AGENDA ITEM BACKGROUND
TO: GOVERNING BOARD
DATE
FROM: PRESIDENT
January 10, 2011
SUBJECT:
Information Technology Update
REASON FOR BOARD CONSIDERATION
ENCLOSURE(S)
ITEM NUMBER
INFORMATION
Page 1 of 8
E.6
This update takes a look back at the accomplishments of 2010 as well as a look forward to
Cabrillo‟s developing Technology picture for 2011.
Project Management
In Fall 2010, IT staff evaluated over a dozen potential project management tools, including popular
options such as Basecamp and Manymoon. We have now committed to using Smartsheet for at
least the next year, at which time we will evaluate our satisfaction. Smartsheet provides a way to
manage tasks, timelines, project documentation and communication in a streamlined, shareable
and web-enabled format. In addition to strong functionality, this software tool has the additional
benefit of being used by staff in the Career Education and Economic Development (CEED) division
as well as by Title V staff (STARS), opening the door to sharing knowledge, training and project
management across departments and divisions.
Data Center Upgrade and Server Consolidation
On November 29, 2010 the computer room AC unit for the 1300 building data center failed. While a
plan to consolidate data centers and provide redundant cooling for the 1300 data center was
already under development, the AC failure clearly increased the importance of moving quickly from
planning to implementation.
IT staff have worked with M&O staff and an air conditioning engineer to develop a plan that will
provide a stable, adequately cooled environment that safeguards our mission critical servers,
switches and data. The plan involves some modifications to the 1300 building to improve energy
efficiency and to allow for the inclusion of the servers currently housed in the 1200 building. The
use of green technology to allow cool outside air to be utilized will result in the savings of
approximately $3,000 per year in electricity usage. The decommissioning of the AC unit being used
to cool the 1200 building data center will result in a similar savings in money and energy.
The plan calls for the installation of two enterprise-level data center air conditioners to provide
failover protection in the eventuality that one unit fails. Improved ducting, enforcement of hot/cold
zones, and the utilization of outside air economizer are expected to provide improved cooling and a
50% reduction in energy usage over the former system.
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Administrator Initiating Item:
Brian King
Craig Hayward
Academic and Professional Matter
If yes, Faculty Senate Agreement
Senate President Signature
 Yes  No
 Yes  No
Final Disposition
Web site migration
In fall 2010 the Cabrillo College website underwent a total overhaul. While a project of this scope is
bound to result in some broken links and growing pains, the overall process went remarkably
smoothly and with exceptional results. Cabrillo now has a more student-centric, modern website
with improved organization and intuitive navigation.
The new website is designed to bypass the bottleneck created by having a single web master by
creating a distributed system and process of maintaining pages by those individuals who are most
intimately familiar with their pages‟ contents. IT would like to give many thanks to Francine Van
Meter and Kip Nead of the Teaching and Learning Center for their support of this process. Also,
many thanks are due to Kristin Fabos, Evelyn Hirsch, and Jana Marcus in the Marketing &
Communications Department for their leadership on the development of the new look and feel and
also for their work with numerous focus groups to create the new, streamlined navigation system.
Finally, John Mauceri, our lone web master, truly deserves recognition for the skill, integrity and
devotion he brought to the development and implementation of the new web site.
Technology plan
The next iteration of the college‟s technology plan began its development in fall 2010. Major
milestones include:
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IT Retreat
Datatel Action Planning
Establishment of Tech Plan Development Committee
Technology Project Prioritization meetings with each component
Establishing an outline of the next technology plan
Additionally, the Tech Plan Development Committee has identified themes that will run throughout
the next tech plan, including Virtualization, Security, and Green Computing. Next milestones
include a first draft of the plan to be completed in January and the gathering of input and feedback
at various venues during spring 2011, with the final report ready for the Board meeting in June
2011.
Computer Technology Center (CTC) – 2010 Highlights
CTC staff assessed over 1,000 personal computers in Cabrillo‟s labs and deployed Windows 7 on
those computers which could benefit from the upgrade.
In fall 2010, the CTC served 2,714 students who logged in for a combined 53,282 hours in the CTC
– about 20 hours per student, on average.
The CISCO lab moved into new facilities in the CTC in fall 2010.
CTC staff salvaged memory modules from older systems to upgrade Transfer Center computers to
1 GB RAM.
Assessment lab computers were configured to accommodate distance education test proctoring
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Additionally, CTC staff also collaborated with other IT staff on the following projects of note in 2010:
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Assisted with the Stroke Center and Radiology computer move and setup
Assisted with switch installations in the new Health and Wellness buildings
Evaluated alternative anti-virus & anti-malware security applications
Researched virtualization of computer lab PCs
New nursing simulation lab and new nursing computer lab installed
New Medical Assisting laptops configured
New cart and laptops for room 515 installed and configured
Upgraded student domain controllers to Windows Server 2008
CommVault data backup enhancement
IT purchased data deduplication software that removes redundant files from server and network
drive backups thereby improving the efficiency and stability of critical backup processes, allowing
our existing hardware to keep pace with growing data demands without sacrificing reliability. Our
network administrators have received training in the use of the new deduplication capabilities from
CommVault personnel and are already seeing enormous benefits from this deployment.
