DCSMT met on September 21, 2007.  Derick Larson of Kinetic Data Corporation  provided an overview of Kinetic and their software products for the BMC  Remedy ARS environment.  The Kinetic Request product is slated to replace  the functionality of custom incident submission pages programmed in perl on  the current Remedy system.  Philip Baczewski presented a demonstration of  some of the functionality of the Kinetic

Service Request software and showed  how it could inject incident tickets into the ITSM 7 helpdesk application.  He also showed examples of the Kinetic calendar software which can display campus-wide outage tickets via a calendar format. Also at that meeting,  John Hooper handed out a new organization chart showing organizational  changes to the Administrative Information Systems group within CITC.

DCSMT again met on October 5. Philip Baczewski demonstrated the BMC Remedy  ITSM 7 helpdesk application and announced the availability of a testing and  validation system to all support areas who use the current Remedy 5 system.  Information and resources about the new system can be found at http://itsm.unt.edu/ including access to the web-based console as well as documentation and configuration information.  Also at that meeting, Joe Adamo queried the group regarding use of a Ghost client to push emergency notifications to selected workstations in distributed areas.  Distributed support managers expressed concerns regarding the security of workstations  under such an arrangement, since the Ghost client provides total control  over a subject workstation.  DCSMT recommended a notification solution  based on the enterprise Active Directory implementation.  DCSMT also  reached consensus that similarly configured desktop computers from the Dell  Optiplex 755 line could replace the currently recommended Optiplex 745  models, since the 745 line will soon no longer be sold by Dell. 

DCSMT is next scheduled to meet on October 19.

Patrick Pluscht asked the Council to vote on his request to extend the deadline to April 30, 2008, for making a decision about a learning management system.  He reiterated that because of issues regarding the current Vista platform, that had to be addressed immediately, they decided to upgrade to the new version of Vista now, but continue to look at other viable options.  Patrick reported that 433 out of 1100 sections have been migrated already, and that the testing of Vista V.4.2 is going well.  The Council voted unanimously to extend the deadline to April 30, 2008.  Patrick also announced that UNT has signed the Apple iTunes contract and now will get Apple’s signature.

Communications Planning Group 

Lou Ann Bradley reported that the Communications Planning Group has not met; therefore, she had no report.

EIS Planning Group 

John Hooper reported for the EIS Planning Group that the Campus Solutions 8.9 upgrade is 5 to 6 weeks away from going live.  At the present time they are doing some serious testing of the system.  Critical load testing is being conducted, using all of the new versions of software along with the new SAN and other new hardware.  John explained that the AIS group has taken over the responsibility for the SAN and there is a lot of activity in that area as well.

Standards & Policy Planning Group 

Tim Christian reported for the Standards & Policy Planning Group that the committee requests a vote on the two policies he presented at the September meeting.  He distributed copies of the revised Computer Use Policy pointing out that there had been no changes to the document following the September meeting.  The policy was approved as distributed.

Tim then distributed copies of the revised Electronic Mail Usage and Retention Policy  which incorporated the changes suggested at the September meeting.  Maurice Leatherbury stated that the revised policy is based on a template received from the State.  The policy was approved as distributed.

Student Computing Planning Group 

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner reported for the Student Computing Planning Group that she encouraged the President of the Student Government Association to appoint a representative to the IRC, but that she had nothing further to report.

Emergency Notification Project 

Tim Christian asked for an update on the Emergency Notification project. Joe Adamo reported that he has been involved in the technical selection of a product and will be involved in the implementation and support of the product, but not in the establishment of a usage policy.  The product selected is NTI Company’s Connect-Ed product.  Access to the emergency notification system will be given only to: 1)  UNT President, 2) Chief of Police, and 3) URCM.  Tim also asked if Network Managers will be involved in a decision about what software would be used on desktop computers, and the reply from Joe was “No.”

Joe Adamo further stated that information will appear on MyUNT.edu; there will be a banner that refers to Eagle Alert, and an effort is underway to update the EIS database with current cell phone and home phone numbers for all students, staff and faculty.

Tim asked for a definition of an emergency notification event.  Joe replied that the system would be used to notify of a priority or urgent message concerning an impending disaster that is weather-related or otherwise considered an emergency.  The decision as to what to use the system for will be made by the three persons who have access.  When asked for a timeline for putting the system into effect, Joe stated that it would be mid-November at the latest.

Exchange Migration Progress Report 

Maurice Leatherbury reported on the progress of the Exchange Migration, stating that they have cleared one of the last big hurdles on backups. The backup servers talked to the exchange servers; and they plan to test backups this afternoon. One lingering issues is in sending a GroupWise schedule request to Outlook…Outlook automatically sends a rejection notice. There have been some problems with external mail addresses, primarily HSC. They are getting ready to roll Exchange out to more groups in CITC for testing, so progress is being made. It is hoped that Exchange can be rolled out to other CITC departments (whoever is ready), barring any big problems, within a month or so. GroupWise and Exchange will be operating at the same time for a while, until everyone is on Exchange.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 2:45 pm.