Survey

Do you think the new IT Services home page and service catalog are user-friendly?

Yes
No
I haven't checked them out yet.

Results from last issue's survey question: What is the capital of South Dakota?

There were 33 responses. 4 said Fargo, 6 said Sioux Falls, 19 said Pierre,
and 4 said they had to look it up.
(Pierre is correct)

Staff Profile

Suzanne Schiessler

Suzanne Schiessler joined Stanford in 2001.

 

 

 

How would you describe your current job responsibilities?

As the new Director of Order Management, my responsibilities include oversight of the Order Processing team, Cell Phone Support and Counter Services, and Stanford ID Card services. Each week, we receive over one thousand orders (requests for IT Services) including voice, cable, DSL, and the newly-added data center orders.

Our team works very closely with the Service Desk, Finance, I&M, Facilities Engineering, TFAC, PCG, Shared Application Services, and many others to streamline requests for service fulfillment on behalf of all of our clients.

Which aspects of your job do you enjoy the most?

I am very process oriented, so it is a thrill for me to be at the beginning stages of the Order Management Redesign (OMR) implementation and work with all of the groups on streamlining processes. As an organization, we have a lot of opportunity to improve our documentation of processes and communication and hand-offs from one internal group to another. This work requires lots of meeting facilitation and clarity on our overall goal (improving customer satisfaction) and how we all can work together best to make this happen.

A lot of changes are also needed. For the short term, this is difficult because what used to be "just a phone call" or "just an email" is now a HelpSU ticket or an OrderIT order that is tracked from beginning to end. This is a new process. Initially it can take longer, but for the long term we will be able to scale our requests for service and ensure that they are consistently handled in a timely manner (even if someone is on vacation or out of the office).

What did you do before you came to Stanford?

I have been at Stanford for six years. I was a manager in Administrative Systems, handling the support of the Oracle Financials applications. Before I came to Stanford, I spent 15 years managing a variety of implementations for large and small scale companies. I have a Bachelor of Science degree from San Diego State University in Information Systems. 

What do you like to do when you're not at work?

My kids are very active in sports, so we spend most of our weekends at sporting events (football, wrestling, soccer, track). I love to go camping on the few spare weekends we have. We go to Big Basin and stay in their tent cabins. We have a cabin in South Lake Tahoe that we go to during the summer. None of us are skiers, so we don't go up in the winter. I also enjoy gardening. I don't know a lot about it; I plant a bunch of flowers and see what thrives. Then I'll plant more of that type of flower!

What is your favorite movie, book, song?

I only go to corny love story or comedy movies. The last one I saw was The Holiday. I just saw Jersey Boys and also Wicked; both were fabulous musical plays. My music taste is a fallback to high school days; 70s music, like Earth Wind and Fire, is my favorite.

Staff Happenings

The H&S support contract has grown in support needs and to meet that need, CRC posted a new position for the team last month. Sam Ablao was the successful candidate for the position and we could not be happier that he has agreed to work with CRC on a permanent basis.

In the short time that Sam has been here as a contractor, he has really dazzled our clients, made fans of his teammates, and made significant contributions to a number of projects including network/firewall preparations and security health checks in the H&S Dean's Office, as well as server work in Sociology and the MLK Institute. We are absolutely ecstatic to have Sam as part of CRC on an ongoing basis. Welcome, once again, Sam!

- Kim Seidler
Client Support; Computer Resource Consulting

I am pleased to announce that Kathy Frates has joined Stanford as our new HR Manager. Her office is in Redwood G10 and her phone number will be 724-8942. She will be setting up meetings with all of you to learn more about your areas of responsibility, so look for her on your calendars.

Kathy comes to Stanford with twenty years of progressively responsible business environment and HR experience gained working with employers such as Lowes, Target, InternetSpeech, and Rosso's Furniture. She has been responsible for the full gamut of HR generalist duties: recruiting, training, retention, coaching, succession planning, and HR compliance.

Please join me in welcoming Kathy to IT Services.

- Nilda Bonet
IT Services; Human Resources

The following people recently joined Information Technology Services. Welcome!

  • Wei Leung (Dan Stillmaker)
  • Virginia Tang (Cholanda Chenhansa)

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

  • Linda Vrhel (Carolyn Kane)

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

Tech Briefings / Tech Express

Tech Briefings

Fridays
2–3:30 p.m.

Turing Auditorium

June 8: RSS Feeds, Blogs, and Podcasts

Mark Branom will show you how to create and use RSS feeds—those XML files that are used by web publishers to broadcast blogs, podcasts, and other content by "pushing" it to their users. Join Mark as he demonstrates how to use these new technologies.

