November 2009 It Status Report

Information Technology Activity and Status Report November 2009

Announcements for Faculty and Staff Meetings Contact Information Technology Anytime Support Desk Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (310) 506-HELP (4357) or (866) 767-8623 Tech Central for Students Payson Library, 2nd Floor Mon. - Thur. 10:00 am- 8:00 pm Fridays 10:00 am- 6:00 pm (310) 506-4811 Office of the Chief Information Officer and Vice Provost (310) 506-4501 Request IT Services http://services.pepperdine.edu/it /forms

NetworkID Profile Implementation. Starting Thursday, November 19, all faculty, students, and staff who log into web applications via Pepperdine's Central Authentication Service (CAS) will be required to create a NetworkID profile. Use these links to learn more about or create a NetworkID profile. Users who do not have a NetworkID profile created before November 16 will be required to create a profile before logging into a CAS application.

Faculty Support and Services Online Course Evaluations in WaveNet. Faculty and students can now access online course evaluations by logging into Wavenet. Once inside WaveNet, course evaluations can be found by selecting "Faculty" or "Student" tabs, followed by "Academic Resources" in the left navigation area. Then, select "Online Course Evaluations" under the Academic Services area. Faculty and students will be automatically logged into the course evaluation system so they no longer need to remember their external password. Process for Posting Student Grades Has Changed. In order to provide adequate technical support for the new online course evaluation system, the grading process within PeopleSoft has changed. The Registrar's office will now post all grades to ensure that there is no conflict between the closing dates for online course evaluations and when grades are released to students. Faculty will still approve grades within PeopleSoft, but the Registrar's office will post the grades at dedicated intervals. Photo Class Rosters Now Available in WaveNet. Student photos are now available on class rosters. When users view class roster information in WaveNet, they will find a link for a "Photo Roster." The photo roster displays individual student names and associated photographs. The

1

Information Technology Activity and Status Report, November 2009

photographs are pulled from the Pepperdine Student ID card system; if a student has not yet taken a photograph for their Student ID card, their photograph will not appear on the photo roster.

Administrative Support for the University Rate Reduction for Blackberry Enterprise Service. Beginning December 1, the Blackberry Enterprise Service (BES) license recharge rate will be reduced from $50/month to $40/month per account. This reduction is made possible through the volume subscription and discount from CDW-G. BES allows University employees to access their Pepperdine email on their Blackberry. Obtain a BES license. Pepperdine's Email System to be Upgraded. Pepperdine IT staff are testing Exchange Server 2007, an upgrade to Pepperdine's current email Exchange Server. The new server will provide improved compatibility with Apple's Mail, Address Book, and iCal applications, but will not affect current Microsoft Office Outlook users. Pepperdine Webmail users will notice that their email platform looks more like Microsoft Office Outlook. The current testing will ensure that there is little to no disruption in email service for mobile devices. Phase one of the upgrade begins this December and will include IT staff and select University stakeholders; phase two, which begins in spring 2010, includes full migration of all faculty, staff, and student email to Exchange Server 2007. Spam Filter Improves Email Experience. The central spam filter service checks all external mail transmissions to Pepperdine email addresses and attempts to stop spam. On a typical day, Pepperdine receives over half a million computer connections attempting to spam the University community, and rejects about 80 percent of those computers outright as well-known spam bots. In the last 30 days, 4.86 million total messages were received; 2.64 million of them were identified as spam and blocked. Computer Registration System Update. The Computer Registration system, implemented in August 2008, has improved the blocking of viruses, malware, or copyright infringement on campus. An improvement was recently made to the computer registration system that directs a blocked user to an informative web page that explains why their computer was blocked and what to do next. Under the previous system, there was no notice and many users thought the network connection was broken. Windows 7 Testing at Pepperdine. On October 22, Microsoft released the latest version of its Windows operating system, Windows 7. For the past several months, IT staff members tested and will continue to test the operating system's compatibility with Blackboard, PeopleSoft applications, PGP Whole Disk Encryption, and Trend Micro virus protection software. When testing is complete, Windows 7 will be available on new University computer purchases for departments and staff. Discounted Personal Purchase of Window 7. Pepperdine students and employees may purchase Windows 7 beginning the week of November 16 for their home computers for a discounted price of $49.99 at Tech Central in Payson Library (in-person purchase only). Windows 7 retails for $319.99. New home computers purchased through Tech Central can request the Windows 7 operating system.

Infrastructure, Systems, and Networking Updates Single Sign-on Implementation for Pepperdine Applications. The new single sign-on service, which allows users to log in only once to access multiple applications, was implemented for sev2

Information Technology Activity and Status Report, November 2009

eral web-based applications at Pepperdine University including Sakai, library databases, iTunes U, VoiceThread, and the NetworkID profile. For one month, from September 28 to October 27, the service averaged 2,500 sign-ons per day. In addition to providing convenience to end users, this service makes application use more secure.

