MEMBERS PRESENT: Craig Berry, Paul Hons, Tim Christian, Chris
Strauss, Maurice Leatherbury (Chair), Ginger Boone, Jim Curry,
Eric DuChemin, Kelly Wood, Richard Harris, Robert Pierce, Bruce
Pollock, Curry Searle, Cyndie Harris, Sue Ellen Richey (Recording
Secretary)
MEMBERS ABSENT: Mike Hatch, Mike Wright, Dallas Newell, Rich
Anderson, Abraham John, Bill Buntain, Cengiz Capan
The minutes of the March 7, 1997 meeting were approved as
published.
Jim Curry reported for the Call Tracking Software committee that
they have established a weekly meeting time. They are at a point
of looking at major solutions, such as Lotus suites and
Clientele. He said there are at least 100-150 solutions on the
market and it will take quite some time to look at them all.
Maurice said he has not appointed a chair for the Desktop
Operating System committee since Mike Hatch resigned, and asked
for volunteers. Tim Christian agreed to chair this committee.
Maurice said he will serve as chair of the Desktop Applications
Standards Committee and will try to get the members together to
begin dealing with the issues involved in that area. He said the
first issue they will deal with will be the standard for files
being transferred via e-mail.
Not much progress has been made on a system outage notification
system; however, Chris Strauss has been busy making some changes
in the Help Desk in order to be prepared to deal with any
procedure that is implemented. Chris explained the telephone
changes he has made, stating that the new set-up should improve
call transferring, and call response. One change will be for
Chris and Ty Young to have a separate number that will be
available to network managers to use. Chris has spent some time
with Blair Copeland about a system outage notification system;
he's not sure he has the time to set up something as complicated
as Blair's and he thinks some call tracking software packages
have a notification system built in. There was some discussion
about the various paging systems available.
Tim distributed an interactive survey about Year 2000 readiness
he found on the web (Attachment #1). Richard explained that there
are designated persons working on the mainframe issues of this
conversion for the Computing Center, and that the Distributed
Computing Support Management Team is being counted on to deal
with distributed computing issues related to the Year 2000
conversion. There are sure to be some common problems throughout
the distributed areas, such as databases, spreadsheets, and
computers of an older technology than the Pentiums. Maurice asked
committee members to bring problems they encounter to this group
for everyone's benefit in dealing with Year 2000 conversions.
Maurice told the group of a Society for Information Management
Year 2000 web site that Dr. Kappelman in the College of Business
is heading up. That may be a place that can be used to publish
information about this issue. Chris said he would post any
information he receives about Year 2000 conversion on his Help
Desk web page.
Maurice told the group that the Communications Program Group is
proposing, to the IRC, a unified directory system for the campus.
This will be a major project, which will involve getting
information off the mainframe and tying it to the directory
system, plus support services after it is in place.
Bruce Pollock reported that he and Curry have been busy moving
people into the new building; and that next week they will be
setting up for the NCAA.
Eric DuChemin reported that he is trying to finish
product-selection for the APAP system.
Tim Christian reported that Arts & Sciences is finished with
their roll-out and are doing clean-up now. They will have to go
back and re-install the preliminary test group of machines. They
plan to upgrade their servers and the network in the first summer
session. Tim reported that they have had some problems with
servers freezing up. Others in the group shared similar server
freeze-up experiences.
Richard Harris announced that the Computing Center is
interviewing for the team leader's position in the distributed
computing systems group and will be bringing a couple of people
on campus soon.
Jim Curry reported that his shop is continuing to work on
computer upgrades for various departments. He said that he
doesn't have many used machines for sale because most of the ones
he has gathered up are going to be used for spare parts.
Kelly Wood reported that he has managed to move 99% of all of
Music's users off of the SCS server. He is working on database
creation and needs some expertise in that area to set up calendar
scheduling for Music's classrooms. He explained that they don't
see how they can use the GroupWise scheduler for this purpose
because they want students to be able to schedule the rooms
themselves and students don't have GroupWise accounts, as a rule.
Kelly explained that there are a lot of security issues involved.
Several suggestions were made by committee members.
Paul Hons reported that they are continuing with the rollout of
Windows 95. He asked when the next Microsoft Select contract will
be in effect. Sue Ellen Richey reported that the purchase order
should go out next week, and that the legal contract has been to
the University Attorney and returned with the attorney's comments
already.
There was some discussion about establishment of standard
spreadsheet packages and word processing applications. Maurice
said that when the administration changes to a products in these
categories and sends out documents to the entire campus in those
formats, that will set the standard.
Robert Pierce reported that the Library has brought its new
jukebox on line and it is in full production now. They are hoping
to buy another one by the end of the year, and then another one
later on. They are in the process of hiring a full time
information technology librarian for applications development and
training. Robert said that people should contact John Stanton in
the Library to help with problems with the Library's CD ROM
system.
Robert distributed a mission statement of the UNT Network
Managers' Group (Attachment #2). The group is trying to become
active again and asked for this committee's views about the
relationship of that group to this committee. Ginger stated that
she doesn't see this committee replacing the Network Managers'
Group because it provides a forum for delving into the technical
problems network managers have - more so that this committee
does. Chris Strauss stated that the Network Managers' Group
should provide input into this committee for decision making.
Maurice said he envisions the NMG as working with more technical
issues; whereas he sees this committee as working on policy.
Robert said he would send e-mail to all DCSMT members in order to
obtain their input on this subject.
Chris Strauss reported that he will be lose about half of his
help desk staff this summer. He explained that all of his new
help desk staff have to go through a 30-hour training program,
during which they meet with the various people in the Computing
Center to whom they will be referring calls. It was suggested
that Chris take new employees to Microcomputer Maintenance as
well. Tim suggested that this committee address the issue of
training of new employees, at a future meeting.
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at
3:30 p.m.
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Page last modified on May 05, 1997 by Philip Baczewski