Datatel/Technical Applications update
Regulatory
Custom Title 5 course repetition changes were in place for Wintersession Registration 2010. This
limits a student to 4 funded W‟s in a course.
Collaborated with the Instruction Office on the CB21 project to define levels below transfer in
English, Math, Read & ESL was completed. Added additional levels for CB21-Levels-BelowTransfer and also new Taxonomy of Program (TOP) codes. IT sent the changes to the
Chancellor‟s Office CO via the CB00 MasterCourse File update process.
MIS requirement to report Migrant Worker Status, Major is complete. The WebAdvisor Verify My
Student Info form collects CTE and Matric MIS data required by term.
The state has rewritten all MIS programs and error reports based on their SQL implementation.
Hopefully this is a work in progress as the error reports are not helpful and we used an Excel
spreadsheet developed by College of the Canyons in order to identify the errors and submit 2010
Fall MIS.
Software
Software upgrades completed:
WebAdvisor 3.15 – in house
Java 6 – Datatel consultant
SaValet 2.4 - Datatel consultant
Datatel Daemon 1.5.1 – Datatel consultant
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Unidata 7.2 upgrade requested; approved; and downloaded
Programming support ends 12/31/10
Full tech support ends 3/31/11
Limited tech support ends 6/30/11
Schedule for January or spring break with Datatel Services?
eCommerce 4.0 upgrade plus Payment Gateway installation and training are to be scheduled. With
this release Colleague no longer supports the entry, storage, or transmission of sensitive credit
card information. The objective of this release is to support institutions in their pursuit of PCI
compliance.
Switched support for the Sun server that runs Datatel (aka Brain) to Oracle.
Training
Purchased Datatel‟s UI 4.0 Learning Services Package and have held training sessions with major
offices.
Analysts are training and becoming proficient in working with Colleague Studio, Datatel‟s new
programming tool. Analysts participated in a Colleague Studio training webinar on 8/26 from 10am
to 1pm.
Staff members participated in Dreamweaver training in order to support the departments that will
be building their own forms for the document imaging project.
Three staff members attended the DUG conference from March 28 through March 31.
Participated in several discussions with Datatel and other vendors regarding the creation of a new
SQL warehouse to support integrated reporting and research. Also outlined the pathway for moving
moving Datatel Colleague from Unidata to a SQL database backend.
Three staff members attended the 3CDUG meeting held at Ohlone College on Wednesday, July 28
focusing on sessions covering MIS, SQL, virtualization, Disaster Recovery, and FERPA rules.
Core Team
The Core Team has been reconvened and meetings are now being scheduled for four times a
year. Meetings were held on June 23, September 29, and December 15. After the first meeting, a
subcommittee was formed to review procedures for changing addresses in Datatel.
Administrative Services projects
Completed 4 classes for Business Office on Excel and Datatel reporting.
Provided QueryBuilder and Datatel file/element structure training for Business Office.
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Prepared training material for importing Budget Workbook RTReports into Excel and Advanced
Filtering. Updated the Budget Workbook How-To.
Rebuilt the Leave Report as not all balances were not summing correctly.
Created a RTReport for Contract Leave.
In progress with the Higher One project which was approved late September for a January
implementation.
Includes: Refund to debit/credit card or bank direct deposit
Spring 2011 Fin Aid pilot
If Fin Aid, any balance will go through H1
Mailing to students when group is identified (complete)
ATM‟s to be setup with phone line (to bank); students can use any ATM
Will send file with transaction detail to Higher One.
Instruction projects
Incorporated new „Web Advisor Email the Whole Class‟ functionality into custom online rosters.
Custom Late Add codes were successfully piloted with online students only for the Spring 2010
semester.
Worked with Instruction and Student Services for rollout of Add Codes for all sections beginning
with summer classes.
Implemented Datatel‟s Cohort module for Learning Community registration in Fall 2010. This
included research, testing, training, setup, and monitoring.
Student Services projects
Completed Phase 2 of online grading modifications which included:
Stamping the section as completed.
Modifying the form to show faculty which of their sections are completed.
Modifying the program with the logic to know it's completed.
Create a printable Excel version of the WA form that shows who was graded.
Create report of Incompletes for Paula.
Create automatic emailing that Paula can send.
Create report for Paula of outstanding grades.
Financial Aid 2010-2011 file suite building, rollover, rule table build in the test account and then in
the production environment. Updated all computed columns to point to new file suite once built.
Created and tested new rules and parameters for student evaluation.
All grant funded classes were initially coded with an NA attendance type so these classes would be
auto-excluded from the 320 report. We recoded to create an NA type code for each attendance
type as we also use attendance types for programs like short term date calculation.
