Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Rutherford and Son
This production is by Northern Broadsides and its artistic director Barrie Rutter at the Viaduct in Dean Clough. We went on Febrruary 14th and were welcomed by members of the cast as we went into the venue and afterwards they were in the bar chatting to the audience. It seemed appropriate for this play to be staged in Dean Clough itself, and for the messages to be as relevant in 2013 as they were a hundred years ago when the play was written. Highly recommended whenever they perform, and yet another triumph for Halifax.
IT Services Newsletter #42
The first newsletter of 2013 (belatedly published) with plenty to report since the start of the New Year. There does appear to be lots happening across the University, and Prof. Shirley Congdon’s briefing to all staff illustrates the scale of some of those changes and the significant number of these activities which are technology-enabled. Thank you to everyone who is continuing to work hard and to juggle a number of competing demands to the best of our abilities.
Small Successes
At the start of our monthly IT Board we begin by sharing small successes over the last month. Among other things, we found out that:
At IT Board we reported on the latest rolling plan for IT Services. This document and others (like our org chart, account management documents, lessons learned and plans etc) are all published here. There are 78 items we are tracking on the plan (up from 67 last time) and 36 of these are live activity (versus suspended or waiting for approvals etc). There were 6 items that were reported as completed and/or now business as usual since the last meeting.
New Mobile Phone Framework
A small team led by IT Services has sorted out the new purchasing framework for our corporate mobile phone supply and service. We are remaining with Vodafone under improved terms and conditions resulting from adoption of the Public Sector Networks (PSN) Framework. Based on the previous tariffs etc and assuming similar levels of business we expect a saving to the University users across campus.
IT Services “on tour”
Following in the footsteps of Library colleagues in LSS who have “been on tour”, we undertook the first IT Services event where we camped out in Richmond Building K Floor for most of the day on January 16th. The event was well publicised in the School of Life Sciences who were the target audience. It was a quiet day overall, which could be interpreted in various different ways – either positive spin or otherwise. We thought it was a good enough idea to give it another go, and therefore the next “victims” of the IT Support team’s enthusiasm will be LSS! The date is February 22nd and the location is JBP Building Group Study Room One at the entrance to the building. All welcome with your IT questions and issues – including those of us in IT Services who sometimes suffer from “cobblers shoes”.
Office Moves and Changes
Now that most of the library books have left Floor 01 we are beginning to get space back which is gradually being re-purposed. There is an overall plan which is being overseen by a small “Tidy Up Group” post refurbishment project. Pat and team have done a great job and for example, 01.4 is now fully back in action again. The student PC Clinic is going to be re-located to Floor 01 in the foyer area - some people call this space the “old shop”. An office space (01.45) is also being prepared for occupation by people mainly working on projects and also a “hotdesk/shared desk”. This space also in the foyer area will be occupied during week commencing February 11th.
Upgrades to the Learn Higher Room
Completing a campus-wide upgrade to lecture/teaching facility, two new PCs have been installed in the Learn Higher Room running Windows 7/Office 10 etc. These have been tested and are working with the extensive AV equipment in that room. Thanks for assisting the AV Services team with the launch of that. We are now working on Summer plans to upgrade/refresh the AV capability and layout of the PC Cluster Room (01.58) and the AV facility in Richmond Building J Floor.
This is just a quick snapshot of some of the projects and activity which might be of interest. There is, as always, lots of other activity happening, so apologies if your work wasn’t included – please let me know for the next newsletter.
Small Successes
At the start of our monthly IT Board we begin by sharing small successes over the last month. Among other things, we found out that:
- A facility called “Groups” is now operating to collect information on IT accounts which use Open Athens to access learning and research materials. This has been made possible by recent changes and upgrades to authentication systems and will mean that we can collect and report on better management information into the future.
- The Christmas and New Year period passed without incident or service interruption. It was the first extended break where there has not been a “call out” for some reason or other (although not always related to technology!). Our thanks to those who participated in monitoring the services over this period.
- We reported that a service improvement to the email server had been successful during the IT “at risk” period – this was at the third attempt – plenty of perseverance demonstrated on that one.
- We reported successful changes to the Secure Global Desktop service and the consolidation of SAINT “S drives” during the IT “at risk” period. The subsequent snow day in mid January demonstrated how even when the University is shut the IT Services remain open for business. On that day the statistics show that we have had over 200 people use the SGD system. There have been almost 1500 accesses to the SGD service since the beginning of January 2013.
