October 2009

October 7, 2009

Projects Recently Submitted for Approval

Approval History

The background on projects previously reviewed by the UTC can be found here.

Emerging Policy Issues

SalesForce with Mike Eleey

WP Carey has been using SalesForce.com as a departmentally configurable CRM tool to manage prospect development and student recruiting/admissions in its executive education and MBA programs and is extending the approach to other school functions. The Carey school has been sharing its progress with a number of departments around the University interested in SalesForce for similar purposes. Mike will fill us in on the progress his team has made, outline some other opportunities around the University, and raise some questions about where SalesForce might go next within ASU.

View a presentation.

Qwest Update with Dave McKee

Since July, Qwest is ASU’s managed network services provider. During that time, we’ve seen the backlog of service requests decline and the time to perform service also decrease. Reliability has been good, and the working relationship is even better than expected. So we’re off to a good start. Dave McKee will fill us in on how we’re measuring Qwest and planning to move forward.

View a presentation.  

University Supported Software with Sandy Johnson

UTO has recently created the list of University Maintained Software, sorted into five categories:

• University Infrastructure
• Common Computing Infrastructure
• Common Computer Supported Software
• Specialized Instructional Software with a wide user base
• Specialized instructional Software with a narrow user base

We’re suggesting that the University support the first four categories centrally, and offer to support the fifth category through Citrix if academic units want the licenses they purchase to be available through that channel.

We believe our policy should be to secure University-wide licensing wherever possible. Where not possible or affordable, we would try to secure licenses sufficient to meet demand through a combination of machine locked and Web delivered licenses, with an emphasis on Web-delivered where ever feasible.

We would like to suggest the following as a way to develop the list of University Maintained Software:

A draft list of the University Maintained Software is available as a Google Doc that you have all been invited to. Please feel free to mark it up, adding packages you think we should support, telling us which ones you think we should drop, and which are most important to your unit. We’ll take that input and produce a second draft for review at the next meeting.

Apple Agreement
Apple has announced the release of their OS upgrade Snow Leopard. ASU has been working on a University-wide purchasing agreement. Sandy will discuss the terms open to the University and asks for your input.

Blogs & Wikis with Max Davis-Johnson

Last spring, ASU asked for feedback on its aging blog and wiki infrastructure. Max will report on the feedback we’ve receiving, the alternatives we’re considering, what we’re recommending, and we ask for your input.

Blackboard 9.0 with Max Davis-Johnson

This fall, ASU has been pursuing a Blackboard 9.0 pilot with a dozen faculty. The Blackboard 9.0 instance is hosted by Blackboard, and so far, we’ve been pleased with both the product and the hosting. Max Davis-Johnson will update you on the progress of the pilot and the status of discussions about converting ASU from Blackboard 8.0 to 9.0 in either this spring or this summer.

Performance Audit Update with Tina Thorstenson

This past week, Tina Thorstenson was appointed as ASU’s Information Security Officer. Tina will fill in the UTC on the status of the 12-month follow-up to the Web-based application security performance audit.

View a presentation.

Student Financial Aid Assistance with Mary Covington

The Service Desk began taking Financial Aid phone calls a week prior to the start of the Fall 2009 semester and has continued taking calls since then. To continue improving the student experience, the Service Desk will begin handling 100% of Financial Aid calls within the next two weeks. Mary will update you on where we are today.

View a presentation.

UTO Digest with John Rome

UTO is thinking of producing a monthly digest of the activity in UTO Labs. Not unlike the CM Digest, the UTO Digest would include summaries of new projects, projects at risk, recent releases, and projects due to release every month. Looking for your guidance on what might be useful to include.

Status on All UTO Projects

The status on all UTO projects can be found in UTO Labs.