STATE OF COLLEGE COMPUTING:
Some of you might wonder what the Computing Services
Department does for our college. To put it simply, we are
here to serve you. Last year, a lot of you benefited from our
services:
DESKTOP SUPPORT TASKS BY DEPARTMENT
426
391
SUPPORT TASKS BY CATEGORY
254
246
203
177
84
67
Windows Devices, 850
Printers & Scanners
245
Supported and maintained college technical infrastructure
and assets. These assets are serviced through six teams: web,
servers, databases, desktop support, video, and design. Each
of these teams is managed by one of four full-time employees
and much of the work is performed by student employees.
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Apple Devices, 250
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Websites, 134
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Databases, 57
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Department wide, we completed almost 5,000 support tasks
Servers, 43
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Desktop support completed over 2,600 support tasks
Provided support for teaching and learning throughout the
college
Extended Classrooms: These are classes that are taken
online and off-campus. Students participate in class
through video conferencing. Dr. Jenny Pulsipher has
offered this approach for a semester abroad history
class.
Online Classes: Allow more students to take an
online class that follows the semester class schedule
(assignments, exams, etc.). American Heritage,
Psychology, Sociology, and Social Work have all used
this approach.
Flipping classes: Students are expected to study
materials outside of class and work on assignments
during class (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_
teaching). Dr. Bruce Brown has used this approach in
his classes.
Support for the new BYU Learning Suite.
Needless to say, we have been busy. More information about
our services is located on our website at fhsscomputing.byu.
edu. If you need a website, a database, data storage, hardware
or software support, consulting services, design services, video
services, or other technology needs, please call us at 422-7415.
Thanks,
Ken Millard
Director, Computing Services
Computer tip of the week: If your
computer says “Printer out of Paper,” this
problem cannot be solved by continuously
clicking the OK button.
DESKTOP SUPPORT UPDATES!
Have you ever thought to yourself, “I wonder what in the world the Desktop Support guys/gals did during the
summer when a lot of the students and faculty are gone”? Well you are in luck because I would like to briefly
give you a heads up on a few things we worked on. This may interest you or it may just put you to sleep in
which case you now have a good excuse when your boss finds you sleeping at your desk!!
So here are a few items we did this summer:
1.
Many of you have heard or seen Windows 8. This is Microsoft’s new operating system mainly build for
tablet PC’s but will work with any windows computer. Windows 8 is very different from what you may be
used to. We are currently testing and evaluating this new operating system to see how it would work with
our environment and if all the software packages work properly. We are not ready to push this out to the
college. My best guess would be that it won’t be pushed out anytime this year. If or when we move to this it
will be slowly pushed out and individual training may have to be taken to help with the learning curve.
2.
During the summer we were busy installing new computers. Both faculty/staff and lab computers need
to get upgraded. This year we have about 8 labs that will be getting upgrades. There will be a total of 120
computers replaced in these various labs. We will have about 70-80 faculty and staff who are up for computer replacements. We started on these over the summer and will continue the process throughout the
year.
3.
The summer and fall periods are times when faculty, both new and old, need equipment moved from
one room to another. We ask that you call us (2-7415 option 1) to have us move your computer equipment.
When computers move we need to make a record of the move in our inventory and re-label the computers.
4.
The last item you may want to know about is the physical inventory that needs to be done this year. It
has been several years since my group has come around to all the offices and labs to verify equipment. It
shouldn’t take too long to just come in and scan your computer equipment and verify that it is correctly in
our system. This also gives us a chance to make any corrections and keep track of the enormous computer
inventory this college has.
As our customers, we are here to provide you the best service that we can. We may not know all the answers
but we will do our best to help you get a computer related problem solved.
- Gary Glade
PURCHASING SITE:
This fall, we will rollout a new computer request website. As you may know, the university generously allocates
$1,300 for your computers. This system will help us track computer requests and stay within our budgets:
Each Chair will review eligible candidates based on our four-year computer replacement cycle.
Candidates who are approved to receive a new computer will receive an email asking them to select a new
machine.
Candidates will navigate to the website and select a computer. We are happy to help you choose the best
machine for your needs. Some of these configurations cost more than $1,300 and will require justification. You
will also have the opportunity to select when you want to receive your new computer.
The department chair will review and approve or reject each request. If the approved system costs are
greater than the department budget of $1,300/computer, we will ask for additional funding to cover the more
expensive machines. There is no guarantee that we will receive that extra funding and adjustments may
become necessary.
After budget issues are resolved, Computing Services will contact candidates during their preferred timeframe
and schedule the installation of the new computer.
As always, please call Computing Services at 422-7415 if you have questions, issues, or suggestions!
