Accomplishments
Over the next few months, we will continue to upgrade audio-visual technology as part of the 2016-2017 Classroom Technology Enhancements project (PC0629). This project requires incredible coordination and scheduling efforts to minimize disruption to classes while improving the audio-visual experience for our instructors and students. In February, Mac D283 and Clearihue B316 were upgraded to meet our new digital standard.
Our SAS enterprise reporting framework was upgraded from version 9.3. to 9.4 during the month of February (PC0617). This important system provides authoritative data for student prospect, applicant, admission, enrolment, funding, retention and credentials granted reports. This upgrade ensures that we have the latest program and security features available.
Our FAST enterprise application and reporting environment was upgraded from version 4.3.0.1 to 4.3.13 during the month of February (PC0699). This system provides users across the campus with access to financial, human resources, and student data. This upgrade provides considerable improvements to the budget and forecasting modules, the ability to schedule report delivery, and the automation of data extracts from FAST Finance for upload into the Enhanced Planning Tools (EPT) system.
Around Campus
On Wednesday, February 8, the campus closed due to a large dump of snow. Our Computer Help Desk staff cleared and secured our computing facilities, then made some snow angels on the way home!
Greg and Fraser making snow angels. Photo Credit: Tomoyo Masuda
Ideafest will occur from March 6-11 this year with a wide array of presentations and exhibits. Our Audio Visual team is in the final stages of preparing staffing coverage and logistics to support this fun and large event.
ConnectU, a staff professional development conference, will occur on May 3 and 4. Planning for Connect U is underway with many members of Academic and Administrative Services working together to organize support for the event.
Media Services webcast two events for the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions in February: “The health risks of a changing climate” and “Implications of future development pathways for the risks of climate change“.
BCNET
Tired of your iPhone updates taking so long?
UVic is now part of a BCNET evaluation of a caching service for Apple updates. Normally, updates for iOS and OSX are downloaded directly from Apple over the commodity Internet, resulting in significant traffic volumes when Apple issues a major new release. This not only impacts the people updating their Apple devices, but also has consequences for many other uses of the university’s Internet service. However, with the caching service in place, updates are stored on a server within BCNET meaning that traffic now flows to campus over a much higher capacity network (10Gbps vs 1Gbps). More bits, less waiting, happy users. The service is failsafe: if the BCNET cache server fails for some reason, updates will automatically revert to the normal, potentially slower method. Testing has turned up one minor glitch: choosing to “Update All” will bypass the cache and obtain the updates directly from Apple. The vendor is aware of this issue and hopefully will resolve it soon.