Tech Express

12–1 p.m.
Turing Auditorium

June 21: iTunes at Stanford

Stanford on iTunes provides access to a wide range of Stanford-related digital audio and video content via the iTunes Music Store, Apple’s popular music jukebox and online music store.

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

Technology Training Courses

Upcoming Tech Training classes of interest to IT Services staff.

Have you checked out the Helplets on the Computing Self-Help page? If you click on the video-camera icons, you can see the short, narrated, video how-to's on: Resetting Your SUNet ID Password, Changing Your SUNet ID Password, and Setting a Vacation Autoreply Message. These are just-in-time aids to help you and those you support learn, or remember, how to do tasks.

After you've checked those out, you may have ideas for video Helplets you'd like to see or make. To learn more about the technology used to create the Helplets, sign up for Technology Training's June 20th class "Captivate Lite." (See below.)

Thu, June 7, Excel Level 1, 9 to 4, $275

Mon, June 11, Excel Pivot Tables, 8:30 to 12, $150

Mon, June 11, Excel Tips and Tricks, 1 to 4:30, $150

Mon, June 11, FileMaker Pro Level 2, 9 to 4, $275

Tue, June 12, OrderIT Site Training (formerly IT Services Site Training), 1 to 4:30, Free

Wed, June 13, Web Design Level 3: Cascading Style Sheets, 1 to 4:30, $150

Thu, June 14, Mac OS X Fundamentals, 1:30 to 4, $150

Mon, June 18, Excel Level 2, 9 to 4, $275

Wed, June 20, Access Level 3, 9 to 4, $275

Wed, June 20, Security: Basic Computer and Network Security Awareness for Non-Techies, 10 to 12, Free

Wed, June 20, Captivate Lite, 1:30 to 4:30, $150

Thu, June 21, Dreamweaver Lite, 1 - 4:30, $150

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.

- Leni Silberman
Technology Training Services

IT Employment Opportunities

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

Req #25558: Application Administrator, 100% FTE, continuing position, Range 4P3, Anne Pinkowski, hiring manager.

This position is responsible for the effective operation of Stanford’s Remedy-based applications including HelpSU, the University’s request tracking system, BenefitSU, and other Remedy applications. In addition, the incumbent will provide application support (either primary or secondary) for Journyx Time Tracking system, Infra Change Management system, DocuShare, Pinnacle, Pathworks, SunDial, and any software that the organization decides would be best administered by the Application Support Team.

Req #25559: Network Specialist, 100% FTE, continuing position, Range 4P3, Alvin Chew, hiring manager.

Responsible for planning, implementation, and 24x7 operation of the ResNet, N2J, N2S, MMR, Stanford West, and 802.11 wireless networks. ResNet is the data network serving the student dorms and apartments. There are approximately 14,000 students using ResNet. IT Services' Net-to-Jack (N2J) program supports data networking to the wall jack in faculty and staff spaces. The Net-to-Switch (N2S) program supports data networking to the communications closet network switch. Managed Machine Room (MMR) service supports the networking infrastructure for critical Stanford applications.

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

"The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco."

- Mark Twain (Apocryphal)

News

New Home Page and Service Catalog Debut

On Wednesday, May 30, the Web Site Project team released the redesigned IT Services home page and a new service catalog with browse and search capabilities. The team received great feedback from IT Services colleagues, clients, and other Stanford staff throughout the review cycles and continues to welcome additional comments.

As more people use the site, team members are closely monitoring searches in the new service catalog and are adding keywords to help produce the most appropriate results. The team continues to fine-tune the home page to make it an ideal portal to our organization and its services.

For more details about the changes, see the overview of new web site features. For more information about the project, visit the project web site.

Thanks to the designers and implementers: Dave Ream (project manager), Marco Wise, and Brian Young. Thanks also to their teammates in DDD for eagle eyes and ideas, to Chris Lundin and Nan McKenna for their part in creating and improving the service catalog content, to Tim Torgenrud, Anne Pinkowski, Victoria Azarshahy, and Sunia Yang for work that helps ensure that Department Contacts and LNAs can log in for specially-tailored catalog views, and to the UNIX Systems and Applications team for their always-ready support.

- Jim Knox
Client Support; Documentation, Training, Licensing, and Campus Readiness

Stanford Answers

Last week the Self-Help Knowledge Base Project bore its first fruit. "Stanford Answers" for support staff was opened to all IT Services staff. Called the "Stanford Answers–IT Support Analyst" portal, it has thousands of FAQs (or "solutions") from our vendor (RightAnswers) on a wide range of topics (all of the Office applications, Windows and Mac OS versions, various PDAs, and lots more). It also has several hundred Stanford-specific solutions—a number which is growing daily. 

