Bovine Online: The Internet Software Package for UC Davis, Bovine Online, is in its second version for the 97-98 year. Available on CD or diskette to UCD Affiliates; Win95, MAC, and Win3.1 versions have the latest Eudora Pro, Netscape Web Browser, PPP communication software, AntiVirus software, other internet tools, and a 90 page manual included in this 2.0 version. Also new this year; support has been added for outside ISP's, ResNet, and DANR. Purchase price is $14.99, upgrades are available for $10.99.
ResNet: Training is scheduled for 9/18 & 9/19. Tier 1 support people (48 site attendants) will be trained. Approximately 4,000 ports will be available in the dorms. UCD Housing is expecting about a 70% connect rate. We will be supporting DHCP rather than static addresses. Students register their ethernet card MAC addresses with Housing in order to gain access. In addition to teams of Tier 1 people, extensive web documentation is in place to encourage residents to handle their own connections. I.T. is providing incoming residents with a subset of Bovine Online, in order to ease software installation and help standardize student software.
Technology Support Program: This continues to be a key piece in campus technology efforts. FIS, SIS, PPS, and Network21 rely heavily upon the members for support at the departmental level. Training programs are regularly revised and augmented to ensure both readiness for such rollouts and attractiveness of the program to the members.
Temp. Pool for Technical Support: The campus developed a resource for temporary technical support during the Net21 implementation. Casual employees were recruited at the Computer Resource Specialist II level to aid departments in network installation and configuration. It is becoming a permanent service with continuing calls for support beyond the network scope and a regular supply of temporary service providers.
Technology Training: We will open two computer labs permanently dedicated to staff training later this month. This coming year the I.T./Staff Development and Professional Services partnership will offer over 300 classes to staff at no charge. After a review of the offering we have decided to join with other UC campuses in acquiring the CBT internet and LAN-based training. This decision was made after an initial arrangement for Gartner Group's internet training proved unsatisfactory.
SIGUCCS Conference: UCD is handling the registration for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference scheduled for November 9-11 in Monterey. We are presenting several papers as well as the user documentation for DaFIS. Historically this has been a practically based conference termed very useful by the attendees. Information can be found at http://www.acm.org/siguccs/fall97/index.htm.
H.R. Activities: UCD has established the Employment Advisory Committee to address recruitment issues. I.T. is represented. A major component is the consideration of how technology can be used to improve the process.
I.T. will continue to use a revised training/retention contract with new employees with the understanding that it is probably unenforceable and certainly will not apply to staff subject to a collective bargaining agreement.
Our broadbanding efforts for programmer/analysts are temporarily transforming into the designation of a P/A for each of the six Professional and Support Staff ranges.
We have a goal of developing a web-based employee orientation program this fiscal year.
At the request of campus staff recruiters an I.T. employee attends technical job fairs with the recruiter.
The campus is moving toward background checks for all new employees. This is in response to the growing workplace violence and in addition to normal reference checks. The focus is on past convictions and related arrests not credit history or educational background. This practice is already in place at UCDHS.
I.T. initiated a renewed focus on customer service last month with a two-day training session by Ouellette & Associates. Senior I.T. management, including the A.V.C., attended to ensure alignment on issues and methods. There are on-going efforts designed to enhance our overall effectiveness with our clients. We anticipate similar training efforts focused on rational problem solving/decision making processes and overall performance management systems.
Year 2000: We have continued our efforts to enlighten our campus about the issues surrounding Y2K. We have published one article in the August IT Times intended to identify the problem itself. A follow-up article will be published in the September issue that provides a procedure that can be used by any campus department to manage the research and modifications needed for the Y2K challenge. In the fall 97 we anticipate a presentation on resources available to help campus departments research product compliance. Later in the academic year we plan to have demonstrations on:
LAWR Project: This is a pilot effort, initiated this summer, to determine effective ways to introduce i.t. in an academic department. We have developed templates for Land, Air, and Water Resources professional faculty (c.v.)web pages, departmental pages, and course pages. These are designed to be fast to load, and easy to maintain; in fact, administrative assistants are expected to keep them updated where feasible. We have also defined ten faculty workshops to be launched in the Fall. We are currently working on assessment criteria, with input from the School of Education. The next pilot project will involve the Division of Social Sciences and their TSC's. The results of the initial project will be presented at the SIGUCCS Conference in November.
Class Mailing Lists: The automated process to create these lists is very popular. Last year about 250 classes used the feature.
Early allocation of computer accounts: In our continuing efforts to reduce the activity levels during the early weeks of fall quarter we have registered over 3700 new students for their accounts during the summer orientations sessions.
The Arbor: The latest New Media facility opened July 21. The faculty whose broadly represented participation was essential to the design enthusiastically received it. Ten to twenty faculty per week visit the site to discover if i.t. can enhance their course offerings.
DaFIS: (comments provided by Accounting & Financial Services) The DaFIS system went live July 1st. The launch was successful, and the feeds, including the payroll feed from OP, all worked well. The number of users accessing the system started with 500 on the first day, and since the third week we have been averaging 750 users per day. Concurrent use of the system normally peaks during mid-afternoon with 420 users on the system simultaneously. To date about 200,000 documents have been created on the system, and we have posted almost 1.5 million entries to the General Ledger. Average response time has been 2 seconds. Average CPU utilization was at 55 percent for normal business hours during the first month. A fourth CPU was added to the Transaction Processing system August 4th, and since that time CPU utilization has been averaging 45 percent.
During the first few days we experienced some problems with the AFS file distribution system which were quickly resolved. One problem related to the AFS system failing to migrate updated forms on the Linux clients was resolved by changing our AFS client servers over to HP UNIX machines.
One difficulty we encountered was the introduction of commodity code. With over 20,000 detailed commodity codes to choose from, users found it difficult and time consuming to identify the specific one to select. By instructing users in the availability and use of generic commodity codes we were able to reduce the frustration that users were experiencing in creating their purchasing documents.
We are continuing to refine our reporting of information in the Decision Support System, addressing concerns about how object codes are rolled up and the level of detailed provided in specific reports, in order to make DS more understandable to the user.
The deployment plan included preparations for SWAT teams to provide on-site support to departments on an as needed basis. These teams were not required as much as we had anticipated, with most of the problems being able to be handled by telephone through the DaFIS Help Desk. With the exception of VMTH, which has its own in-house system that poses a particular challenge to coordinate and interface with the DaFIS system, all units are reporting success with their ability to process transactions.
Alumni -- University Relations: This business unit is gearing up to replace its transaction processing information management system. The old system, which manages alumni data, is beyond upgrading and will require wholesale replacement. University Relations is working with IT on a consulting basis only and will likely hire it's own staff to manage this project. However, they have begun expressing interest in using IT developers to assist in some aspects of the analysis and coding during implementation.
Data Administration: A Data Administration Steering Committee has been charged by the Executive Vice Chancellor to investigate the feasibility, scope, and budget of a Data Administration function at UCD. The committee has met four times and is considering a Data Administration pilot project that includes the following activities: Strategic Data Planning, Data Element Definitions, Data Standards, Access Policy, Office of Record, and Data Access. The pilot for the Strategic Data Planning activity would address the analysis of student outcomes as it relates to academic planning. The pilot for the Data Access activity would involve the implementation of a data warehouse consisting of a Student subject area as a first module.
Last updated: October 15, 1997