http://www.csuchico.edu/ires/plans/utac
Friday, April 15, 2011
10:00am, MLIB 338
x Joe Alexander
Debra Barger x Rebecca Cagle x Scott Dickerson x Kathy Fernandes
Lorraine Gardiner
Jeremy Pollard for Robyn Hafer
X Ben Juliano
Ben Levitt
X Andy Miller
X Deborah Furgason for Jaime Nelson x Margaret Owens x Dan Reed x Tom Rosenow x Seema Sehrawat x Phyllis Weddington
1. Approval of meeting minutes from March 11, 2011
Approved.
X Brooke Banks
X Sarah Blakeslee x Scott Claverie
X Lori Fuentes x Cris Guenter
Nancy Hermanson
Beth Kissinger
Paul Melcon x Andrea Mox x Brian Oppy
Bill Post x Jerry Ringel
Carol Sager
Mike Spiess x James Tyler x Joe Wills x Lerita Ringel
2. Announcements and Additions/Changes to Agenda

Sara Blakeslee announced a Digital Resource Platform Web seminar taking place on April 21 and hosted by
McGraw Hill. It is from 11:00 to 12:00 in MLIB 226. Digital tools will be demonstrated and cost is free.

Scott Claverie requested time to comment on current network issues.
3. IT Status Sheet
Ben Juliano asked if there were any questions regarding the IT Status sheet he sent out. No questions or comments.
4. Recent Network Issues
Scott Claverie reported there was a network outage over the weekend which affected the campus. After 4 hours of investigation they determined that one of the colleges made some changes to their network which brought down the campus network. Scott said they are now working with that college to ensure that the college’s network be managed by Scott’s department, reminding everyone that CSRV should be managing all networks for this very reason.
Dennis Partington is writing up a synopsis of what occurred, and Scott will be sending Bill Post a memo describing the events and the need to identify any other isolated networks in order to prevent similar occurrences in the future. Further discussion resulted regarding anyone’s experience encountering the network outage. One suggestion was to let faculty/staff know, after the problem is fixed, a summary of what happened (e.g. network was down for 4 hours on *date*, restored at *time*) so faculty will know what took place and can make decisions regarding homework assignments due (e.g. granting extension of due dates for students).
5. March 8 th ATAG Meeting Update/Information & Technology Strategic Plan Update
The last ATAG meeting included an update from Brooke regarding the Information & Technology strategic planning project. Many faculty from ATAG met with Brooke & Ben on March 25 to brainstorm further. They said the meeting went well, and feedback from attendees confirmed that the meeting was helpful, and that they

were able to think beyond the budget issues.
Brooke shared a working draft of the Technology Student Survey questions she posted on Sharepoint for all members to look at and provide feedback. She explained these are questions we could have in the survey. She encouraged anyone to submit questions, and to also make comments on the existing questions. Also, she set up a feedback log for everyone to rate the questions in an effort to determine what questions are most important. She said the goal is to keep the questionnaire down to about 10 questions total. She also explained how to look at version history in order to see what others have submitted.
Brooke said there is another list of questions for staff and faculty. She said they will address that in the near future.
Ben asked, what is the status of Sharepoint implementation on campus? Andy said they just closed out Phase 2, and they are beginning Phase 3. He said he hasn’t done any metrics yet on what is really being used. They are putting the creation of new team sites on hold at this time (currently have about 70). He said he attended a conference and learned that the point we are at is similar to others in various industries.
He said he wasn’t sure how CSU Chico compared to other CSU’s using Sharepoint. He did say he was contacted by CSU Channel Islands who have an interest in using our campus for some infrastructure support and then reimbursing us. He will update the group as needed.
6. Service Catalog (Jerry Ringel and Andrea Mox)
Jerry said he has been spearheading the charge to move to a more managed ITSM. Two of the biggest projects are Incident Management (e.g. trouble tickets) and Change Management. He said they went to a common tool about a year ago (the Footprints tool) to deal with Incident Management.
Jerry said his department has been working on a Service Catalog. Per ITSM, good practice is to build a menu
(service catalog) so people can find what to do and where to go for help.
Cris Guenter asked if this service catalog included office phones. Andrea Mox picked up the discussion here, explaining yes, the service catalog does include the campus phone system. She went on to present a demo of what the service catalog will look like on line.
Andrea said they have a team of three people who have been working on it comprised of Tony Dunn, Roberta
Roebuck, and Jeff Jaxon.
She said they could have used Footprints to build the Service Catalog, but they found it was limited. The structure they created is being tested within the IRES world right now. They designed it with expansion in mind.
They want everyone on campus to be able to use it, and they want other areas on campus to be able to build upon it (e.g. HR, or Business & Finance.) They chose to use the Confluence Wiki. This structure supports their ability to expand and the information can easily be managed and updated. The on-line catalog has search capabilities and the menus are broken into relative categories (tree-based). Some things will show up in more than one category, in order to accommodate different manners in which a person may search for a topic. It can be used on a broader level also.
Andrea said the Wiki allows forms to be used, and the forms are tied into Footprints. So the person who is requesting service and fills out an on-line form will hit “send” and that form is automatically sent to the person who takes care of the service (it by-passes the service desk altogether.) A suggestion was made to give examples in the forms of what type of information is expected.
Andrea explained that some services will say “Call Extension X ” (no on-line ability to request service.) An example is a password reset. It is important for the user to contact a person in order to confirm the person’s identity.
Ben asked if this would provide information to a new faculty member who is looking for help in developing a website. Andrea confirmed this would include that.
Scott asked if there is a go live date yet. Andrea said hopefully by fall. She also added, this is a living document and can (and will) certainly go live even though there may be additional things to add and/or update. The question was raised of how it will be advertised to the campus community and will people be offered training.
Andrea said they will be working closely with the AAS’s. They also plan to advertise to campus via All
Announce. They can schedule demos for large groups to attend. It was also asked if it will be available to

