November 20, 2007 (Revised 12/17)

VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT:   PHILIP TURNER, CHAIR, PATRICK PLUSCHT, TIM CHRISTIAN, ELIZABETH HINKLE-TURNER, JOHN HOOPER, JUDITH ADKISON, BRUCE HUNTER, JIM BYFORD (for SCOTT WINDHAM), GARY MATTHEWS, UWE ROSSBACH, YUNFEI DU, NOREEN GOGGIN NON-VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT:  MAURICE LEATHERBURY, PHILIP BACZEWSKI, SUE ELLEN RICHEY (Recording Secretary) MEMBERS ABSENT:  ROBERT NIMOCKS, LOU ANN BRADLEY, DON GROSE ,  JOHN PRICE, WILL SENN, RAY BANKS, ABRAHAM JOHN, CENGIZ CAPAN, JON NELSON, DONNA KEENER, RAMU MUTHIAH, FRANCES MAY GUESTS PRESENT:  KEITHA ROBERTSON

The minutes of the October 16^th meeting were approved with one correction: 

Paul Hons attended the meeting as proxy for Judith Adkison.

Distributed Computing Support Management Team**

Philip Baczewski reported for the Distributed Computing Support Management Team that DCSMT met on November 9. Bahram Paiani presented an overview of issues which lead to the unscheduled replacement of the top-level mail routers with devices from IronPort. He explained that there had been a dramatic spike in e-mail connection attempts which the old mailhost servers could not handle without significant delays in mail delivery. The IronPort devices had been operating in parallel for several weeks with no problems. Placing them in production increased the efficiency in mail handling but changed the method in which spam messages are identified and quarantined.

Also at that meeting, Keith Cullum of Dell Inc. introduced John Forshay as our new Dell account representative for UNT. Keith has accepted a promotion at Dell and John will take over the role that Keith played. In addition, Mark McClung from Dell was in attendance and will be the primary marketing resource for Dell server technologies. John mentioned that our inside sales contact has also change and promised to relay complete information for redistribution to distributed support managers.

Distributed support managers were urged to review the test implementation of the ITSM 7 system slated to replace Remedy. The next meeting is scheduled for December 7 and will feature updates on the MS Exchange migration and the MS Active Directory implementation.

Dr. Turner asked if a notice would be going out explaining where to look for mail that is labeled as SPAM, so that people can know how to check it out. Philip replied that Bahram reportedly said that he could send weekly notifications, but didn’t really feel it was necessary since these new units are much more efficient at weeding out only SPAM. Discussion followed regarding the rules of the new IronPort system, during which Judith Adkison reported that some faculty are reporting problems receiving mail from valid sources. Also Dr. Turner reported that several times while he was away from campus he found that he could not connect to GroupWise remotely because the site he was accessing from had been blocked. Uwe Rossbach commented that he wanted to be sure that faculty did not miss mail-host items and government notifications.

Learning Enhancement Planning Group

Patrick Pluscht reported for the Learning Enhancement Planning Group that the transfer of courses from Vista to new Vista 4.2 continues to go well. They completed migrating the 1100 sections that were offered this Fall, as of end of October. Now they’re going back and picking up any exceptions, courses that were offered in Spring but not in Fall that faculty would like to have offered again next Spring, as well as any new courses. On November 12 they released to the Learning Enhancement Planning Group the usability testing results of the learning management systems alternatives they are looking at, for their review. On December 5 they will see if they have enough evidence to narrow the selection.

Patrick presented the enrollment data for Fall 2007, which showed 37,530 semester credit hours through internet courses (which does not include video conference courses).  There were 12,710 enrollments representing 9,739 students; and those are the ones that are 50% or more.  There was no way to capture data for those that are less than 50%.   He also reported that they are in the implementation phase of Apple iTunes U.  Once in place, they will begin to present training for faculty, during the Spring semester, and roll out some of the services.  In the meantime there is a lot to be done to with organizing the site as to how to use it for instructional and promotional University relations-type matters.

There will be scheduled downtime for both Vista as well as Vista 4.2 in order to physically move the servers, beginning at 6:00 am on December 18 and ending by 10:00 pm on December 21.  Any attempts to access the service during scheduled maintenance windows will result in redirection to a notification page set up by Distributed Learning Support.

Communications Planning Group

Tim Christian reported for the Communications Planning Group that the committee discussed the virtual side of networking, like VPN. The VPN project is something that Datacomm has been working on for some time. Joe Adamo said that they hope to have something to put into production by mid to late Spring. C.R., Chevli said they want to propose a maintenance window when they can conduct regular system maintenance, and he will soon present that proposal to DCSMT. Also, Joe Adamo announced that the firewall in Richardson will soon be brought to the UNT campus, doesn’t expect that this architectural change will not bring about any downtime. Some dorms are using Apogee ISP, a third-party internet provider, in lieu of UNT’s service, with more dorms changing over in the near future. There were some concerns raised regarding UNT’s existing wireless network, which was put in place as a secondary lower-priority network not to be used as for primary productivity by faculty, staff or students. There was some discussion about reviewing that criterion to move to making it a more fully productive solution. Datacomm will take the comments under consideration.

