to Shibboleth authentication" »

New Hire:
Steve Scherping joined OIT today as a Systems Administrator, Virtualization. Welcome, Steve!

Peg Sherven has been appointed service owner for academic technology tools. Service offerings include:

• Anti-Plagiarism (Turnitin)
• Course Management System (Moodle)
• iTunes U
• Learning Object Repository (Equella)
• Online Course Evaluations
• Surveys (UMSurvey)

Peg has 19 years of experience at the University of Minnesota working in various areas. At the Crookston campus, Peg was the computer help desk manager, and adjunct instructor in the College of Business and Technology. Peg transferred to Minneapolis in pursuit of a PhD in Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development. While taking courses, she worked in application support where she developed a deep knowledge of enterprise tools such as Moodle, WebVista, Google, UMSurvey, and more. Most recently, she has been a member of the Educational Technology Services team and Academic Technology Tools.

In the coming weeks, the former service owner, Chris Ament (senior director of academic technology), will work with Peg to ensure a smooth transition. Congratulations and best wishes to Peg as she takes on this new role!

Much appreciation and thanks go to the staff that helped stabilize and increase capacity for Moodle this week. After Moodle users experienced degraded service on Wednesday evening, the team provisioned, configured, tested, and deployed the server and storage infrastructure necessary to nearly double Moodle's user capacity in less than 24 hours.

Specifically:

• Infrastructure and Production's Garrett Kuchta, Jeff Aspinall, John Boggs, Tom Kunz, and Dack Anderson;
• Application Development's Colin Campbell; and
• Academic Technology's Alex Anderson

Kudos for your great teamwork and commitment to excellent service!

Vikki Auzenne has been named the new service owner for the User Support Services team. Vikki previously led the Academic Support Resources technology help desk and desktop support. Welcome, Vikki!

Continue reading "Vikki Auzenne named service owner for User Support Services" »

Departures:
Gary Ogren is leaving OIT and transferring to UMN OHR. His last day in OIT is today.

James Wanta is leaving the University and his last day will be September 15.

We will miss both Gary and James and wish them the best in their future endeavors!

The University wireless network continues to experience intermittent and sporadic loss of service in areas on the East Bank campus north of University Avenue, and some users may experience intermittent disruption. Network engineers continue to investigate the situation and are working on a solution.

Continue reading "Update on wireless network" »

The University of Minnesota is pleased to announce that the Classroom Recording software (Camtasia Relay) has been upgraded to version 4.1.2 and is available for download. Current users of Camtasia Relay version 1.2 will be automatically enrolled in version 4.1.2 and can take advantage of the new features, including:

• Mobile device support

• Mac Lion and Mountain Lion OS support
• Trimming
• Webcam support
• Retina Display support
• With the new version, users can capture higher quality videos that are less resource intensive for user computers, resulting in a machine that performs better even while recording

Continue reading "Classroom Recording (Camtasia Relay) Upgrade Complete" »

Remember when technology support for University departments was called FAST? It was a catchy, but confusing, acronym. IT at the U is focused on providing customer driven service offerings and our terminology has been updated to reflect this culture shift. Desktop Support not only replaced the FAST acronym, but we also made the services free to anyone on campus!

While it is hard to break a habit, let's do a collective brain wipe, click our heels three times and say: Desktop Support! Desktop Support! Desktop Support!

More information about this service offering, including how to request help, is located on the Desktop Support page.

New Hire:
Bonnie Schubert joined OIT as the Executive Liaison in Scott's office. Welcome Bonnie!

Departure:
Fritz Skinner is leaving OIT and joining another department at the University. Fritz's last day with OIT will be Friday, August 31. We wish him the best!

OIT would like to thank Noah Osthus from the Minneapolis Step Up internship program for his great work for the University this summer.

Noah was an excellent addition to our service desk team and made significant contributions in a very short time. We wish him great success in his remaining high school years. Hopefully we'll see him back here as a Gopher freshman in 2014!

Thank you, Noah.

Paul Honsey
User Support Services

Email Services will undergo maintenance between 6 a.m. and noon Sunday, Aug. 19, to move bulk storage from end-of-life hardware to the new Isilon bulk storage.

Continue reading "Email Services maintenance this Sunday" »

YouTube joined the expanding list of available Google Apps for the University of Minnesota on Friday, August 3. The addition of YouTube also enables the Google Hangouts On Air broadcast feature.

Continue reading "Broadcast Yourself at UMN: YouTube and Google Hangouts On Air " »

A recently published ebook and this year's expansion of the Faculty Fellowship Program show that faculty, staff, and students embrace the benefits of educational technology and are driven to explore its effective use. Together, we are transforming our practices to take advantage of the opportunities academic technology provides at the University of Minnesota.

