Tips From Your Admin

When traveling on University business, you don't need to purchase additional insurance when renting a car within the continental United States.

Stanford's insurance policy provides the "additional coverage" that rental agencies attempt to sell you when renting a car. If you do purchase additional coverage from a car rental agency, Stanford will not reimburse you.

Staff Happenings

The Order Management team would like to welcome Mellani Miller, who started on Monday, January 7, as an Order Processor.

Mellani's primary role will be to staff the ID Card office in Forsythe, as well as to help out with cell phone orders and support. Mellani has a varied background in customer service, most recently with an international au pair agency, handling all program components of placing au pairs with their host families (visas, travel, training, etc.).

Please stop by and welcome Mellani when you have a chance.

- Suzanne Schiessler
Shared Communication Services; Order Management

Comings and Goings

The following people have left Information Technology Services. Please contact their manager if you need to follow up on any open items.

John Timco (Suzanne Schiessler)

its in bits welcomes more detailed employee news submissions from all staff. Please submit to itsinbits-submissions@lists.stanford.edu

Tech Briefings

Tech Briefings

Fridays
2:00–3:30 p.m.

Turing Auditorium

January 18, Forsythe Data Center Update

Bob Moya will present the latest information on the Forsythe Data Center changes.

Wednesday, Jan 23: Apple Presents...

Come hear Stanford's Apple rep Wyn Davies talk about the exciting new Apple products, direct from Macworld 2008, in this special Wednesday Tech Briefing.

January 25, Remedy 7 Jumpstart

An overview of the changes to Remedy and HelpSU. This will include minor changes to HelpSU and new features in Remedy: the ability to create a personal signature file for email sent from Remedy, the ability to create tasks and assign them to other groups while maintaining control of the original ticket, and the new web-based client that will allow easy access for Macintosh users and quick access from computers where Remedy is not installed.

Check the Tech Briefings home page for future sessions and to subscribe to the mailing list.

Tech Express

(monthly)
12:00–1:00 p.m.
Turing Auditorium

January 17, Stanford Desktop Tools

Ammy Hill will demonstrate the new version of Stanford Desktop Tools. The focus will be on moving off of PC-Leland and MacLeland as everyone on campus needs to move to Stanford Desktop Tools (and off of PC-Leland and MacLeland) prior to April, 2008.

For the complete schedule, a map to Turing Auditorium, times, and a list of topics, visit the Tech Express site.

Technology Training Courses

Upcoming Tech Training classes of interest to IT Services staff.

Office 2007: What's new?, Thu, Jan 17, 9:00–12:00, $125

Vista Overview, Thu, Jan 17, 1:00–4:00, $125

Photoshop Level 1, Thu, Jan 17, 9:00–4:00, $325

Dreamweaver Lite, Thu, Jan 17, 1:00–4:30, $195

InDesign Level 1, Fri, Jan 18, 9:00–4:00, $325

FileMaker Pro Level 1, Tue, Jan 22, 9:00–4:00, $325

Email and Mailman at Stanford, Wed, Jan 23, 1:00–4:00, Free

Word 2003 Tips & Time Savers Lecture, Thu, Jan 24, 1:00–4:00, $125

Access 2007 Level 1, Thu, Jan 24, 9:00–4:00, $325

XML Introduction, Fri, Jan 25, 9:00–4:00, $325

FileMaker Pro Lite, Mon, Jan 28, 1:00–4:30, $195

Project 2007 Level 1, Tue, Jan 29, 9:00–4:00, $325

Web Design Level 1: The Basics, Wed, Jan 30, 1:00–4:30, $195

Access 2007 Lite, Thu, Jan 31, 1:00–4:30, $195

Dreamweaver Level 1, Thu, Jan 31, 9:00–4:00, $325

Security: Securing Unix and Linux Systems, Thu, Jan 31, 9:00–4:30, Free

Security: Securing Windows Hosts & Domains, Fri, Feb 1, 9:00–4:30, Free

Adobe Acrobat: Beyond the Basics of Using the Full Version, Mon, Feb 4, 1:00–4:00, $195