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner commented that RESNET is second in line if Apogee is not available to take a call; and they are expanding some of their other services, also. The RESNET administrators don’t just administer the dorm services; they also handle the gaming areas, etc.

There was some discussion regarding the establishment of a schedule for computer system maintenance, and importance of coordinating that with network managers and critical system administrators. Tim assured everyone that C.R. Chevli would present the proposal to DCSMT first and then take it to other appropriate groups for approval before putting it into effect. 

EIS Planning Group 

John Hooper reported for the EIS Planning Group that the upgrade of the Learning Solutions module is scheduled for the Thanksgiving weekend.  In addition, they are putting in the new database operating system and upgrading the system hardware.  They have been doing quite a bit of testing including load testing, and a mock “Go-Live” test, and believe they are ready for this upgrade.  If all goes well throughout the weekend, and after final checks on Sunday, they will move into production mode by Monday morning.  If there are serious problems, they can always revert back to the old system; it will still be there.  They plan to trade in one of the old 6800 machines, but keep the others for backup machines, or testing machines.

John Hooper assured everyone that there had been no changes made to DARWIN; it is its own system, and runs separately. 

Standards & Policy Planning Group 

Tim Christian reported for the Standards & Policy Planning Group that Andrew Harris and Bonita Hairston have now received the revised Computer Use Policy and the Electronic Mail Usage and Retention Policy, which were approved by the IRC at its last meeting.

Student Computing Planning Group 

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner reported for the Student Computing Planning Group that due to some hardware issues, an ad hoc committee has been formed and charged to look into the possibility of out-sourcing Eagle Mail.  A technical portion of this committee has met to discuss the technical issues.  They are looking at the viability of Eagle Mail along with options from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo Zimbra, considering security and functionality of each option.  They have solicited task force members from various groups on campus, such as Registrar, Finance, Student Government, etc.  They have developed a list of technical questions and hope to have a meeting of the entire task force before the Christmas break and bring in some representatives from various companies in January and February and have a decision made by the end of February, 2008. 

Tim Christian mentioned an article in Gartner about educational institutions adopting the free packages offered.  He also asked if Elizabeth’s committee had considered telling students they have to have an email account, and leave it up to them to get one from whatever source they choose.  Philip Baczewski noted that UNT now gives students the choice of providing their personal email address versus signing up for Eagle Mail.

Emergency Notification System

Maurice Leatherbury reported that new Emergency Notification System has been tested; that was really an unplanned test.  He reported that they had live delivery of 17,000 messages and 24,000 answering machines in 36 minutes, resulting in 86% successfully deliveries, if you consider answering machines.  The remaining percentage was a result of bad phone numbers, or unregistered numbers.  Tim Christian questioned the use of the Emergency Notification System for an accident on I-35, and Maurice replied that the decision to use the system was made by the University President.

Maurice Leatherbury also reported that 64 people in CITC have been using Microsoft Outlook successfully.  The rest of the CITC staff will be migrated to Outlook next week. 

December 18, 2007

VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT:   PHILIP TURNER, CHAIR, PATRICK PLUSCHT, TIM CHRISTIAN, ELIZABETH HINKLE-TURNER, JOHN HOOPER, BRUCE HUNTER, JIM BYFORD (for SCOTT WINDHAM), GARY MATTHEWS, YUNFEI DU, FRANCES MAY, NOREEN GOGGIN, JOE ADAMO (for LOU ANN BRADLEY), WILL SENN, BEN BIGBY (for JON NELSON) NON-VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT:  MAURICE LEATHERBURY, PHILIP BACZEWSKI, SEAN-MIKEL FLOWERS, SUE ELLEN RICHEY (Recording Secretary) MEMBERS ABSENT:  UWE ROSSBACH, JUDITH ADKISON, ROBERT NIMOCKS,  DON GROSE, JOHN PRICE, RAY BANKS, ABRAHAM JOHN, CENGIZ CAPAN, DONNA KEENER, RAMU MUTHIAH GUESTS PRESENT:  CHARLOTTE RUSSELL

Distributed Computing Support Management Team**

Philip Baczewski reported for the Distributed Computing Support Management Team that they met on December 7. Jason Gutierrez presented an update on the status of the GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange and Outlook migration.  He stated that about 200 e-mail post offices are in operation on Exchange, with most of the CITC already migrated to Exchange.  HSC and Dallas Campus addresses are not yet in the Outlook address book, but work is underway to make those available.  No busy searches are possible between GroupWise and Exchange; however, it is possible to send appointments between systems. Several tech support offices are ready to migrate, but no department-wide migrations are formally scheduled yet. Blackberry services are not yet installed, but they may have a 90-day transition period allowable in our Blackberry server license. GWIM will be up and running until Microsoft OCS is ready. Yoke Teo distributed a report on the status of the Active Directory implementation. All but a small number of faculty and staff are provisioned in AD. Administrative groups have been created and distributed areas have been granted full OU control.  The System Management Server is fully deployed.  Distributed managers were also provided with instructions on joining their systems to the UNT Active Directory. Additional information was provided regarding migration of Netware servers to Windows file and print services.

