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Systems Support Users
Group Minutes |
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Systems Support Users
Group Minutes |
February 24, 2005 STV 141
Present:
Kathy Beal, Dave Bentlin, Rachel Calhoun, Cindy Cotton, Shannon Covey, Heather Freehill, Julie Goodlick, Eric Hodges, Shirley Murphy, Amanda Parker, Carmen Plummer, Dudley Roach, Rob Siebert, Linda Thomas, Luann Vanmeter, Tina Wright, Jessica Heiden, Jason Petty
Absent:
Bob Aaron, Jeffrey Aug, Pam Beach, Kriss Davis, Tom Fowles, Mark Walcott
Eric provided a brief history of the Users’ Group for new members, and announced that four members have been added from Athletics, as well as several replacements for former members. All members present introduced themselves. Eric announced that their support group now supports approximately 600 users in 21 buildings across campus. The addition of Athletics has enabled them to add 2 FTEs (Jessica Heiden and Jeremy Baker, who were introduced by Eric), bringing their office to 10 FTEs, 10 students and 1 GA.
Eric described the procurement and deployment of 16 new Dell 5100CN color laser printers, and Jason Petty demonstrated the duplexing feature, how to clear common paper jams and the location of the ink cartridges and fusers. Eric reported that Systems Support had a conference call with Dell tech support to discuss problems, and that Dell has acknowledged the issues and is working to resolve them. Some of the issues appear to be related to Dell’s attempt to distinguish their product from HP. Firmware updates to resolve the outstanding issues and open new features are expected. Individual print queues have been created for color and black & white printing, allowing supervisors to grant specific access to individual users. Manuals and reference cards are being delivered with the printers, and the printer’s functions are being demonstrated to at least one individual in each unit as they are deployed. Kathy Beal asked whether Quark printing was supported on these printers; Eric will check and let us know.
The XP conversion is underway with the first departmental migration beginning in Planning and Institutional Research on February 24. The Athletics conversion will begin on Monday, February 28 and is expected to last six weeks. The Comptroller’s Office will probably be next, based on year-end PC purchases. Two hours have been scheduled for each workstation conversion, but Systems Support is proposing the acquisition of Altiris, a desktop deployment and management tool that would cut the time and costs of conversion, and make file and configuration migrations quicker and more accurate. Conversion of all 600 workstations is expected to continue until this fall.
Home directories, currently mapped as J:\ drives, will be moved to H:\ (for Home), to be more consistent with industry standards. Kathy Beal asked how this would be handled for MACs that access network resources. Rachel Calhoun asked if the space allotted to users’ home directories would be affected; it will not.
Eric introduced the new Redbird Card that will be distributed to all faculty, staff, students and retirees beginning in April. The cards may be picked up at a to-be-announced date in April at the Prairie Room in BSC, or they will be mailed to home addresses. The new cards display the UID that will replace SSNs on all University systems and cannot be used prior to June 1 when the conversion takes effect. The old cards will not work after that date. More information about the SSN to UID conversion is available at http://www.ais.ilstu.edu/ssn/.
Microsoft Exchange Instant Messaging will be deployed to all users concurrent with the migration to Windows XP. In addition to units supported by Systems Support, VPSA is using Instant Messaging. Dudley announced that IM addresses will be changing from ulid@syssrv03.ad.ilstu.edu to ulid@im.ilstu.edu as soon as he moves the accounts to a new server. Instructions on reconfiguring current contacts will be sent to IM users. In response to the question, “Can IM be used to communicate with AIM?” Dudley stated that the newest version of IM will allow that, but it is still possible to prevent accounts in a corporate environment from being seen outside campus. Julie Goodlick requested documentation for IM; Eric will try to get documentation on the Systems Support website.
Rachel Calhoun asked about division or University policy regarding storing University data on personal devices. After some discussion, Eric stated that the particular case to which Rachel referred (emailing prospect lists to a development director, to be stored on a personal laptop) was acceptable since the data also existed on University resources, but that the larger questions of policy and practice were of concern. In a case where data is stored only on a personal device, the issues of backup and support are critical. There is an ISU policy prohibiting University tech support staff from working on individuals’ personal PCs, laptops or other PC-related equipment, as well as a policy about ISU-licensed software on personal PCs, but other issues related to confidentiality and corporate work on personal devices are not as clear. Julie Goodlick expressed her belief that this is a HR issue.
The next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, March 31, 2005 at 2 p.m. in STV 141.