Techport Open Lab, Wed, Feb 6, 9:00–12:00, Free

Web: Securing Computers, Documents, and Web Sites, Wed, Feb 6, 1:00–4:30, $195

Security: Hardening Systems Through Hindsight, Wed, Feb 6, 10:00–12:00, Free

Word 2007 Level 2, Thu, Feb 7, 9:00–4:00, $325

ReportMart1 Introduction, Thu, Feb 7, 1:00–4:30, Free

Excel 2007 Getting Started with Macros, Fri, Feb 8, 9:00–4:00, $325

Sundial Tips and Tricks, Mon, Feb 11, 1:00–4:30, Free

Blogs: Setting Up a Blog at Stanford, Tue, Feb 12, 1:00–4:30, $195

Excel 2007 Level 1, Tue, Feb 12, 9:00–4:00, $325

Using Technology to Manage Your Workload, Wed, Feb 13, 1:00–4:00, $125

Flash Levels 1 and 2, Wed, Feb 13 & Thu, Feb 14, 9:00–4:00, $525 (Two-day class)

OrderIT Site Training, Thu, Feb 14, 8:30–12:00, Free

Sign up at http://axess.stanford.edu.

Classes with low enrollment may be cancelled one week in advance. More information on courses, registration, and training is available at the Technology Training Services site.

- Nancy Baumann
Technology Training Services

IT Employment Opportunities

There were three new job postings for IT Services this week.

Req. #28545: Director of Financial Operations, 100% FTE, Range 1M4, Sam Steinhardt, hiring manager.

Develops, leads, and motivates high performance teams of finance, business, and billing analysts to ensure the integrity of all accounting and cost control functions in the IT Services organization.

These functions include all recording and reporting of financial transactions related to the origination, booking, and control of revenue and expenses for budgets, such as expenditure requisition and control, capital purchasing and asset tracking, vendor invoice reconciliation, and all account reconciliation and forecasting as well as oversight of billing functions.

Req. #28547: Campus Readiness Analyst, 100% FTE, Range 3P3, Christopher Kittle, hiring manager.

Participates as a key member of project implementation teams, serving as a client advocate, while providing expertise for the planning and delivering of communication and training that prepares the Stanford community for service and system introductions and changes.

Req. #28680: Technology Training Financial Associate, 50% FTE, Range 1A4, Nancy Baumann, hiring manager.

Provides financial support including processing billing for classes and facilities, providing accounting reconciliations, financial reporting, and serving as the primary liaison between Technology Training and Application Support (Pinnacle staff), Administrative Systems (STARS staff), and IT Services Finance staff using the University’s financial systems.

To view the complete listings or to apply for a position, visit the StanfordJobs web site at: jobs.stanford.edu.

There are other open Information Technology positions at Stanford. To see what other opportunities exist on campus, link to the full list of all open IT positions at Stanford

Quote of the Week

“There are only two industries that refer to their customers as ‘users’.”

- Edward Tufte

News

A Note From Bill...

Happy New Year to all of you, and I hope that you enjoyed your vacation time. I especially enjoyed my time off with friends and family.  Funny how at this point, that seems so long ago. I always enjoy coming back after the holidays at Stanford because there is so much happening here in January. This year there are a number of projects and programs that we are focused on, and today I’d like to share one of them with you.

At the end of this month we will join the Dean of Research, Ann Arvin, as she takes forward a proposal for a new Research Computing Facility at Stanford.  IT Services has been working closely with Ann over the last several months to prepare for this meeting. The Computing Strategy team has been researching all aspects of the new facility. The team is putting together a detailed proposal for building a green, state-of-the-art research computing facility at SLAC that would be shared by SLAC and campus researchers.

To really understand the needs and requirements at this point in time, Phil Reese and I have conducted interviews with thirty top researchers in scientific computing here at Stanford, and plan to talk with about ten more. The results have been quite surprising. Almost all of them say that research computing demand has increased dramatically in the last five years, and that they now require a central facility that can take advantage of economies of scale in power and cooling. The surprising part is that they also say they would prefer to share their clusters, and to work together with their fellow researchers. They need a central facility to do that effectively, and that’s why they support this initiative completely.

It is clear now how closely we will need to work with the Dean of Research Office over the next several years, and so Phil has agreed to take a joint position reporting to both Ann Arvin and me, to work to fulfill the needs of our scientific researchers.  Ann will be taking a draft copy of our report to the Faculty Senate’s Committee on Academic Computing & Information Systems (C-ACIS) on the 23rd of this month, and then to the Provost’s Budget Group on the 30th. We need to make sure that the financial implications of the report are well understood.

We will then meet with the Executive Cabinet (the President, Provost, and Deans) on February 13th to discuss how best to chart a strategy for research computing going forward at Stanford. The report recommends forming a research faculty committee that includes approximately six of these top researchers, along with the Dean of Research, to develop a more detailed strategic plan of how Stanford should proceed.

These are indeed exciting times for IT at Stanford, and I look forward to discussing this further with you at our February Town Hall.

