University of Massachusetts at Amherst Faculty Senate University Computing & Electronic Communications Committee Nov 21, 2002; Campus Center 905 Minutes Approved Feb 12, 2003 Attendees: Rosio Alvarez (OIT), Steve Brewer (Biology), Heidi Dollard (OIT), Murray Eisenberg (Math), Marilyn Hanley (Library, secretary), Gary Hough (Library), Bill Israel (Journalism), Cynthia Jacelon (Nursing), Tad Jackson (ITS), Joe Kunkel (Biology, chair), David Powicki (OIT), Elizabeth Pyle (Registrar), Norman Sims (Journalism), Ed Stanek (Public Health), Howard D. Stidham (Chemistry), Michael VanKleef (Undergraduate, Management / Plant and Soil) Announcements: Email and traffic problem Old business: SPIRE system - Heidi, Elizabeth, Rosio Several issues: SPIRE behaves differently with different browsers. Suggestion: Use IE as the recommended standard. PeopleSoft supports Netscape 4.6 and higher, Internet Explorer 4.7 and higher. Limit to these. Inaccessibility to Course Catalog. Comments: There is a load problem on the server. If you can not get in, keep trying. It clears up quickly. During the ramp on period (every 45 minutes), it will be difficult to get in. On average, there are 70,000 searches. OIT did a substantial amount of stress testing and built in safety valves based on information from other sites' installations. The good news is that the server has not stopped and gone into gridlock. The enrollment engine is a resource hog. The resources have been put into the application server, but the web server has been the resource hog. Budget of PeopleSoft: the one time costs are approximately $11 million, including hardware and software. When OIT discovered the extent of the web page resource issue, it was recommended that, since we were going live within a month, we not reconfigure the system at that point. Web page front-end: Students found that it takes a long time to navigate within the web site. Comments: OIT does need to revamp the web page. It is not user friendly. There is training available at Whitmore. OIT bought SPIRE as an interim solution to get us through the first couple of years. They had a limited amount of development time and focused energy on the worst of the PeopleSoft functional problems, then went on to other core problems. It was critical to focus on top priorities of data accuracy and functionality accuracy, before working on the user interface. Information issue: Honors students and pre-requisites. Comments: The Registrars Office is fixing the pre-requisite problem. Most were resolved within 36 hours. There is automated pre-requisite checking that can be set up at the discretion of the dept. Class list: Recommendation, don't use SPIRE to download, use MOBIUS, a separately purchased product. Call Ted Atkinson with problems. The next PeopleSoft version will have better interface so won't have to use MOBIUS at all. Send any problems to Heidi and Elizabeth. The departments used to manage these types of things themselves. However this new method gives the students a better sense of control. Seats for majors and seniors is an issue for faculty. Action item: Rosio, Heidi, and Elizabeth need to report on PeopleSoft to the Faculty Senate, new version, timelines, housing piece (to be developed at UMass), degree audit. Rosio agreed that more faculty input is needed. Murray suggested scheduling meetings with individual departments and work with the departmental scheduling person. Format of screen issues: PeopleSoft can modify. However changes would sometimes break other things. An effort is being made to make it compatible with other software such as JAWS (ADA software), which is not used with java. The PS system uses java. The President's Office signed an extended service contract with PeopleSoft to give us another year with the current version. August 2003 is the deadline for support of version 7.6, the extension gives us until August 2004 before needing to migrate to version 8. SPIRE is a front-end product with no staff interface (we wrote that part) Full functionality with the web will be available with version 8. SPIRE is a means to get us through 3 semesters until version 8. Then we’ll have better functionality. Questions: Who shouldn't be suffering? Students (primary), faculty, administration Who’s having the worst problems? Help Desk: took in 750 call during the first week. They developed this into a FAQ for the web site and / or for making quick changes. They need student input on the web form, lab, calls, etc. Each group of students (honors, graduate, etc ) or processes (online registration, add/drop, etc) has different issues. Financial Aid and transfer credit problems due to lack of staffing They learned a lot from the top 3-5 implementation issues at other institutions. An issue is how much to rely on homegrown rather than outside consultants. There are new and exciting developments coming but at the same time feeling overwhelmed. Early retirements hurt the organization and the implementation. Now we need to move forward and hit the highlights together. We needed to have a foundation from which to build. We now have that. It is time to give input and also know there are lots of resource constraints. Was it worth it to go to PeopleSoft? Absolutely. The other products do not have what we needed. Every institution going through this process has had tense times. Suggestion: develop a tabbed browser such as Godzilla OIT news (Rosio Alvarez) Bandwidth: We have increased bandwidth capacity by 160%. Campus dark fiber down to Springfield, live Oct 8, and maintained costs at the same level. Email: David Powicki: moved umail accounts to new servers, new web front-end delivered 3 days ago. Recommend that view eamil via a client such as Netscape or Microsoft Outlook Express. Delivery of new servers for mail hubs. Can allow people to do filtering of spam and virus scanning within messages. Attachments: 5 megabyte limit. Students need to be trained in how to send appropriate sized attachments. The Help Desk needs to work on documentation for this item. Five College network: The Five College fiber optic network ring (article was in the Gazette on Monday) for all 5 institutions has 2 links to Springfield, built in redundancy, high bandwidth among all 5. Wireless deployment: Phase one was the Cape Cod Lounge, W.E.B. Du Bois Library Main Floor and the Physical Sciences Library. Phase 2 is ISOM new wing area and public spaces in dining commons areas that are also used as study spaces, and the Campus Center ground and underground areas and the Graduate Student Lounge. Currently they use a VPN client on laptops for security purposes. OIT is investigating other products for this, such as Blue Rocket - OIT's wireless deployment policy: they will fund wireless projects in any heavy congregation of public areas. OIT used Cisco for the first deployment but had to switch to another vendor for further deployment. MAC support - all positions are currently frozen but they have a list of requests. PCCO had a Mac support person there but retired. They are currently training someone. Academic Computing also has a person trained in Macs. Mac OS 10 will be the only OS that boots on new Macs as of _____? Upgrading equipment in public labs: PCCO unit reports to Academic Computing. They did a thorough inventory and camp up with a replacement cycle. They will replace 150 machines during January break, both Dell and Mac. They will be opening up the special discount deal to personal purchases as well very soon. Annual report approved. Murray will forward to the Faculty Senate. Action item: Joe will talk with Rosio about changes in OIT's organization plan and rationale for the next year. Action item for all: Authentication for wireless - Contact Scott Conti with questions or suggestions Agenda items for next semester: Security of network Browser issue Agenda item for next time: Questions for Jack Wilson (Joe composing a list of questions) Email lists and unsigned messages from official university offices (Chancellor, Provost)