november 2009 it status report

8/14/2019 November 2009 IT Status Report

1/5

Announcements for Faculty and Staff Meetings

NetworkID Profile Implementation. Starting Thursday, November19, all faculty, students, and staff who log into web applications via Pep-

perdine's Central Authentication Service (CAS) will be required to create a

NetworkID profile. Use these links to learn more about orcreate a Net-

workID profile. Users who do not have a NetworkID profile created be-

fore November 16 will be required to create a profile before logging into a

CAS application.

Faculty Support and ServicesOnline Course Evaluations in WaveNet. Faculty and studentscan 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 toprovide 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 re-

leased 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. Studentphotos are now available on class rosters. When users view class roster in-

formation 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

Information

Technology Activityand Status Report

November 2009

Contact InformationTechnology

Anytime Support Desk

Available 24 hours a day,

7 days a week

(310) 506-HELP (4357)

or (866) 767-8623

Tech Centralfor 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 ChiefInformation Officer and

Vice Provost

(310) 506-4501

Request IT Services

http://services.pepperdine.edu/it

/forms
https://networkid.pepperdine.edu/app/default.aspxhttp://services.pepperdine.edu/it/help/network/netprofile.htmhttps://networkid.pepperdine.edu/app/default.aspxhttp://services.pepperdine.edu/it/formshttp://services.pepperdine.edu/it/formshttp://services.pepperdine.edu/it/formshttp://services.pepperdine.edu/it/formshttp://services.pepperdine.edu/it/formshttp://services.pepperdine.edu/it/formshttps://networkid.pepperdine.edu/app/default.aspxhttps://networkid.pepperdine.edu/app/default.aspxhttps://networkid.pepperdine.edu/app/default.aspxhttps://networkid.pepperdine.edu/app/default.aspxhttp://services.pepperdine.edu/it/help/network/netprofile.htmhttp://services.pepperdine.edu/it/help/network/netprofile.htm


2/5

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 UniversityRate Reduction for Blackberry Enterprise Service. Beginning December 1, the BlackberryEnterprise Service (BES) license recharge rate will be reduced from $50/month to $40/month per ac-

count. 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 ExchangeServer 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 externalmail transmissions to Pepperdine email addresses and attempts to stop spam. On a typical day, Pep-

perdine receives over half a million computer connections attempting to spam the University commu-

nity, 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 inAugust 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 aninformative 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 itsWindows 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 pur-chase 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-onservice, which allows users to log in only once to access multiple applications, was implemented for sev-

http://services.pepperdine.edu/it/help/voice/blackberry.htmhttp://www.cdwg.com/pepperdinehttp://services.pepperdine.edu/it/help/voice/blackberry.htmhttp://services.pepperdine.edu/it/help/voice/blackberry.htmhttp://www.cdwg.com/pepperdinehttp://www.cdwg.com/pepperdine


3/5

eral web-based applications at Pep-

perdine 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 toend users, this service makes application

use more secure.

Stellent: To be Decommissioned on November 30. The previous document managementsystem, 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, [email protected] to request access.

Benchmarks and AccountabilityStatistics 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 suppor t 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, therewere 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 aver-

age 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 feed-back 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 com-

pleted. The five-question sur vey uses a 1 to 9 sliding scale with 7.00-9.00 equal to Excellent.

MonthResponse

RateOverall

SatisfactionResponse

TimelinessSkillSet

Communi-cation

ResolutionTimeliness

August

September

October

9% 7.50 7.57 7.85 7.48 7.50

7% 7.94 7.75 8.15 7.8 7.74

9% 7.54 7.61 7.77 7.50 7.53

mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


4/5

Staff Support by Major Area. All Pepperdine IT staff allocate their day-to-day efforts using cli-ent, project, and task codes; using this data, total division-wide staff effor t for October 2009 was distrib-

uted as follows:

University Administration Support 1,600 hours 10.73% $84,719.82

Colleges, Academic Affairs

University-Wide, Common Services

IT Administration and Management

General Overhead (Leave, Holiday)

Total:

3,060 hours 20.53% $81,684.49

5,109 hours 34.27% $237,646.74

3,154 hours 21.16% $131,185.64

1,983 hours 13.31% $83,899.17

14,907 hours 100% $619,135.86

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

Month Seaver GSBM GSEP SOL SPP

August

September

October

61.24% 19.85% 16.60% 0.73% 1.58%

56.21% 22.71% 17.38% 1.86% 1.86%

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 atthe EDUCAUSE 2009 Annual Conference in Denver this month. Gerard Flynn, director of the Technol-

ogy 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 con-

sumption costs using NComputing. In addition, Flynn and Hoover also presented a poster about emerg-

ing 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 Can-

ning, 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 canadopt 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 initia-

tives.



5/5

Other NewsSCCUR 2010 Conference Preparation Begins. The Technology and Learning group has be-gun 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 Repor t archives are available

online at http://services.pepperdine.edu/it/about/status-reports.htm.

http://services.pepperdine.edu/it/about/status-reports.htmhttp://services.pepperdine.edu/it/about/status-reports.htmhttp://www.sccur.org/http://www.sccur.org/

november 2009 it status report

Documents