Stellent: To be Decommissioned on November 30. The previous document management system, Stellent, will be decommissioned on November 30, 2009. All users have been notified of the scheduled decommission. If there are any previous Stellent users without access to Nolij, the new document management system, they should contact Scott Bolan, developer, at [email protected] to request access.

Benchmarks and Accountability Statistics Show Improvement in Anytime Support Desk Operations. Jerry Hoover, director of Anytime Support at Pepperdine IT, recently compared Anytime Support Desk statistics from Spring 2008, when the Anytime Support Desk was managed at Pepperdine University to Spring 2009, when the Anytime Support Desk was outsourced to SunGard Higher Education. Under SunGard, the average speed to answer the phone decreased to 55 seconds (from 90 seconds), and the number of calls abandoned by the caller decreased by 10 percent. Also, the number of tickets, or support requests, closed by the Anytime Support Desk on the first call increased by 24 percent. Anytime Support Desk Support Statistics for October. During October 2009, there were 1,404 requests for support managed through the Anytime Support Desk. Of these requests, 79 percent were resolved within one day and 90 percent were resolved in fewer than five days. The average wait time for individuals calling the Anytime Support Desk was 65 seconds. Seventy-five percent of requests were resolved by the Anytime Support Desk on the first call. Anytime Support Desk User Survey Results for October. Through an automated feedback process, all Anytime Support Desk callers are provided the opportunity to complete a web-based satisfaction survey. In October 2009, 116 (9%) of 1,357 survey requests sent to customers were completed. The five-question survey uses a “1 to 9” sliding scale with “7.00-9.00” equal to Excellent. Month

Response Rate

Overall Satisfaction

Response Timeliness

Skill Set

Communication

Resolution Timeliness

August

9%

7.50

7.57

7.85

7.48

7.50

September

7%

7.94

7.75

8.15

7.8

7.74

October

9%

7.54

7.61

7.77

7.50

7.53

3

Information Technology Activity and Status Report, November 2009

Staff Support by Major Area. All Pepperdine IT staff allocate their day-to-day efforts using client, project, and task codes; using this data, total division-wide staff effort for October 2009 was distributed as follows: University Administration Support

1,600 hours

10.73%

$84,719.82

Colleges, Academic Affairs

3,060 hours

20.53%

$81,684.49

University-Wide, Common Services

5,109 hours

34.27%

$237,646.74

IT Administration and Management

3,154 hours

21.16%

$131,185.64

General Overhead (Leave, Holiday)

1,983 hours

13.31%

$83,899.17

14,907 hours

100%

$619,135.86

Total:

Support for Schools. Pepperdine IT staff effort provided to Pepperdine Schools, is as follows: Month

Seaver

GSBM

GSEP

SOL

SPP

August

61.24%

19.85%

16.60%

0.73%

1.58%

September

56.21%

22.71%

17.38%

1.86%

1.86%

October

56.48%

23.14%

17.18%

0.83%

2.37%

Conferences and Presentations by Pepperdine IT Pepperdine IT Staff Presented at Educause 2009. Several Pepperdine IT staff presented at the EDUCAUSE 2009 Annual Conference in Denver this month. Gerard Flynn, director of the Technology and Learning group, and Thomas Hoover, director of Instructional Technology, presented "Virtual Desktops: 60% Cheaper, but Are They Worth It?" Their presentation focused on Pepperdine University's 12-month study and pilot to assess the costs and feasibility of replacing desktop computers with virtual machines. Virtual machines, also known as NComputing, allow multiple users to share a single computer processor. Flynn and Hoover shared information gathered during the pilot on expenses, power usage, user satisfaction, and ease of administration. They also shared recommendations for installation. Over the past year, Pepperdine University as a whole has saved more than $100,000 in hardware and energy consumption costs using NComputing. In addition, Flynn and Hoover also presented a poster about emerging technologies and the best practices for using those technologies at Pepperdine University. Pepperdine vice provost and chief information officer, Timothy Chester, presented along side Ross Canning, executive assistant to the vice provost and CIO, and JoAnn McNayr, assistant to the deputy CIO, on "Competency-Based Career Ladders for IT Professionals." Their presentation explored how CIOs can adopt competency-based, human resource practices in their information technology organizations to enhance the versatility of IT professionals. In 2007, Pepperdine Information Technology embarked on a project to create competency-based career ladders for all IT professionals across the institution and reorganize IT practices to emphasize versatility. This presentation highlighted the success of these initiatives.

4

Information Technology Activity and Status Report, November 2009

Other News SCCUR 2010 Conference Preparation Begins. The Technology and Learning group has begun to prepare to host the fall 2010 Southern California Conference on Undergraduate Research SCCUR. The conference draws awareness to faculty-mentored undergraduate research and other scholarly activities within institutions. The Technology and Learning staff is developing a web application that will allow undergraduate students to submit conference presentation proposals online. Monthly Status & Activity Report. If you would like to be added to the distribution list for this report, please contact Dana Hoover at extension x4948. Monthly IT Status Report archives are available online at http://services.pepperdine.edu/it/about/status-reports.htm.

5

Information Technology Activity and Status Report, November 2009