UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS
INFORMATION RESOURCES COUNCIL
April 19, 2005
VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT: PHILIP TURNER, CLAUDIA LYNCH (for ELIZABETH HINKLE-TURNER), JONEEL HARRIS, PAUL HONS (for JUDITH ADKISON), RAMU MUTHIAH, JIM CURRY, GUILLERMO OYARCE, MIKE HATCH (for CENGIZ CAPAN), WIL CLARK (for JOHN PRICE), PATRICK PLUSCHT, SANDRA TERRELL
NON-VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT: MAURICE LEATHERBURY, PHILIP BACZEWSKI, JOE ADAMO, SUE ELLEN RICHEY (Recording Secretary)
MEMBERS ABSENT: ROBERT NIMOCKS, CHRISTY CRUTSINGER, BRUCE HUNTER, MAX KAZEMZADEH, DON GROSE, MARGARET AMBUEHL, CHUCK FULLER, LOU ANN BRADLEY, JON NELSON, COY HOGGARD, KENN MOFFITT, KATHY SWIGGER, ABRAHAM JOHN, DOUG MAINS, BOBBY CARTER
GUESTS: CHARLOTTE RUSSELL
There were not enough voting members present to make a quorum; therefore, the minutes from the March meeting will be approved at the May meeting.
The Chair reported that there has been no Information Resources Steering Committee meeting since the last IRC meeting.
Philip Baczewski reported for the Distributed Computing Support Management Team that the group met on April 1 and April 15. It was reported that the Adobe contract is being converted to standalone licenses; therefore, an accurate count of licenses in each department will be needed from network managers by May 15, 2005. An Adobe student software sales agreement is in place and selected Adobe software is being sold at the University Store, with particular interest by students in the Creative Suite. Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner reported to the Planning group that updated Skillsoft Courseware is now available. Adobe Photoshop 7 training is still on the Skillsoft courses, but all other Adobe training is being provided on the Adobe Education site.
Philip further reported that the ad hoc committee looking at PDA Synchronization has completed its work for now. Most testing has been on Palm OS, since not many volunteers had Windows Pocket PC devices. The College of Education has decided to standardize on Portamail (http://www.quartzdevelopment.com/). The Novell Groupwise PDA synchronization product still has some operational problems. If the Novell product has updated versions at a later time, DCSMT will revisit this software based on feedback from the Network Computing Services department of the CITC.
Philip further reported that some departments have taken advantage of an offer by Dell to provide two printers for the price of one. Dell is developing a web-based universal printer management tool which may be used to manage its and other brands of printers.
Patrick Pluscht reported that the awards committee is in the middle of determining who, of the 15 nominees, will receive the awards for on-line teaching excellence. In addition, there was a demo by TurnItIn.com on how it will integrate with WebCT, hopefully by Fall semester.
The Learning Enhancement Planning Group met as a group for the first time on March 24th, and discussed setting up sub-committees for prioritization and needs analysis; one for evaluation, and other ad hoc technology groups to look into different technologies that might be deployed. The group will meet the 4th Thursday of each month.
Patrick asked that if anyone is familiar with the product, Outlook, please contact him. They need assistance with a mass mail merge.
Lou Ann Bradley was not present so there was no report from the Communications Planning Group. Joe Adamo noted that the Communications group has been discussing the problems at the Library Annex. Lou Ann asked Joe to mention that the Planning Group needs a new charge. The Chair said he would speak with Lou Ann about this.
Joneel Harris reported for the EIS Planning Group that the first EIS Users Group meeting was held last week. This group is a recreation of the old AIS Users Group. The new group includes product family heads, module leads, and technical team leads as well as some key people in the AIM group in CITC. The focus was on the information received at the HEUG conference and afterwards. The group began discussing the planning for upgrades; there are 4 potential upgrades that may occur between 2006 and 2010, if Oracle stays on track. There is an upgrade of Finance to V. 8.8 that is available now, and a Learning Solutions upgrade to V. 8.9; and there is a 9.0 release for Learning Solutions and from there to Oracle’s fusion product, which is proposed to be the best of both the PeopleSoft product and the Oracle product. Initial discussion was to target the 2006 Spring semester to possibly begin the upgrade for Finance and Learning Solutions.
The Chair asked about the progress of resolving the report issues in the EIS system. Joneel responded by saying that some of the employees of the PeopleSoft Services group that were contracted with for the reporting data system modules have formed a company and would really like to come in and do UNT’s reporting work. They need an institutional project, so they have been conferencing about the possibility of providing help with Financial reporting in a pilot project. SAS has also been contacted regarding their reporting products. When at a SAS conference recently, Joneel met a UNT graduate who is now a SAS employee and whose experience is in financial reporting. He actually volunteered his time as a UNT alum to come in and help. He said he thought that SAS offers the most complete and robust business intelligent tool platform. Maurice Leatherbury added that he has been giving a lot of attention to the reporting issue and is pushing the data warehousing solution. A new machine is on order which will provide a more robust platform. He said CITC is pushing Crystal Reports or Cognos’ solution for the data warehouse. Joneel commented that the SAS product has capabilities for the Student module that neither the Crystal Reports nor the Cognos product have, and stated that there is room for all three.
There was no report from the Standards & Policy Planning Group.
Claudia Lynch reported for the Student Computing Planning Group that the new General Access Lab signs are in the final stages of production, and the PC printer counter monitoring software order should go out this week.
The Chair reported that new load balancers have been installed and running on the WebCT Vista test servers and many of the problems attributed to the Radware have been resolved. The latest service pack of WebCT Vista has been installed and that is also running on the test server and the decision has been made not to switch over until after final exams. In May, both of those will go on the production machines and hopefully the last of the remaining issues can be checked off. They are, at this time, inviting faculty to migrate to Vista. There could, of course, be more issues when this goes into the production machines.
In response to a question from Philip Baczewski, Dr. Turner stated that the date for cutoff of Web CT Campus Edition will be May 31, 2006, but it is hoped that people will migrate as soon as possible.
There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 2:50 p.m.