The URL for the portal is http://answers-sa.stanford.edu. Note that this is slightly different from the one that was sent by email last week. If you'd like to have a bookmark, please use this one.

Along with our support analyst portal for IT information, the project worked with Student Financial Services to provide a separate portal for their staff. It allows them to search for the policy and procedure information they need to answer questions from students and parents about student loans, credits, and other financial queries.

The RightAnswers portal allows us to set up separate collections and to restrict access to designated organizations or individuals. However, making this actually happen took outstanding work from the Application Integration team, especially Jean Lucker and Tim Torgenrud.

Response so far has been very positive, but we'd really like your feedback. Give it a workout and tell us about your experience. It's meant to be a tool that becomes more and more useful over time, and that will happen best with your feedback about what you'd like to see.

In July, we'll be releasing a self-service version of Stanford Answers for the entire University community. All of the information in the self-service portal will be available in the support analyst portal; the latter includes some information directed toward support staff in particular.

For more information, see the Self-Help KnowledgeBase description.

Many thanks to the project team for lots of hard work. In addition, thanks to Tim and Jean, Dave Ream, Linda Pilkin, Heather Ramamurthy, Christopher Kittle, Chris Lundin, Jim Knox, and Jan Cicero.

- Tom Goodrich
Client Support; Help Desk Services

Commencement Freeze Planning

System availability is an essential element of the services provided by our organization. During certain periods of the academic year, system availability is of heightened importance. Commencement is one such period. We have instituted what is known as the "commencement freeze" once again this year.

To avoid potential service disruption, we are disallowing system changes during the two and a half weeks surrounding commencement. This period is June 4th through June 20th.

All change requests must continue to follow our standard change request process. Change Management Requests (CMRs) into our change management system made for any system changes that would occur during the commencement freeze period will be declined and/or postponed. Exception requests may be escalated for consideration.

Thanks for supporting this process by delaying your system changes until after the freeze.

Feel free to contact Donna Cummings or me if you have any questions.

- John Freshwaters
Shared Application Services

Desktop and Laptop Backup Pilot Completed

The Desktop and Laptop Backup project is chartered to review the current University workstation backup alternatives and determine if providing a centralized secure backup solution is a viable IT Services offering. Currently, workstation backup solutions include Tivoli Storage Management (TSM/BaRS), Connected/Iron Mountain (third party), department backup solutions (Retrospect), and saving files to a file server. Both TSM/BaRS and Connected have encrypted solutions with data compression. Today, only TSM/BaRS and Retrospect have a Mac solution.

The Workstation Backup pilot took place May 7th through the 25th with approximately 20 IT Services participants using Windows workstations. The Connected backup solution was installed at Stanford for the purpose of this pilot. Each of the participating workstations was backed up by both BaRS/TSM and Connected for comparison. In addition, a lab pilot took place in Post comparing TSM/BaRS (Stanford), Connected (Stanford) and Connected (Vendor Site) to provide additional information.

This pilot demonstrated that Connected is simpler to install and use, that TSM/BaRS executed the backups more quickly, and that Connected's data compression algorithm required less storage to retain the backups.

The next steps include continuing to work with Connected to test a viable Mac product as we identify the initial service cost model for a University workstation backup service for both Mac and Windows workstations.

Dan Stillmaker is the Project Sponsor, supported by Steve Loving as Project Manager.

- Shirley Hodges
Client Support; Computer Resource Consulting

Hospital and IT Services Partnership

A joint IT Services, Stanford Hospitals & Clinics (SHC) IT and Ambulatory Care Customer Response Transformation (CRT) project has been in progress since Autumn Quarter of 2006.  Staff from all three groups comprise the CRT project team. The team has been working towards improving the experience of patients who call in to the clinics by standardizing the clinics’ voice mail menus and call center configurations.

Monthly team meetings have been taking place since Autumn Quarter of 2006, and we are now seeing the fruits of their labor. Reviewing the monthly tracking reports for the menus and ACD (call center applications) has proved to be a worthwhile effort in improving clinic statistics.

The goal of the clinics is to answer 85% of incoming calls. A sample of 17 clinics taken last December reflected that only seven clinics were meeting that goal. A sample of the same clinics in April of 2007 shows eleven clinics had met their goal, and four out of the remaining six improved their performance significantly and are continuing to display an upward trend. Additionally, Patient Satisfaction surveys demonstrate a rise in all six categories related to the phone experience in the clinics since improvement steps have been put in place.