- Bill Clebsch
IT Services

Integrated Email and Calendar Project Update

Since our last its in bits update in December, project staff have completed the contract for professional services that will provide us with the needed vendor support for the duration of the Integrated Email and Calendar Project. Last week, Karl Buchner, our primary technical consultant from Zimbra (the product vendor), came to meet some of the project staff and start planning for the official project kickoff, scheduled for January 16. Karl will be working on-site three to four days each week, and together with the rest of the project team is hard at work laying out the specifics of the project plan.

"Awareness and engagement" communications continue with clients. Project staff, accompanied by account managers and client liaisons, continue to meet with IT staff in the schools and departments that participated in the discover phase. These meetings allow us to keep staff informed of progress and to maintain a partnership that we can leverage to better ensure acceptance and successful deployment of the new tools.

Project staff have also begun distributing other introductory communication to campus groups (e.g., Expert Partners, CampusIT) and potential clients via email and newsletters. To see this communication, visit the project web site.

As always, if you have any questions about this project, pleace contact the project team.

- Ammy HIll
Client Support; Campus Readiness

Remedy Reimplementation Update: Looking Good

The project team working on bringing up the newest version of BMC Remedy's Service Desk application continues to make excellent, steady progress. The team has scheduled a Go/No Go decision for Thursday, January 24 for the planned go-live on Tuesday, February 19 (after a nice three-day Presidents' Day weekend).

Functional testing within IT Services has been going on for more than a week, and any bugs identified so far have been quickly addressed. No major issues have surfaced to date, although testing continues on a daily basis.

During the week of January 14, testers from around campus are coming to the Polya Hall Instructional Lab (PHIL) to receive a brief orientation to the new application and are invited to run through their common test scenarios. If you are interested in testing, please email Katherine Pappas-Kassaras and we'll get you on the list to test.

Also beginning this week, IT Services has engaged a consultant to assist us in performing load testing of the application, from the Remedy User client end (using Borland's SilkPerformer tool) as well as the Mid-Tier (Web) version of the application (using HP's LoadRunner software).

Initial drafts of training materials and documents are circulating among the project team, and an updated version of the HelpSU For Consultants web page is now available. This page will continue to be augmented as more information is finalized.

- Chris Lundin
Client Support; Help Desk Services

Service Alerts

Over the past few months, a small team of people have been working on a new application that will improve the way IT Services communicates planned and unplanned high impact incidents (service outages) within IT Services and to our clients. The bulk of the design and development effort was carried out by Adam Lewenberg from the Applications Support group, but the basic need and concept was initiated early last year by Chris Lundin, Nan McKenna, and Donna Cummings.

The fundamental premises were that IT Services needed: a more uniform way to communicate outage status internally; a way to differentiate our internal communication from our client communication; and a common store for the information that was flowing during the outage, and afterwards, as root-cause analysis was performed.

The main business requirements that drove the design of this new application were: the initial form to be used for incident reporting would be easy to use for initial notification, as well as update and restore information; the Production Control Group (PCG) would post incident alerts to a public web site to keep clients, as well as the general public, informed during outages; and Remedy would be used as the persistent store for service incidents.

The current version of the application is in final testing and is available for viewing. There will be three training sessions for IT Services personnel who, in the course of their duties, may need to submit service alerts or incident reports. These will be held in the Forsythe 246 conference room on:

  • Monday, January 21st, 11 a.m.–12 noon
  • Wednesday, January 23rd, 1:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m.
  • Friday, January 25th, 10 a.m.–11 a.m.

The IT Service Alerts application will be introduced in three phases beginning January 27. Phase I will replace the current method of incident reporting in its entirety. During this phase, service alerts will be posted using the new application and emails will be automatically generated and sent to the same audience as they have in the past, albeit using new distribution lists (Note: itss-service-alerts@lists is being retired). The Production Control Group will be publishing a public version of the service alert, but during Phase I it will be viewable only by IT Services staff; this will serve as a training period for PCG staff.

During Phase II, which will begin approximately four weeks later, the internal and public functions will be fully implemented as planned. Internal service alerts will be emailed to IT Services personnel. A public version of the same information will be emailed to clients and published to http://italertsu.stanford.edu.

In Phase III, Remedy incident tickets will be automatically generated. These tickets will be used to track and report incident restoration activity as well as root-cause analysis and permanent corrective action. The application will also be integrated with Infra so that planned service interruptions may also be posted internally as well as publicly.