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner provided a report from the DCSMT working group on software metering.  Softrack was selected as the solution for metering when copy execution limits need to be enforced. A central server for metering statistical applications can work in conjunction with distributed Softrack servers used to restrict applications within a department or college. A number of managers expressed a need to implement Softrack to replace Zenworks functionality, feedback which had not been previously received.  Elizabeth agreed to again receive requirements information from managers and recalculate the level of Softrack licensing needed.

Philip further reported that DCSMT briefly discussed problems using Excel 2007 to directly open reports generated by Cognos on the UNT EIS system. Managers agreed that a workaround was to save a file to disk and then open the file in Excel. Because of the proximity of the holidays, DCSMT will not meet on Dec. 21 but will next meet on Jan. 4, 2008.

Learning Enhancement Planning Group

Patrick Pluscht reported for the Learning Enhancement Planning Group and gave an update on the learning management system evaluation, stating that participation throughout the Fall has been good, with 20-25 attendees for each meeting with the committee. A public lms evaluation website has been launched and is now available if anyone would like to read reports and notes. The url is web3.unt.edu/lmseval.  This Fall three teams completed research and/or testing on all four of the systems that are candidates; those were “end-user,” “ease of use testing,” “user technical requirements and integration of third-party tools.”  Blackboard Vista is first in terms of ease of use, as a result of the testing, but these results are likely due to the familiarity the end users had of the system.  In terms of user technical requirements, Blackboard Vista came in last because of specific requirements for JAVA throughout the system.  Angel registered within the top two spots in all of the three teams’ evaluations.  No clear leader has emerged at this point and the committee was reluctant to rule out any of the systems, and would like to continue the evaluation on all four in the Spring.  At that time the focus will be on accessibility, including testing with ODA students; on quality of product support, which will be gathered from individual vendors and customers of those vendors, on system stability, and analysis of cost of implementation and long-term maintenance.

In addition, a subcommittee of the CDL Steering Committee has met to evaluate the learning enhancement grant proposals; there were 31 proposals this year.  The committee recommended 20 for full funding, 3 for partial funding, and 8 for no funding.  The recommendations are awaiting Provost approval.  Patrick also reported that there has been some informal training in podcasting with Journalism faculty in a wonderful Apple lab.  A technical meeting is coming up on January 10^th where there will be 3 representatives of the content production area, the design interface and the back-end or central web support piece. 

EIS Planning Group

There was no report from the Communications Planning Group.

EIS Planning Group

John Hooper reported for the EIS Planning Group that they completed the Learning Solutions Upgrade over Thanksgiving.  He is very pleased with how it went.  A week later they tried to move the new finance system to the new storage system, but that didn’t work so they are still looking at that.

Standards & Policy Planning Group 

There was no report from the Standards & Policy Planning Group.

Student Computing Planning Group 

Elizabeth Hinkle Turner reported for the Student Computing Planning Group and distributed a report of the Student Email Task Force Meeting, which was a result of an inquiry into outsourcing Student email, storage and web page services.  There seemed to be in general favor of looking into outsourcing these services, with a primary goal of giving students a system they can utilize effectively to get the information they want and need from the university community.  Students had a favorable impression of the Eagle Alert system, and thought it was a good model for any new Student Email service. They are looking at Microsoft, Google and Yahoo Zimbra and will have another meeting in late January.

Maurice Leatherbury reported that CITC is ready to have departments migrate to Microsoft Exchange. They have not run into any problems, and the Blackberry server is up and running.  Network Managers are coordinating with Jason Myre regarding the timing of their migration.

Maurice also noted that one of the recommendations of the Peer Review group was to look at restructuring an advisory group for IT on campus.  He has talked with Andrew Harris and the Provost about this and agreed to re-form the Information Resources Steering Committee to help set priorities for IT.  They have also agreed to look at restructuring this council, so they will be discussing that over the next several months.  It is still unclear where IT will report; no decision has been made about that.

Maurice reported that CITC has been looking at email archiving products for months. The company that provides UNT with backup systems also provides an archiving software that would be beneficial in UNT’s attempt to be compliant in that area, and would enable the archiving to be done centrally. The company is offering the software at a deep discount if purchased before 2008, so Maurice asked for the Council’s input about purchasing it now. Discussion followed.

Before closing the meeting, the Chair asked for approval of the minutes of the IRC’s November meeting. Tim Christian moved for approval of the minutes as distributed.  John Hooper seconded the motion and the minutes were approved.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 3:00 p.m.