Continue reading "UMN Embraces and Explores Academic Technology" »

The Staff Engagement Council met Friday, June 22. The agenda included:

• The communications team (formerly OCA) has been onboarded into the ITSM tool (ServiceNow). Going forward, anyone who would like to post to the Inside IT blog should send their requests via email to help@umn.edu, attn: communications team.

The OIT Faculty Fellowship Program (OIT FFP) announces its 2012 - 13 cohort. This cohort--the largest to date--comprises 16 instructors representing 10 colleges/units and three University of Minnesota campuses. View a complete list of the new cohort of Faculty Fellows.

The OIT FFP is an 18-month program that fosters a multidisciplinary learning community that explores possibilities and good practices in teaching and learning in technology-rich learning environments, produces scholarship in this area, and advances faculty leadership around these issues.

Continue reading "Announcing 2012-13 Faculty Fellowship Program Participants" »

Effective July 4, Symantec AntiVirus (SAV) Corporate Edition 10.x and Client Security 3.x no longer will be supported by the vendor.

Continue reading "Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 10.x, Symantec Client Security 3.x vendor support to end July 4" »

• College of Design (Incident)
• Academic Support Resources - e.g. CITSU (Incident), One Stop (Incident)
• Carlson School of Management (Incident and Knowledge)
• Admissions (Incident)

• College of Liberal Arts (Incident and Knowledge) Go live date: June 25/26

June 8 Meeting Recap

• A group discussion around coaching

• Scott to go on a walking tour of OIT

Contact us

• Some staff expressed that they feel uncomfortable participating because their responses were not completely anonymous.
• Only Scott and Ben will see the survey responses--a promise!
• Responses continue to trickle in.
• This may be due to the lack of deadline, or a lack in understanding regarding how input will be used.

• Scott is starting a dialogue to review OIT departmental policies to ensure that they are fair, equitable, and right for the organization today. He is researching current policies and soliciting input. More to come!
  

• An additional member is being added to the Staff Engagement Council from the Academic Technology (AT) line organization. AT is currently the only line organization without representation. We are also exploring other gaps in representation.
  
• The SEC will share updates and contact information through the Inside IT blog.

• Kendric Moore, Master of Education in Human Resource Development, Fall 2011
• Heather Rafshol, Master of Arts in Human Resources and Industrial
• Relations, Spring 2012
• Nishat Shaikh, Master of Business Administration, Spring 2012
• Toufong Vang, Master of Science in Security Technologies with a minor
• in Geographic Information Science, Fall 2011
• Bob Zak, Master of Business Administration, Spring 2012

• No HTML code is required to display video
• The ability to use your built-in camera to record video directly into your Moodle course
• Automatic detection and display for playing video on all devices (desktops and mobile devices)

• Basics: all remaining spring semester classes
• Assignments: starting with summer classes

• Kristopher Kirkland joined OIT this week as an Enterprise Systems and Applications Administrator. 

• Chue Vang is leaving the University and his last day will be Friday May 4.

• Al Pierce is leaving the University and his last day will be Thursday May 10.

• Visit http://z.umn.edu/oitlocaladmin
• Use the Service Catalog request item in the Self-Service section of Service-Now
• Contact the Service Desk at 1-HELP on campus, or email help@umn.edu

Chris Ament

•     Shared leadership
•     Timeline was held
•     Timeline was adequate
•     Support was kept in the loop
•     Openness and transparency
•     Seemed like team effort
•     People took ownership as a whole - accountability
•     Planned and executed effectively
•     Interest from the TC campus for our [coordinate] campus needs

Ben Neeser began serving as interim Chief of Staff in the Office of Information Technology (OIT) this week. As Interim Chief of Staff, Ben will provide direct strategic, communications, and administrative support to Scott Studham. Ben’s appointment will end with the conclusion of a national search for a permanent Chief of Staff.

Recently, a very upset person called me from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. The person was quick and to the point. She said they needed to do an emergency live stream event from Cowles Auditorium... a faculty member had passed away two hours ago. We want to be the first to inform students, faculty, staff and alumni of this terrible news right away, she said.

I had less than 20 minutes to prepare, test and broadcast this unfortunate news.

The process OIT has wouldn't have accommodated such a request, as we usually require 24 hour notice, schedule technician time, reserve limited equipment and of course we charge for this service. I knew I could technically pull this off but I knew it wasn't protocol, however, I figured the worse case it doesn't work but the best case is it does. I thought, just do it...it's the right thing to do. Video connection, audio and streaming services tested...we (OIT) supported the event, without issue.

As a result, more than 70 people turned in. The event lasted about 30 minutes filled with stories, memories and tears. Phone calls and emails came in throughout the day from alumni expressing their condolences and appreciation for providing this shared experience.

