Welcome to this month's IT updates. These updates cover news from LSA IT, as well as the broader Michigan IT community that's here to serve your IT needs. Please let us know if you have any feedback and feel free to forward to others who may be interested.
In This Issue...
LSA IT's Mark Montague recognized at LSA Staff Achievement Awards —Congratulations to Mark Montague of LSA IT, who was recently awarded LSA's Robin Sarris Outstanding Individual Employee Award, recognizing his outstanding contributions that go above and beyond. Mark's accomplishments include enhancements to make Flux more accessible to a broad range of researchers, establishing and running regular IT training, and overall having deep expertise while being dependable, collaborative, and committed to excellent service. However, as Mark said in his acceptance speech for the award, his success is only possible through working together as part of a great team. Please join us in congratulating Mark! (Contact: firstname.lastname@example.org)
Annual IT Survey coming soon —The LSA IT Faculty Advisory committee's annual survey will be coming later this month. This will be our 3rd year conducting this survey, and results are used extensively to enhance IT service offerings. For example, previous years results led to greater accessibility to Flux compute resources, introduction of research programming services, enhanced faculty and lab website offerings, and efforts that have increased timeliness in response to IT service requests. Thank you in advance for your input once the survey is available. (Contact: email@example.com)
Looking for iOS Mobile App ideas help? —Do you have an iOS mobile app or Apple Watch idea that you want custom discovery, prototyping and user testing on? The School of Information is accepting innovation project ideas that would involve app prototyping in an undergraduate-level entrepreneurship course.
High Performance Computing Service —LSA IT has created a pilot programming service for High Performance Computing needs. Services include parallel programming and workflow optimization for Flux and XSEDE cluster applications. Visit the LSA Services Portal for additional details. (Contact: firstname.lastname@example.org)
Flux for Undergraduates —Flux is the shared computing cluster available across campus. Student groups and individuals with faculty sponsors can now access unused computing cycles on Flux for free. The goal is to provide undergraduates with experience in high performance computing. Complete the request form if you are interested (Contact: email@example.com)
LSA IT Naming convention —Based on input and feedback as to how to simplify interaction with LSA IT, as of January 1st, we have adopted the naming convention of "LSA IT - Building" for all geographically-based support locations (where "Building" is the name of the building where support is located). We are phasing out the old naming (BioIT, CaTS, CSG, EHTS, NuIT, RSN). In addition to reducing confusion, this is also consistent with the standard adopted for LSA finance and HR regional business offices.
Easier access to support and more for Windows users —We have enabled a new service for users with the Managed Windows Build that is called WLMS Notify. It exists as a Block M in the bottom-right corner of your desktop near the clock, and contains useful shortcuts and information. Within the menu, you can do useful things such as get information regarding your computer, contact IT Support, and find shortcuts to map network drives and install software.
Struggling with Canvas? LSA ISS can help! —LSA ISS Learning Technology Consultants can provide one-on-one support, course site consultations, and migration assistance. Faculty and Staff who prefer to work independently may also share information, ask questions, and receive updates/announcements about tips, issues, and events at ITS Canvas at Michigan. Self-enroll in this ITS Canvas site. (Contact: firstname.lastname@example.org or 734.615.0099)
Campus Workshops for Winter Canvas —Introductory and advanced Canvas workshops are offered through LSA ISS, UM Library, and the LRC. CRLT also has workshops available for faculty and graduate students. (Contact: email@example.com or 734.615.0099)
Funding for assistance with Canvas Migration —LSA ISS has funding available to hire a grad student or undergraduate to work with a faculty member on Canvas sites. Departments may consider pooling faculty funds to provide more hours for faculty assistance across the department. (Contact: Monika Dressler)
Lecture Capture —LSA ISS offers LSA Lecture Capture in a number of classrooms. The system ties audio recordings to lecture slides and projected images. In some spaces, there is the option of having a video recording of the faculty and front of the room. Video is currently available in about half of the lecture capture-enabled rooms. (Contact: ISS Reservations or 734.615.0100)
"Tech" your course! —Funding is available to explore new ways of enriching your classroom teaching using everything from 3D printing to field work/data collection on iPads; from daily videoconferencing with a foreign University to revising the pedagogy of the lab/discussion sections to create more interactive, team-based learning. Faculty with varying levels of technical expertise to implement new technologies to enhance undergraduate courses may apply for funds for student assistants, programmers, resources, and other project support. (Contact: Monika Dressler)
Videoconferencing —Whether it is a class, meeting, defense, job talk, presentation, or large-scale, interactive events streaming to thousands of viewers, LSA ISS Videoconferencing staff can assist you with Blue Jeans videoconferencing and Blue Jeans Primetime. For more details see ISS Videoconferencing. (Contact: firstname.lastname@example.org)
LSA IT Communities —In order to adopt "Best of#" practices for specific technologies, LSA IT Communities are being established and will provide a cohesive and consistent user experience while maintaining flexibility of unique configurations where needed. The communities (and their facilitators) will focus around Printing (Ryan Bankston), Automation (Jesse Reets), Linux (John Gallias), Mac (Jaime Magiera), and Windows (Tim Ahlgren and Duane Lute). These communities will guide the technical direction of each specific technology and how it is utilized in LSA.
Campus WiFi Update —Full building upgrades are underway in the USB and MLB. Site survey design are in process at CC Little, 202 S. Thayer, and LSA Building. Completed buildings now include Angell, Mason, Tisch, Haven, Tappan, and Chemistry. Full details of the WiFi upgrade project (Contact: Marissa Green
New and updated software available —Since the previous update, UmichITAM has released the following upgrades to the software catalog: JMP 12*, MATLAB License Server Expiration Update, NVivo 11, & Parallels 11. Complete list of all titles. (Contact: UmichITAM-Help@umich.edu)
LSA IT Service Desk Scorecard —Monthly support ticket statistics are included below. (Contact: Lisa Callihan)
|LSA IT Support Requests||November 2015||December 2015||January 2016|
|Total Ticket Volume||1,616||1,453||2,056|
|Total Tickets Resolved||1,425||1,346||1,803|
|Tier 1 Resolution Rate||50%||45%||40%|
|Key Performance Indicators|
|Average ticket resolution time||16 hours||16 hours||16 hours|
|Tickets responded to within 4 hours||89%||90%||85%|
|Calls answered within 30 seconds||99%||99%||99%|
|Overall Customer Satisfaction||95%||100%||99%|