UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS
INFORMATION RESOURCES COUNCIL
Tuesday, 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
Philip Baczewski reported for the Distributed Computing Support Management
Team that they met on December 7. Jason Gutierez 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.
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 10th where there will be 3 representatives of the content production area, the design interface and the back-end or central web support piece.
There was no report from the Communications 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.
There was no report from the Standards & Policy Planning Group.
Elizabeth Hinkle Turner reported for the Student Computing Planning Group and distributed a report of the Student Email Task Force Meeting (see Attachment #1), 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.