Events happen - in the world of news, video and the Internet, you have to be ready for anything, even if it's bad news. I am proud to say I work for an organization that makes this stuff possible, even with the limited resources we have - with only a moments notice, we can pull off some amazing feats.

Mike Williams

Senior Streaming Media Consultant

Video Solutions, Office of Information Technology

University of Minnesota

Because you are an "IT Insider", we would like you to save the date for the upcoming "Academic Technology Showcase: Innovation in Teaching, Learning, and Research" on April 4 from 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. in Coffman Memorial Union's Great Hall.

Over 60 participants will be on hand to showcase their innovations in the area of academic technologies. An iPad will be given away to one lucky guest (it could be you!), courtesy of the College of Education and Human Development.

This showcase is a collaboration between the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Education and Human Development, and the Office of Information Technology.

• Computer and mobile device support
• Software support
• Microsoft software distribution center
• Learning Bytes technology training sessions
• Multimedia workstations
• Collaborative peer research, learning and sharing area

Dear ITLA collective,

You may remember in 2009 Linda Woock, the director of financial systems support [now the strategic sourcing program manager], came to an ITLA meeting to introduce the Strategic Sourcing Initiative. This was a plan to meet University leadership's charge to reduce costs. We agreed to assist Purchasing with the IT component of this plan and one of the initial areas we looked into (as low hanging fruit) was desktop, laptop, and server purchases.

The attached powerpoint deck given to the Senate Committee on Information Technology (SCIT) in December 2011 shows the success we had in reducing overall computer support costs through standardization of the Dell offerings on Umart. It's important to note that the use of these standard machines is voluntary and yet we are seeing an 80 to 90 percent adoption rate.

On slide 5 you'll see that IT generated the second largest savings after Benefits.

I want to thank Paul Honsey (OIT), Kris Adelmann (OIT), Rex Wheeler (Ext), Simin Hickman (OIT), Linda Woock, Elaine Kelash and Tim Bray for work done on the Dell laptop/desktop standards and Patton Fast (OIT) and Kemal Badur (CLA) for work on the Server standards. If I left anyone out, I apologize in advance. Certainly the CM group's work on OSD task lists and application packages for Dell computers was large part of these savings so we must thank them as well.

One interesting footnote is that we've learned that the University spends more on printers than on computers making this is a potentially new area where we could focus future efforts.

Steve Winckelman

Turnitin Brown Bag

• Setting up an assignment
• Viewing and interpreting originality reports
• Editing and grading student papers online
• Using the peer review assignment tool

Turnitin Webinar: Pushing Past Plagiarism

• students' issues with source integration
• intentional versus unintentional plagiarism
• best practices on using Turnitin for reflection assignments, and revision assignments, to improve writing skills and encourage original work.

Dear IT Colleagues,

Defining Moments 2011: OIT's Year in Review

Shared vision. Shared innovation. Shared leadership. Shared purpose. ONE IT.

During the past year, OIT has continued to work steadily and strategically on the development of "One IT" to advance excellence and efficiency in all IT at the University, and to advance access and innovation systemwide.

Defining Moments 2011: OIT'S Year in Review

• Someone takes remote control of the computer and shows the Joe various signs of "hacks" or "intrusions."
• Someone takes remote control of the computer and performs operations of which Joe is unaware.
• The so-called "help line" asks Joe for various other types of information, such as his U of MN Internet ID, password, and/or other personal data.

• iPad project 
• Active learning classrooms (Learning environments research)
• Biology vodcasting project 

I just wanted to give a shout-out to our IT support and Eric, Jeff and everyone who helped get Morrill Hall and OTC back up and running this week.

I think most of the time they only hear complaints from their clients, so wanted to make sure that they know how much it meant to me that they were on top of the issue and were able to figure out the problem so quickly. Thanks also to Bill for making it a priority. Our set-ups over here and at MAC are different, which make fixing the issues/problems/irritating things harder than the average University computer user.

Thanks Eric and everyone who helped. You did a bang-up job!

Susan

Susan McKinney, CRM

Director, Records & Information Management

502 Morrill Hall

100 Church Street SE

Campus Mail Code 0263D

Minneapolis, MN 55455

(612) 625-3497

• Use the “Comments” section of the workgroup request to specify that you are requesting an IPv6 subnet.
• Identify the VLAN and IPv4 workgroup that the IPv6 subnet will be associated with.
• An OIT analyst will coordinate with you to make the DNS entry directly into Infoblox. You will not be able to make DNS entries for IPv6 addresses without assistance from an OIT analyst.

 ITIL Definition Reminder: Incident Management

An Incident can be defined as an unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in the quality of an IT service. An Incident will have an impact on the service, although it may be slight and may even be transparent to customers. An example of an Incident is an application outage.