- The order was placed for new call recording software which will enable specific calls/phone extensions to be recorded “for monitoring and training purposes” etc. The first roll out of this system will be in the Hub and our own ICT Servicedesk with a target for launch in the Spring.
At IT Board we reported on the latest rolling plan for IT Services. This document and others (like our org chart, account management documents, lessons learned and plans etc) are all published here. There are 78 items we are tracking on the plan (up from 67 last time) and 36 of these are live activity (versus suspended or waiting for approvals etc). There were 6 items that were reported as completed and/or now business as usual since the last meeting.
New Mobile Phone Framework
A small team led by IT Services has sorted out the new purchasing framework for our corporate mobile phone supply and service. We are remaining with Vodafone under improved terms and conditions resulting from adoption of the Public Sector Networks (PSN) Framework. Based on the previous tariffs etc and assuming similar levels of business we expect a saving to the University users across campus.
IT Services “on tour”
Following in the footsteps of Library colleagues in LSS who have “been on tour”, we undertook the first IT Services event where we camped out in Richmond Building K Floor for most of the day on January 16th. The event was well publicised in the School of Life Sciences who were the target audience. It was a quiet day overall, which could be interpreted in various different ways – either positive spin or otherwise. We thought it was a good enough idea to give it another go, and therefore the next “victims” of the IT Support team’s enthusiasm will be LSS! The date is February 22nd and the location is JBP Building Group Study Room One at the entrance to the building. All welcome with your IT questions and issues – including those of us in IT Services who sometimes suffer from “cobblers shoes”.
Office Moves and Changes
Now that most of the library books have left Floor 01 we are beginning to get space back which is gradually being re-purposed. There is an overall plan which is being overseen by a small “Tidy Up Group” post refurbishment project. Pat and team have done a great job and for example, 01.4 is now fully back in action again. The student PC Clinic is going to be re-located to Floor 01 in the foyer area - some people call this space the “old shop”. An office space (01.45) is also being prepared for occupation by people mainly working on projects and also a “hotdesk/shared desk”. This space also in the foyer area will be occupied during week commencing February 11th.
Upgrades to the Learn Higher Room
Completing a campus-wide upgrade to lecture/teaching facility, two new PCs have been installed in the Learn Higher Room running Windows 7/Office 10 etc. These have been tested and are working with the extensive AV equipment in that room. Thanks for assisting the AV Services team with the launch of that. We are now working on Summer plans to upgrade/refresh the AV capability and layout of the PC Cluster Room (01.58) and the AV facility in Richmond Building J Floor.
This is just a quick snapshot of some of the projects and activity which might be of interest. There is, as always, lots of other activity happening, so apologies if your work wasn’t included – please let me know for the next newsletter.
IT Services Newsletter #41
Welcome to the (belated publication of the) December edition, and also to our new members of the team in IT Support who were introduced in a separate staff announcement. A few of us were involved in last week’s degree congregations – in fact the Thursday ceremony included two processional marshals and the macebearer from IT Services! These are always fantastic events and although Imran Khan wasn’t available (he sent support messages), there were Honorary Degrees awarded to two more Khans: Dr. Mumtaz Khan (of Mumtaz restaurant fame) and Dr. James Khan (of Dragon’s Den). Excellent acceptance speeches from both of our new Doctors.
Recruitment News – project management framework
We have completed a tender for the project management of the Unified Communications Project. This project is going to have two phases – the first phase will be the migration of all our student email accounts from Outlook Live to Microsoft’s enhanced Office365 service. The second phase will be the migration of a number of staff services. There is no timetable yet for either of these activities, but we did secure Microsoft funding to complete the first stage by September 2013 latest (and much sooner is Microsoft’s preference!). We have appointed Jerry Niman to work on this project, and he will be joining us early in the New Year. Jerry has a significant amount of Higher Education and technical infrastructure experience as a previous Head of IT at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he was involved in several major email migration projects.