- Scott Wildy
Shared Communication Services; Monitoring & Reporting

Go Green with Big Fix

The Big Fix Power Management pilot was a huge success. Over 1,000 computers have been enabled to turn off their monitors after 15 minutes, including over 250 in IT Services. The impact to users was minimal, and it puts Stanford one step closer to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, on February 15, we'll count the number of computers with Big Fix Power Management enabled and apply for refunds of $15 per computer from PG&E. With 24,000 computers currently running Big Fix, this could be as much as $360,000 in refunds.

All rebate funds received will be returned to the participating department and will be targeted for projects to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions (such as replacing CRTs with flat panels, or swapping out old equipment for newer, more energy efficient devices.) Rebates based on student computers will be given to the newly-created Green Fund, and targeted for student-sponsored projects that could help make Stanford a more sustainable campus.

Students will be the first to sign up for Big Fix Power Management during the Energy Bowl, which kicks off today (January 16). Following the student rollout, we'll deploy to the rest of campus through the network of local Big Fix Console Operators. Each department will be able to decide if they want to participate, and how much power savings they want to deploy. Sustainable IT is recommending computers be set to power management settings of Green, which turns off monitors in 15 minutes.

More information about the program is available.

This deployment was made possible by great work by Greg Chong, Ammy Hill, Stacy Lee, Sean Mahanay, Heather Ramamurthy, Phil Reese, Chris Rose, Jay Stamps, and Tony Silviera from IT Services. Other campus contributors were Lee Merrick (Office of Research Administration), Michael Fox (Land, Buildings, & Real Estate), Bob Burkhardt (School of Medicine), Susan Kulakowski (Campus Energy Manager) and Matt Riley (Humanities & Sciences).

Big Fix Power Management was the first deliverable from the Sustainable IT team, which is a cross-University IT team working to develop greenhouse gas reduction opportunities through computing and IT. Our next project involves working with Joe Stagner, the new Executive Director of Sustainability and Energy Management, to identify and quantify power reduction opportunities for Research and Administrative Computing. These data will be used to help structure Stanford's overall greenhouse gas reduction goals that will be announced this spring.

- Joyce Dickerson
Client Support; Project Management Office

Unanet Replaces Journyx

As you have probably noticed by now, timesheet.stanford.edu no longer takes you to Journyx. Instead, you have the option to enter time in the "New" timesheet or the "Old" timesheet.

All time tracking entries through December 31st, 2007 should be entered in the old Journyx time sheet before January 31st. All time tracking entries for 2008 should go in the new Unanet timesheet.

If you didn’t make it to a Unanet training session, don’t panic. The system is fairly easy to use. Also, the instructional handouts can be found on the Unanet service page.

Most staff will only need the handout titled “Managing Your Timesheet.” The remaining job aids are geared toward managers. After access to Journyx is disabled at the end of January, all data for this fiscal year will be converted into Unanet to allow reporting for the entire fiscal year.

Some have asked where training time should be entered. Since this needs to be counted for rate setting purposes, please place training hours in your group’s General project area. If you have questions or need assistance, submit a HelpSU request with the Request Category of "Administrative Applications" and Request Type of "Unanet Time-Tracking" and the team will be happy to assist you.

- Ammy Hill
Client Support; Campus Readiness

Earth Sciences Moves Mail Servers

Towards the end of 2007, the School of Earth Sciences completed its migration to the central campus mail system run by IT Services. Given that the school has been running their own mail service for over 20 years, this was a very big deal.

The administrators at the school did a very nice write-up regarding the migration.

I want to offer many thanks to the folks in IT Services who were actively involved in making this happen: Becky Fenton and Alex Tayts in CRC, Xueshan Feng from the UNIX group, and the Tier 1 Help Desk staff.

- Heather Flanagan
Shared Application Services; Systems Administration

The Lucifer Effect

Philip Zimbardo, an emeritus professor of Psychology at Stanford, will be giving a short reading and talk at the Stanford Bookstore Wednesday, January 24th at 5 p.m.

He'll be discussing, and reading from, his book The Lucifer Effect.

- The Editors

About its in bits

A regular summary of IT business, news about personnel, and pointers to other information of interest to IT Services staff. Coordinated, compiled, and published by the Communication Strategy and Standards Team. its in bits is published on the first and third Wednesday of the month.

Submissions are due by Noon on the Friday before the scheduled issue, to itsinbits-submissions@lists.stanford.edu for consideration. its in bits is distributed via email to its-all-staff@lists.stanford.edu and the subscription list itsinbits-subscribers@lists.stanford.edu People outside of IT Services can self-subscribe via mailman.

The next its in bits will be published on Wednesday, February 6, 2008.