Foundation Staff. Andrea said it can be used by anybody.
Another question was raised regarding checks and balances. For example, if a person orders a service that is going to cost their department money, does that person have the authority to spend the money? It was explained that the current policy of sending a CAF to the department responsible for completing the work would still be in place. The end user will still need to get the same signature on the CAF in order to get the job requested completed, if there is a charge involved.
Andrea said if you are interested in pilot testing the catalog, let her know.
7. IT Emergency Notification System (Jerry Ringel)
Jerry showed a flow chart depicting the process for communicating IT Emergencies to the appropriate departments. He said historically, he discovered the process needed fine-tuning because of a power outage in
Butte Hall about a year ago. At that time it was discovered that the generator behind Butte Hall only kept the lights and elevator on in that building. Now he has developed a process (which ties into ITSM change management) for which key people can be notified when there is an emergency such as this needing immediate attention.
Jerry explained that various roles have been set up. He is the IT Emergency Coordinator and he is able to get the appropriate people involved as needed. (Scott Claverie is the backup IT Emergency Coordinator.) Jerry will know who to call depending on the issue. The key, he said, is to get the right people involved in solving the problem ASAP, and, whether or not the CIO needs to be involved. He said contact is typically by cell phone and involves the Incident Manager (Andrea Mox). She is responsible for getting the word out to the appropriate people and getting the word back. At some point in the process, Jerry said they will know whether the problem is going to get resolved right away or not. If not, then further notification would take place, via the campus Send
Word Now process. (Info would go only to those on the targeted IT callout list, and only if they have signed up for Send Word Now which is an opt-in service.)
Once information is received from the technical group working on the problem, the information can be relayed to the campus technical notice list. If the campus loses total network connectivity, the network transfers over to an alternate CSU Chico homepage at the Chancellor’s office site. Currently there is a generic message on that site.
If we anticipated a long term outage, that message would probably be changed (by working through Joe Wills’ office.) When the problem is solved and back on line, a new message would go out to groups asking them to attempt on line access to confirm.
Finally, the technical lead would send a message to campus tech folks explaining what happened. It was suggested that a campus-wide message be sent via e-mail to faculty/staff explaining the outage and how long service was down. This would help faculty, for example, to make decisions regarding extending deadline dates for their students, if need be. This doesn’t have to be in depth information; just primarily the time frame and what was down.
(Flow chart diagram attached.)
8. Project Prioritization (Brooke Banks and Andy Miller)
Brooke showed the project planning site on Sharepoint to which everyone has access. Under “Projects” there is a list of each project with more detail. Priorities are categorized by Top, Medium, etc. You can also find project documents at this site.
Brooke then presented a Project Prioritization Excel spreadsheet she and Andy Miller have been working on. By answering various questions (through drop-down boxes in some cases) the tool helps define the impact and effort the project has and it graphs the project on a prioritization quadrant.
An example was shared, including how a final prioritization score is determined by the formulas pre-set in the spreadsheet. This is a tool that helps you look at the implications of a project, including whether or not the impact is huge, little, etc. She said they are still developing the spreadsheet (e.g. adding project categories, etc.) and they talked about having a series of bar graphs that might be useful also.
The end result of using this tool could give us a way to compare projects, especially in this current climate where resources are scarce. Discussion took place and comments included :

Some things might not get covered.

Categories may not address everything.

 Isn’t it time consuming?

Do IT Infrastructure projects fall into this list?
Andy said that filling out the information actually may not take as long as you think. He said this gives you a way to quantify projects but you still have to have conversations about your projects. When project requests come in to IT from others, this relieves IT of making the decisions they can’t make. He said the metrics are defined in order to come up with a number on scale. UTAC is supposed to be involved in prioritizing projects on campus. This may be a helpful tool.
It was discussed that this is a good concept. It may help to if more specific areas were defined (e.g. does it help the mission, etc.). Also, this tool helps the debate among end units when deciding which projects are most important, etc.
9. Other
Ben asked the group what they thought about UTAC sending a statement regarding the use of tablets on campus.
Group agreed a statement in support of tablet use on campus was a good idea. Andrea said she talked with Sara
Rumiano who was charged with “policing” all iPad (and other tablet) orders. The group agreed that:

It should be up to Department Chairs or Deans.

It should be no different than other technology purchases we’ve dealt with in the past.

Also explained how students come in with these and we are trying to figure out how to deliver content to them.

Perhaps Admin. doesn’t realize the positive impact tablets have in our environment today.

We should be embracing this.

We are sending a message that E-learning faculty get them but the rest of our faculty don’t (inconsistent).

This tool enables us to support diversity.
It was discussed that there is a lot of documentation showing various schools and students are using these as low as kindergarten students. Many on campus (from cabinet on down) seem to have a different opinion. Ben said if you are interested in contributing to the statement, e-mail him.
Ben said this is traditionally the last UTAC meeting of the year; however, we may need to meet on more time.
He will keep everyone posted.
TO DO LIST SUMMARY
# Task
1.
2.
3.
4.
FUTURE MEETINGS
Date: May 20, 2011 – Possibly
Responsible Party
Time: 10-1130am
Due Date
Place: MLIB 338
Status