University Systems News for October 2016

Around Campus

We attended to the President’s Campus Update video recording held in the Continuing Studies Atrium on October 5th. A recording of the event is available on the Campus Update website.

Our Media Services team met with the organizers of Ideafest (March 6-11 2017) to discuss how AV orders will be managed. As a result of this meeting, dea created a fast fact sheet to be distributed by the Ideafest organizers to the presenters.

We participated in the United Way Plasma Car Race on October 25. More information about upcoming events is available through the UVic United Way website.

Skye Champagne cheers (photobombs) while Wency Lum cruises the circuit! (Photo Credit: Ivan Petrovic)

Planning for the Banner Upgrade

The Banner upgrade team is preparing for a major system upgrade over the November long weekend that includes total of 115 hours of effort by project team members from across University Systems, HR, Finance, and the Office of the Registrar. The upgrade includes technical currency upgrades for a total of 26 Linux servers being upgraded to RedHat6, incremental upgrades to each of the core Banner modules allowing for new and improved functionality, and prepares UVic’s Banner environment for upcoming changes to Banner XE, scheduled to begin in 2017. Selina created a colourful info-graphic to help communicate the scale of this upgrade.

Accomplishments

Desktop Support Services completed two large PC refreshes over the past few months. In Financial Services DSS staff deployed over 60 new computers. In Cooperative Education and Career Services, 33 Macintosh computers were replaced. In both cases computers were replaced with TSC standard PC laptops and desktop computers running the standard UVic Windows 10 image. All computers are bound to the UVic domain with standard UVic group policies, Symantec Endpoint Protection and are encrypted using our Enterprise BitLocker whole disk encryption.

The annual refresh of communications infrastructure within the Residence buildings (PC0573) is nearing completion. The focus of this project is to improve wireless.

Our Network Services team has been provisioning communication services within E Hut for the Civil Engineering program (PC0640). Phase II construction is almost complete with clients moving in next week!

A number of enhancements to the document upload process for applicants went live in October (PC0616). The most significant enhancement is the ability for students to upload additional documents after they have submitted their UVic application. This enables students to apply earlier, before they are in possession of documents that are not required until later in the admissions process, and also allows departments to design more flexible admissions processes.

A number of enhancements to the Applicant Information Review System (AIRS) were introduced in October (PC0627). A comprehensive list of fixes and enhancements were gathered during four Town Hall meetings conducted with the users and stakeholders of the AIRS system. That list was then analyzed by a functional team of users to define and prioritize the requirements according to value and impact to the business. Additionally, a technical team reviewed each fix and enhancement to estimate the effort to develop and implement. Using those two measures, value and effort, the project team has chosen a set of priority items that can be delivered within the project timeline.

Communication and Information Sharing

Wency hosted a Town Hall session for all University Systems staff on October 25. She shared her story, provided us with some of her insights from the last few months, and invited us to share our ideas as well! Congratulations to our Living Values Award winners: the Network Technician team won the team award and Corey Scholefield won the individual award.

Wency Lum and Corey Scholefield after the Town Hall meeting (Photo Credit: Chandra Beaveridge)

Carmen Charette, vice-president external relations, shared her leadership insights with us through our Women in Leadership series on October 26. Carmen created a handout called “Successful Engagement” to summarize her valuable experience and lessons learned in building trust and decision making. Additional handouts from this fantastic session are available in the General Office for those who were unable to attend.

Skye Champagne, Carmen Charette, and Chris Baddock (Photo Credit: Chandra Beaveridge)

Scott Thorpe hosted a Lunch and Learn session entitled Audio Cleanup and Restoration with iZotope RX on October 7th in Clearihue C030. The slides from the presentation are available on the Living Values Connect site.

Nav Bassi shared his takeaways from Project World*Business Analyst World 2016 including some interesting insights into how traditional waterfall and agile project management techniques are being applied. Keep focus on strong project documentation and regular team meetings!

Corey Gibbings presented a Lunch and Learn on how PTS runs production database installs and tips to help projects go smoothly. He covered sqlplus options to common syntax errors, when to use ‘@’ vs ‘@@’, and common reasons why projects that work in PL/SQL developer are unable to be installed by our database administrators.

Don’t become a phishing victim! The Computer Help Desk has delivered Introductory phishing training sessions to most VPFO units. Register to attend a training session, view helpful tips, and enroll in online phishing training through the UVic Phishing Awareness website.