It is through the strong partnership and hard work of IT Services, SHC IT, and Ambulatory Care that these positive results have been possible.

- Dominga Zepeda
Client Support; Client Relations

Order Management Changes

The Order Management Redesign project's commitment to improving the ordering and billing experience continues with two new improvements introduced on June 1st, 2007.

First, a Personal Billing Number (PBN) is no longer needed to make domestic long-distance calls from on campus. A PBN is still needed for international calls and specialty toll calls like 411, 900 numbers, and 976 numbers. Clients are no longer prompted to enter a code when making domestic calls to Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Only charged calls appear on the billing statement.

Second, OrderIT users can now capture and schedule billing reports. For each account or organization, clients can set up a report to run each month and get that report emailed automatically without having to visit OrderIT to set them up each time. The training guide was updated with instructions and a video helplet was created to guide users through the capture and schedule process.

We hope these improvements will help streamline our clients' daily workload.

- Jay Kohn
Shared Communication Services

Biennial Physical Inventory

The IT Services and Administrative Systems Department Property Administrators (DPAs) will be conducting the biennial Physical Inventory, with scanning beginning Monday, June 25, 2007.

The two DPAs, Sally Davis and Christine Wynkoop, will be coming to all IT Services and Administrative Systems locations to scan Stanford Tagged Capital Assets (a purchase price of $5,000 or greater). Outside of the machine rooms, most of the equipment in that category will be copiers, printers, projectors, and analyzers. Sally and Christine will schedule with the building Admins who, in turn, will give the building residents advance notice when each building will be scanned.

A few reminders:

  • Accessibility: Please make sure that your equipment is clear of post-its, toys, etc., so that the inventory team can quickly scan your bar code. A gray-colored dot will be placed on each inventoried machine to indicate that it was surveyed. These dots need to remain in place.
  • Personal Equipment: If you have any personally-owned equipment in your office, please put a “Personal Equipment” post-it on the asset.
  • If you have any Stanford-tagged equipment in a drawer—such as an old tagged external disk drive, projector, and/or analyzer in a suitcase—please place these assets next to your computer with the property tag in plain view for the inventory team so that they can be scanned.
  • The cutoff dates for disposals was June 4, 2007.

Thank you for your help!

- Sally Davis & Christine Wynkoop
Shared Application Services; Technical Facilities

Integrated Email & Calendar Update

Final meetings with the IT Services' Collaboration team and the
campus-wide Selection team took place this week. The Integrated Email and Calendar team is conducting reference calls with clients from Microsoft Exchange and Zimbra and working up final cost estimates for each of the options. The team is very close to making a recommendation for the Systems Governance Group meeting on June 12th based on all of the input received.

- Ammy Hill
Client Support; Campus Readiness

WebEx Update

Usage of WebEx at Stanford continues to rise. We now have 187 individuals across campus who hold WebEx licenses and are using it to facilitate their daily work.

The Stanford Graduate School of Business's Lifelong Learning program uses the WebEx Event Center to conduct faculty-led interactive seminars for GSB alumni. This gives them the opportunity to participate from work or from home. The record, edit, and playback option is now included in the Event Center module. It gives alumni who were unable to attend the web seminar a chance to view it at a later time.

One of this year's IT Leadership Program project teams (joint between Stanford, Duke, MIT, and University of Chicago) is using WebEx Meeting Center to share documents, capture brainstorming ideas, and handle the teleconferencing needs during their project team meetings.

HighWire Press makes heavy use of WebEx capabilities to work with their prospective clients, located around the world.

Technology Training Services (TTS) recently hosted a WebEx Meeting Center session to deliver SQL training to Hopkins Marine Station staff. The instructor was in Pleasanton, the staff were in a conference room at Hopkins, and the entire session was monitored from Stanford by the TTS staff.

In early May, a reduced long-distance rate was put into place for those who are hosting meetings with distant participants. The new toll-free rate cuts the cost by more than half. As usage of WebEx teleconferencing services increases, additional price reductions will be negotiated.

Stanford has now implemented WebEx's "Network-Based Recording" capability, which allows a meeting host to choose to record a meeting or event. These records are saved online and can be replayed by others. Our Stanford WebEx team will be working with this new capability.

More information about WebEx at Stanford is available.

- Chris Lundin
Client Support; Help Desk Services

BBQ 4 U

It's almost here! Come enjoy a brief moment in the (hopefully) sun on Friday, June 15th, at 11:30 a.m. on the Turing Lawn.

Hot Dogs and sausages of all kinds, including vegetarian, will be on the grill. See you there.

Please bring an appetite!

- The BBQers

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, June 20, 2007.