Incident Management refers to ownership of Incidents through their lifecycles. An Incident Lifecycle consists of logging, categorizing, prioritizing, initial diagnosis, incident escalation, investigation and diagnosis, resolution and recovery, and closure.

Since OIT has begun collecting data with ITG Center, some notable trends have begun to emerge.

In the first quarter of FY2011, approximately 7 percent of OIT’s time was spent on new initiatives, but by the end of fiscal year 2011, that number had doubled to over 14 percent. Because of the data that we gather with ITG, we can now observe such trends.

• Mary Klauda (Student / eLearning) is retiring from the University and her last day will be Wednesday, January 11. Mary plans to continue insisting that she is too young to retire! She will be consulting as well as investigating other encore career possibilities.

• Ellen Thayer (University Technology Training Center) is leaving the University after 26 years of service. Ellen will pursue her passions including all things French, Argentine Tango, and travel near and far. The full time journey will start after her last day on Wednesday, January 11.

• Gary Pothoven joined OIT this week as a Workstation Support Consultant on the Workstation Management team. Welcome to OIT!
• Brandon Lattin also began his new role as a Workstation Support Consultant this week.
• Bradley Kaufman joined the Active Directory team as a Computer Management Administrator this week.

• In the new technology-enhanced learning spaces at the University of Minnesota, students outperformed final grade expectations relative to their ACT scores.
• When instructors adapted their pedagogical approach to the new space by intentionally incorporating more active, student-centered teaching techniques, student learning improved.
• Students and faculty had positive perceptions of the new learning environments but also had to adjust to the unusual classrooms.

• Introduced and implemented key ITIL concepts
• Assessed and purchased ServiceNow, an ITSM tool, to replace HP Service Center.
• Defined IT processes and workflows for several service management areas including Incident, Knowledge, and Change Management
• Implemented and trained OIT service areas that use Technology Help for incident reporting
• Implemented Knowledge Management and trained Knowledge Base editors and some contributors
• Transitioned the OIT Change Management process into ServiceNow from HP Service Center

• Onboarding service areas into ServiceNow will be handled by Donna Edelen and Joann Conradson
• Configuration Management Database (CMDB) will be led by Bernardo Prigge
• Request Fulfillment will be led by Kris Adelmann and Paul Honsey
• Service Portfolio will be led by John Sonnack

• Old sign in page
• New sign in page

• All existing Shibboleth applications will be migrated to the new platform, which will go through the new sign in page. All applications that still use CAH for authentication will continue to use the old sign in page.
• There will be no single sign on (SSO) between Shibboleth and CAH applications. This means if a user is signed into an application based on Shibboleth and accesses an application based on CAH, they will need to re-authenticate. As applications are moved off of CAH, users will no longer observe this behavior.
• There will be no single sign out between CAH and Shibboleth applications; users must sign out of both sets of applications separately.
• There will be no single sign out among Shibboleth applications. This means that users must sign out of each application separately. (For maximum security, the browser should always be closed after signing out.)

• February 15: New Shibboleth environment and new sign in pages
• February 15 - June 15: two different sign in pages in use, no SSO between CAH and Shibboleth applications
• June 15: CAH decommissioned

• How will technology change the way we work, learn and govern?
• How are new forms of collaboration and efficiency made possible by emerging technology?
• What is the state of the high-technology infrastructure? 

• What are the facts of the situation?
• What’s the story I’m telling myself about these facts?
  
  

• “What is the person feeling?
  
• In what way does it make sense?
  
• And then, what’s my responsibility here?”
  

• “How can I grow and learn from this experience?”

Google chair Eric Schmidt will appear on the Twin Cities campus this week to discuss technology and business. His talk may be viewed via LiveStream at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 30 at http://j.mp/9GnsUK

In his presentation, Schmidt will address such questions as:

- How will technology change the way we work, learn and govern?
- How are new forms of collaboration and efficiency made possible by emerging technology?
- What is the state of the high-technology infrastructure?

President Kaler and Senior Vice President Jones have invited three candidates to campus for public interviews, and each candidate will provide their perspectives on "Transforming Teaching and Research in Higher Education: A Vision for IT in the 21st Century" as scheduled below.

Donald E. Harris (PDF)

3-4:30 p.m., Monday, November 28, 3-180 Kenneth H. Keller Hall

R. Scott Studham (PDF)

3-4:30 p.m., Tuesday, November 29, 3-180 Kenneth H. Keller Hall

Jim Davis (PDF)

3-4:30 p.m., Wednesday, November 30, 3-180 Kenneth H. Keller Hall

Each public forum will be web streamed on the University of Minnesota Vice President & Chief Information Officer Candidate Webcasts page.

Read the full Search Update 11/22/11 message and see the Candidate Forums and Receptions page for details.

1. Visit this blog regularly
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3. Joining circles on Google+ (still to come)