When I do Tier 2 support, I always feel like I am Sherlock Holmes and I am trying to resolve a WebCT mystery. Some support requests are easy to resolve, i.e. the ones that our auto-response resolves for the student. These are “Blues Clues”-type mysteries. Some support requests are not always resolved by the support form, mostly due to user error because they filled out the wrong information or are not using the correct terminology, but are still easy to handle. These are “Nancy Drew”-type mysteries. And then, there are one-of-a-kind whoppers where I am not even sure if the student is using WebCT, and if they are, what kind of system they are using. These are “Agatha Christie”-type mysteries with an added bonus twist. These are the ones where you need to do research, search forums, send e-mails, etc., to see if there has been anyone else who has ever encountered this problem ever. They also tend to require print screens, multiple e-mail involvement, and a lot of time.
Last week, we enjoyed/are still enjoying a whopper involving a student with an intricate home network and a healthy lack of work ethic. Currently, it is up to them to provide us with some print screens that I assume will expose their procrastination and fibbery skills. This morning, we already received a Nancy Drew level request which, after the correct terminology was deciphered, turned out to be an issue with a full e-mail account. Now, we received a semi-whopper involving Internet Explorer behaving badly.
There tends to be one or two whoppers that we receive from the support form each week. This does not include the internal requests we receive. With that, I am lucky that I enjoy putting on the Sherlock Holmes hat and resolving mysteries.
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Finals stages.
Here’s what my world looks like right now. Click on the three regions to get more info.
When I arrived to work today I discovered a new cart of discarded items from the ghost of I.T. past. I spent a good chunk of the morning determining which items are salvageable, recyclable, and just plain trash. We did find one of the University’s brand new VoIP Phones in the first box of junk, which was really quite scary that one of those may have accidentally been disposed. We also found some functional mice, keyboards, and keyboard trays. It was good fun to see items from I.T. past and also a bit frustrating to increase our pile of recyclables.
Remember sitting in 114 a while back impersonating a student in chat for a demonstration? I have taken that demo and partnered it with a Discussion Board demo. The goal is to give perspective students an opportunity to “sit in” on each of these very important elements of WebCT.
Currently, these demos can be found at:
http://concordia.csp.edu/WebCT/_Documents/_Captivate/_Students/dbdemo.htm
The DB demo was completed this week and is a compilation of many CSP sources brought together via Photoshop. Then, for those who do not know, these static images are brought into
Adobe Captivate and eventually converted into Flash files. If you have comments or see anything out of the ordinary in either demo, let me know!
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Things are moving forward with our tech appeals process. The committee has updated the form to streamline the process and allow for a faster decision making process. We are also working on an automated response when an appeal form is submitted. There were some concerns about summer appeals being delayed because senate was not in session. The committee realized the need for continuous review of appeals to ensure proper processing time. There was a consensus for making a transition to a faculty led committee with student representation. In order to ensure student representation in the appeals process we have created online resources that can be accessed by student senate members from remote locations–whether or not senate is in session–and we will review previous scenarios to take precedent into consideration. I believe that these steps will help to bring additional consistency to the appeals process.
Network Services is currently working with 3 vendors (IBM, Dell, and Sun) to find a solution for consolidating our servers. So far, we have met with our Sun vendor (Collier Computing) most extensively, and we are looking forward to our meeting with our IBM vendor (TSG USA) this morning.
Here is what we’ve discovered that we will be able to do through the process so far.
- Consolidate all of our servers down to one rack.
- A consolidated SAN storage solution allowing for expansion.
- VMWare will be a large part of the consolidation.
- Moving from 30 servers to potentially under 10.
- Include all servers in on this project including new Banner servers.
- The time line is yet to be determined, but it is based on a number of factors including cost and the timing of the new Banner project.
- Backup (Cold Swap), and Development servers will remain on the old servers.
In my spare time I’ve been looking over various Network Policies from other universities and corporations. The first thing I noticed was that it was a little difficult to find the CSP policy (here). Second, our is a pretty poorly written policy. We have some very basic ideas, but there isn’t any information about: newer technologies that people are using; how do we protect children (i.e. predators or pornography); or even the DMCA (here). So I’ve been collecting ideas from everyone else who has written a policy and trying to put them into my own words. If anyone has thoughts or ideas that they would like to see added just let me know.
We had our second committee meeting yesterday regarding moving CSP’s e-mail to Google Apps. I feel that it was a productive meeting and that we are moving forward, but it would have been better to have more committee members there. Here is a short recap of what was discussed.
- Pilot Group
- We are asking that all committee members join the full pilot of Google Apps.
- We are going to release the pilot to the campus community for volunteers to join in.
- We hope to get a good sampling of different types of users to give this potential transition a thorough test.
- FAQ Page
- We would like to compile a FAQ page to answer some of the most common concerns that have been expressed through the Google Apps blog
- This FAQ page will also include some of the rationale behind considering this move (i.e. financial, server administration, reliability, legality issues with storing user data, etc.)
- Client Support
- We discussed whether or not we would support a client. At this point we thought it would be ideal not to support a specific client, but this may be difficult to accomplish after leaving Outlook.
- What sync tools are we going to support/purchase to handle syncing calendar and e-mail with mobile devices and or a client like Outlook.
- Insights from Macalester
- Macalester College is also considering moving off of their Oracle e-mail solution to Google Apps. So, we are hoping to gain some insight from them on what they have discovered so far.
- Decision Time
- We are looking at making the final decision to move on this or not in approximately 1 month.
- If we decide not to move on it at this point, this will not rule out the possibility of doing it down the road, and we will continue to look at this option.
If there is anything that I missed, feel free to comment.
Well, yesterday I would have said that the phones were losing the battle to the Daylight Saving Time change, but finally after last night I think we may have the issue resolved. It looks like most if not all the phones on campus have been updated and have the correct time. We will just have to wait and see if the Help Desk continues to receive calls.
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