Reducing the number of reported IT incidents/service interruptions
At a recent IT Support Team meeting I mentioned some interesting management information from our servicedesk system (RMS). We are now into the second year of ITIL based coding which separates IT “incidents” from “requests for change” (we’re not yet recording “problems” separately). We can now compare the number of these things over the same period of time to see if service improvements and root cause analysis is actually making a difference. Of course, the devil is in the detail and the quality of the data recorded. However, in terms of overall direction in the months of October and November there was a 35% reduction (September) and 50% reduction (October) in the total number of incidents reported year-on-year. The number of requests for change was the same. Dave Ewen has been working on a proof of concept (using a product called Elkview) for “dashboard” reporting from RMS and demonstrated that last week. If you are interested in this sort of thing, then Dave can provide a really interesting overview.
In Other News
Recruitment News – project management framework
We have completed a tender for the project management of the Unified Communications Project. This project is going to have two phases – the first phase will be the migration of all our student email accounts from Outlook Live to Microsoft’s enhanced Office365 service. The second phase will be the migration of a number of staff services. There is no timetable yet for either of these activities, but we did secure Microsoft funding to complete the first stage by September 2013 latest (and much sooner is Microsoft’s preference!). We have appointed Jerry Niman to work on this project, and he will be joining us early in the New Year. Jerry has a significant amount of Higher Education and technical infrastructure experience as a previous Head of IT at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he was involved in several major email migration projects.
Reducing the number of reported IT incidents/service interruptions
At a recent IT Support Team meeting I mentioned some interesting management information from our servicedesk system (RMS). We are now into the second year of ITIL based coding which separates IT “incidents” from “requests for change” (we’re not yet recording “problems” separately). We can now compare the number of these things over the same period of time to see if service improvements and root cause analysis is actually making a difference. Of course, the devil is in the detail and the quality of the data recorded. However, in terms of overall direction in the months of October and November there was a 35% reduction (September) and 50% reduction (October) in the total number of incidents reported year-on-year. The number of requests for change was the same. Dave Ewen has been working on a proof of concept (using a product called Elkview) for “dashboard” reporting from RMS and demonstrated that last week. If you are interested in this sort of thing, then Dave can provide a really interesting overview.
In Other News
- There were a number of successful submissions to the most recent performance recognition process. Congratulations to all those who received an award – Sara has already sent a separate message. I am also very pleased to confirm two successful and well deserved re-grading submissions in our IT Infrastructure Team.
- John Fairhall has been doing some work with Jim Boyne over in the School of Life Sciences. There is a short video clip available here. This was launched at a recent Norcroft conference event and it was very well received. Both Jim and Jon Dermo in the Centre for Educational Development are keen to take it further. This might lead to more development work for the mobile app, but it looks very promising.
- The University student system (SAINT) was successfully upgraded over the weekend of December 8th and 9th in a “double upgrade”. A lot of planning went into this and a number of people were on call out and/or working over the weekend. These upgrades are relatively rare events happening twice a year, and they have a big impact on IT Services. Many thanks to all the team involved in making this happen.
- The Cloud Wi-Fi service is now using the JANET network. As well as enabling us to use more bandwidth, the service will benefit from the resilience of the University’s connection to JANET. Some of you will be aware that we had service interruptions on this over the Summer. The users will not notice any difference, the login process is still the same. With thanks to the Infrastructure Team for making this happen.
- We recently supported the Bradathon activity which aims to raise awareness and funding from alumni for student activity and investment. Bradenton commenced on Sunday 11th November 2012 and ran every weekday (6.00pm to 9.30 pm) and on Saturday 17th November 2012 to 2nd December 2012 (2.45pm to 8.00 pm). This was happening in F42 Sunray Cluster. Thanks to all those involved in supporting this activity in the run up to the 50th anniversary celebrations.
- There have been a number of Wi-Fi updates on campus. During November we reported that the remaining wireless base stations installed to bump up coverage levels in the extension part of JBPB floors 1 and 2 were operational. This brings to a conclusion a process which started in May to give good wireless coverage to all General Teaching Areas but has also included JBP Building floors 0-2 (with some extras on 01 and 02), and for academic departments parts of the ICT Building, Horton A floor 3 and some of Richmond M floor. In all there have been 30 new base stations installed, taking our total overall to 168 base stations.
- Work has been progressing on attendance monitoring solutions and a tender has now been issued for return before the end of December – although no-one will be looking at it until the New Year! The Project Board were especially grateful to the IT team for our contributions to the tender (a 60+ page document).
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