TEC PODIUMS
OIT has recently changed the way that the TEC podiums work. They will no longer
contain any software outside of what we call our Core Software, which includes
Firefox, Chrome, Microsoft Office, and a few other utilities.
In order to meet the needs our faculty have for teaching specific software in the
classrooms around campus, we have created a website that will allow you to run
virtual versions of any software you need. If you run Internet Explorer (which I don’t
usually recommend), and go to http://fhssterminal.byu.edu you will be able to log in
and see a list of our virtual software, which currently includes the following titles:
ArcMap 10.1 (SP1)
Comprehensive Meta Analysis
Mplus 7
SPSS 21
Amos 21
NVivo 10
Stata SE 13
Matlab R2012b
Mathematica 9
We have been able to work with other areas on campus to make sure that our R
drive maps in all of the TEC podiums, Open Access labs and Library labs, in addition
to all FHSS computers. It is also available for use with these virtual versions of
software. In fact, it is probably the easiest way to access any kind of data, including
PowerPoint presentations for teaching and data sets for use in demonstration.
This is available to all FHSS faculty immediately. When you run these programs
on a TEC podium, it should look and feel just like it normally does, and any network
drives that map in your office will be available as well.
If you have any questions, concerns or additional software title you would need
for your teaching, please contact Matt Kieffer at 801-422-4373. We can also
demonstrate this for you if you would like to see how this works.
-Mathew Kieffer
REMOTE ACCESS:
MOBILE SITES
We do have the ability now in the college to
provide remote access to files stored on our
servers, namely your S and R drives. We
are able to provide access through a web
page (http://fhssremote.byu.edu), as well
as through SFTP and WebDAV. This would
allow you to securely download, edit, and
re-upload files from any location in the world.
Right now, setup for this is a manual process
for each user, so we would need individual
requests for anyone who would like to access
this service. Please call Matt Kieffer (801422-4373) if you have any questions.
Did you know about our FHSS mobile site
(fhssmobile.byu.edu)? Mobile phones that browse to
our FHSS home page (fhss.byu.edu) and department
web pages will be redirected their appropriate page
in the mobile site. These pages contain basic contact
information and a link back to the full site.
Feel free to try it: take out your phone and navigate to
econ.byu.edu. You will be redirected to the economics
mobile site. If you click on the banner at the top, you
will be redirected to the College mobile page with tabs
for other departments and other useful information.
For suggestions and requests, please contact FHSS
Computing Services at 422-7415.
DATA & INFORMATION
Did you know or even guess that in one minute YouTube users upload 48 hours of new videos.
Email users send 204,166,667 messages in the time it takes your minute hand to make one full rotation on your watch, you probable feel that you received most of the emails.1
Everyone needs data or information, and there is more than enough
for everyone.
Having data is one thing; knowing how to manage it, and use it is another thing.
The College and the University have excellent tools to help you with your data. From acquiring the
data, storing, and analyzing it. Let us help you, please call 2-2833
Tools that we can help with:
Qualtrics support for surveys data collections. Qualtrics is full of rich features in customizing
the questions to the respondent answers, thinking and attitude. The user friendly programing
interface makes it very easy for you to, skip unneeded questions, display the important questions
and merge answers and questions to form the best question to secure the truth you are looking
for. As of Dec 2013 BYU has 407,780 Responses, sent our 6,062 new surveys and has 8,459 users
Data Base Design, create and upgrade. We have been able to reduce the number of databases
in the college from 320 to just over 100, through the use of better tools to manage research,
department or college information; using SharePoint, New Access, SQL Server, with Multidimensional Analysis, data warehousing, power view, Power pivot and reporting tools for the web.
We have File maker. We can help get AIM and Alumni data. If we can help assist with your data or
database please give us a call.
BYU Super Computer lab offers a total of 12,100 CPU cores and 30 TB of memory across 896
computing nodes which is available for you and your research assistances tackling large
computing problems.2 You will need an account on the system to run your programs. The super
Computer currently has SAS 3.9 , R 2.15.2 Gaussian, MatLab3 and many others. click here to see
the complete list https://marylou.byu.edu/documentation/apps/softwareModuleList
Excel from Microsoft has several powerful new add-ons that you may find very useful for
research and data analysis. If you are interested in learning more about the add-in please let me
know. We will be featuring the add-in in our monthly tips and tricks.
-Bruce Burgon
http://www.visualnews.com/2012/06/19/how-much-data-created-every-minute/?view=infographic
https://marylou.byu.edu/ BYU Super computer
3
https://marylou.byu.edu/documentation/apps/guide/
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2