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Developing plan to assist A&R with cleanup of outstanding issues that have built up over the last 5
years. For example: Addresses, Institutions (e.g., High School of origin), SB11-Ed Status/SB15Enroll Status, Repeats, Duplicates, Deceased, and Documentation.
The Manager of Technical Applications modified the Research Data Warehouse to accommodate
new MIS fields, adding: First-Name-Partial; Multi-Ethnicity; Basic-Skills-Waiver-Status; and CourseControl-Number.
Document Imaging Update
The document imaging team selected Softdocs as our vendor. Contracts were signed. Hardware
and software has been installed.
Phase I of the Document Imaging Project (Financial Aid) is nearing successful completion.
Software requirements for Softdocs implementation:
Files were created and are provided nightly for Active Directory authentication.
A dynamic file of demographic data for auto fill of student info on eforms has been provided.
Automatic update of Comm Mgmt files as eforms are received from students is in progress.
Communication pathways among servers have been established and tested.
Phase 2 of Softdocs project for A&R and Counseling is on hold until a new Storage Arena Network
(SAN) is installed.
New Health and Wellness Building
Network wiring in Building 2 was completed in June. IT Staff played a large role in getting the
network switches installed, and connecting users. The staff computers and phones for Dental
Hygiene and Radiology are up and running.
In July, the network wiring for building 2 was completed and the users from the stroke center were
assisted in connecting their computer and lab resources. Connection of the wireless network, the
HVAC network, and the Fire Alarm network were also completed. Fine-tuning of multimedia carts
and classrooms will continue with additional wiring and switches being added.
Smart Classrooms and Multimedia
During the summer, staff initiated a full maintenance review of smart classrooms. This room-byroom review included cleaning of projector filters, lenses and assessment of remaining bulb life.
The ability to network the ceiling mounted projectors is planned as a project for the 2010/11 year.
Lee Schulz has been revisiting older smart classrooms and improving how things are strapped
down and secured in the Smart Panels. A number of classrooms are being reviewed for the cost
and ability to upgrade or replaced equipment that in many cases is over seven years old.
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Phone System
Removal of the phone connections that were used for HawkTalk resulted in reduced phone
charges for the campus. Our voice mail system was updated and ongoing updates of the system
continue. A new “Fax online” feature was rolled out to the entire campus. This new feature allows
staff and faculty to send faxes via a web interface. The intuitive process starts by entering the word
FAX into any web browser window at Cabrillo and logging in with your regular login and password
Network Administration
The SARS Grid and SARS track (for Counseling Schedules and Tracking) software packages were
updated and upgraded. The Bookstore received assistance with an upgrade of their Server and
Cash Registers. New security certificates that help our computer users to receive a trusted and
stable network were updated. Two virtual servers that provide automatic security updates were
brought on line. The new Doc-e-Scan software servers were installed and configured. A new
additional log-on and access group was deployed to allow new students to access the new
Financial Aid document server software.
Help Desk and Computer Systems Maintenance
While our computer technicians often work in the background to provide a smoothly functioning
work environment, sometimes their actions border on the heroic. While there are many instances
that could be provided in a list, the following email provides a better sense of how these everyday
heroics play out.
Craig and Ray,
When IT does its job well, no one knows you're there. Sadly, that means you are often the unsung heroes.
However, when technology fails us, the IT support staff takes on mythical, super-hero proportions. Today
was one of those days when I needed a rescue and I wanted to write and let you know how fabulous your
team is.
We had two webinars scheduled, today - one at 8:30am and one at 4:30pm, for Nursing students who will be
using a new online system to demonstrate compliance with all of our program requirements. Successful
navigation of this system is an absolute necessity for the program. Without these webinars the students really
were at a stand still. To pull off the webinars we needed a special blend of technology all working
simultaneously and in unison, all in a room we have never used for an activity like this. We have rescheduled
three times due to challenges we faced with the vendor, and were originally scheduled in a different building.
We only confirmed this date and location last week. To make things even more challenging, I was out sick
yesterday and could not set-up or trouble-shoot all of the equipment.
Enter the super-heroes: Wade, Holly, Lee and Ann came up to the classroom yesterday and spent quite a
while trouble shooting problems and finally got everything to work. Then, when I came in at 7:30 this
morning, more problems were here to greet me. Cheryl and Ann responded to my SOS call almost
immediately and were here by five after 8:00 and had everything back in working order by 8:20, ten minutes
before our scheduled webinar. YAY TEAM! Not only was everyone extremely responsive time wise, totally
resourceful problem-solving wise, but as usual, so good humored and patient with us in the midst of our
technology crisis.
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On behalf of the students who now have time-critical, necessary resources, a thousand thank you's. On
behalf of all of us in Nursing who know we have the support we need to run our programs, a thousand more.
And from me, baked goods are on the way, and my eternal gratitude because I literally cannot do my job
without all of you!
Happy, happy holidays to you all!
-Jill Gallo
Nursing and Allied Health Programs Coordinator
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