A Note from Bill...
DocuShare Upgrade
Email Improvements
Flu Shots
Making Winter Vacation Plans?
Survey
Staff Profile
Staff Happenings
Tech Sessions
Tech Training Classes
IT Employment Opportunities at Stanford
Quote of the Week

Past Issues

Have you planned your vacation for Winter Closure?

Yes
No

Results from last issue's survey question: Did you purchase a parking sticker this year?

There were 66 responses. 22 purchased an "A" sticker, 27 purchased a "C" sticker, 2 purchased a "Motorcycle" sticker, and 15 did not purchase a parking sticker.

Ammy Hill works as the Campus Readiness Specialist in Client Support. She has been at Stanford since 2001.

How would you describe your current job responsibilities?

I'm the Campus Readiness Specialist for IT Services. Basically, it's my job to make sure the campus community is ready for all of the changes that IT makes to systems. The target is to get the schools and departments comfortable with the upcoming changes rather than being fearful of them. This involves communication, training, presentations, consensus building, documentation, eLearning, and anything else that comes up.

Internally, I also help with transitions and training related to projects within IT Services. Currently, I'm working many different projects including Order Management Redesign, Kerberos 5, Disaster Recovery, the Self-Help KnowledgeBase implementation, the Docushare Upgrade, and several others.

Which aspects of your job do you enjoy the most?

I come from a teaching background, so I still really love classroom training and public speaking. I also enjoy putting together demonstrations that look like you're going through the system and are completely pre-recorded. They're a fabulous tool for presentations because you don't have to worry about the Internet connection being slow, the server being down, or anything unexpected. Plus, you can cover things that may be changing before they reach the intended audience.

What did you do before you came to Stanford?

Just before I came to Stanford, I was an eLearning consultant for Ernst & Young, but I've done all sorts of things including teaching high school English and Drama in Los Angeles, doing tech support for library automation software, and managing a coffee house/bakery.

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

I'm a vintage social and Irish Ceili dancer. Every Monday night, I head up to the Starry Plough for Irish Dance lessons and open dancing. I've been doing that for the past twelve years. I also work at the Dickens Christmas Fair at Fezziwigs, where I teach people to dance Victorian ballroom dances for eight hours a day, every weekend between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. I play Belle, Ebenezer Scrooge's fiancée, and I break his heart every day at 1:40.

You can also find me at Friday Night Waltz and the Gaskell Ball. I also organized the 2006 Browncoat Ball in San Francisco. When not dancing, I host board game nights at home and have been known to play a mean game of air hockey. I live with my partner, Rick, and our completely adorable cat Pixel in our little old house in San Jose.

What is your favorite movie, book, song?

Favorites are tough, because it's all a matter of mood. My favorite movies include Moulin Rouge, The Princess Bride, and Dead Poet's Society. Favorite books include American Gods, Pride & Prejudice, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Favorite songs include Nara by E.S. Posthumous, Wave of Mutilation by the Pixies, No One Lives Forever by Oingo Boingo, and Les Jours Triste by Yann Tiersen.

In Memoriam: Jo Drechsler

My beloved husband, Jo Drechsler, passed away on Sunday, October 22. You are invited to celebrate Jo's life with me and our friends and families. There will be an informal Memorial Service at our home on November 12 at 167 S. 14th Street, San Jose, CA 95112. It will start at 3 p.m.

We are accepting donations to two funds that have been established in Jo's name:

Sempervirens Fund, "Jo Drechsler Redwood Grove," P.O. Drawer BE, Los Altos, CA 94023-4054. The number for phone donations is 650-968-4509. Jo loved the Big Basin Redwoods State Park. We've enjoyed an annual group/hike/bike trip there for many years.

The funds will go towards designating a redwood grove in Jo's name. It will be a peaceful place for Jo and we can visit Jo and his grove to remember him and make more memories together.

Donations can also be made at the Sempervirens site by clicking "donate now" and selecting the "Jo Drechsler Redwood Grove" on the designation drop-down menu.

Preservation Action Council of San Jose, "Jo Drechsler Legacy Fund," P.O. Box 2287, San Jose, CA 95109-2287. The phone number is 408-998-8105. Jo loved old houses, old buildings, old wood, old stories, old San Jose...well, history.

A legacy fund has been set up in his name with the Preservation Action Council of San Jose (PAC*SJ). Like the organization, Jo feels that historic preservation is good for our quality of life. This fund will be used for a yet-to-be-designated project that will exemplify Jo's values. Donations can be designated to the "Jo Drechsler Legacy Fund."

Thank you for your love and friendship and contribution.

- Bernadette Drechsler
Client Support; Project Management Office

Ronald Clemens, a long time staffer at ITSS, passed away October 1, 2006. Ronald was born in 1933 and moved to Palo Alto in 1973. He is survived by his children, Alex and Jenny.

No services are planned. Donations may be made to the Urban Ministry in Palo Alto. Ronald retired from Stanford in 1990.

- The Editors

As of November 1st, Vera Jones will once again become a member of the IT Services, Client Support, Computer Resource Consulting (CRC) group. This decision was made to more closely align the CRC with the CHaMP Program. Vera's role will be to continue to work with the CHaMP Service, as well as providing billing support to BaRS, CRC, and OnCall services.

For the time being, Vera will continue to be located in Pine. Please join me in welcoming Vera back to the CRC.

- Shirley Hodges
Client Support; Computer Resource Consulting

Comings and Goings

The following people have joined Information Technology Services. Welcome!

• Raymond Cooper (Mark Miyasaki)

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

• William Kaut (Brian Wankel)
• Matthew Stofko (Maria Maravilla)

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

Tech Briefings: WWW/CGI Services

Campus web services had a much needed update in September. Learn how the changes impact your use of the services and also learn how the web services fit into the general technology service offerings that are available via the central campus infrastructure.

Turing Auditorium
Friday, November 3
2:00 to 3:30 p.m.
Tim Torgenrud, presenting

Check the Tech Briefings home page for specials and last-minute additions.

Tech Express: Docushare Upgrade

Docushare is set for an upgrade November 21st. Come see the changes to the Docushare system at noon on November 7th in Turing Auditorium. This presentation will give you a first look at the upgrade, a handout detailing changes to the system, and a navigation demonstration.

Tuesday, November 7
12:00 to 1:00 p.m.
Turing Auditorium
Ammy Hill, presenting

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

Upcoming Tech Training classes of interest to IT Services staff.

• Monday, Nov. 6, Excel Level 1 (ITS-1121), 9 – 4, $275
• Wednesday, Nov. 8, Explore techport.stanford.edu, Open Lab (ITS-0601), 9 – 12 , Free
• Wednesday, Nov. 8, Web Design Level 2: Making Your Web Site Work (ITS-2502), 1:00 – 4:30, $150
• Friday, Nov. 10, Introduction to ReportMart1( ITS-8401), 1:30 – 4:30, Free
• Monday, Nov. 13, Tips & Tricks In Sundial (ITS-2301),1:00 – 4:30. Free
• Monday, Nov. 13, & Tuesday, Nov 14, Flash Levels 1 and 2 (ITS-2631), 9 – 4, $500
• Wednesday, Nov. 15, FileMaker Pro Level 2 (ITS-1803), 9 – 4, $275

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

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

- Leni Silberman
Client Support; Technology Training Services

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

Req. # 22565 & 22562: Computer Information Systems Analyst, 100% FTE, Range 4P3. Shirley Hodges, Hiring Manager.

The Senior Computer Information Systems Analyst (4P3) will be a member of the IT Services, Computer Resource Consulting team initially supporting the Stanford University Department Firewall project 50% time for a period of 18 months.

Req. #22592: Sr. Windows Systems Admin, 100% FTE, Range 4P4. Barry Magsanay, Hiring Manager.

The Senior Windows Systems Administrator role is responsible for the design, specification, installation and administration of all environments needed to support Windows Systems Team (WST) client systems.

Req. #22607: Service Desk Senior Technician, 100% FTE, Range 4P4. Chris Lundin, Hiring Manager.

The Service Desk Senior Technician will report to the Director of Help Desk Services. Due to the variety of services offered by IT Services, it is necessary to have staff with a more extensive technology background to handle complex orders. The incumbent will also be responsible for serving as backup to the Help Desk Senior Technician when that individual is unavailable.

Req. #22691: Service Desk Analyst, 100% FTE, Range 4P1. Chris Lundin, Hiring Manager.

(Two positions) The Service Desk is responsible for receiving, reviewing, correcting, completing and forwarding customer-originated orders for all IT Services services to the various IT Services fulfillment groups.

Req. #22672: Sr. Computer Information Systems Analyst, 100% FTE, Range 4P3. Shirley Hodges, Hiring Manager.

The CISA provides support for Stanford Client contracts. This includes desktop and local server consulting with expertise in Mac and Windows desktop computers, as well as Windows and Mac-based servers. Computer Resource Consulting supports University schools and departments on a full-time or half time basis, or projects.

Req. #22673: Computer Information Systems Analyst, 100% FTE, Range 4P2. Shirley Hodges, Hiring Manager.

This position provides computer support including desktop and local server consulting with expertise in Mac and Windows desktop computers, as well as Windows and Mac-based servers. Computer Resource Consulting supports University schools and departments on a full-time or half time basis, or for short-term projects.

Req. #22773: Sr. Human Resources Manager, 100% FTE,, Range 3P4. Bill Clebsch, Hiring Manager.

The Senior HR Manager is directly responsible for the management of staff related issues, programs and processes for exempt, nonexempt, and all other employees as appropriate. The HRM provides senior management level support and consulting to the leadership of IT Services, and is a partner and peer with senior staff and leadership of the organization.

Req. #22821: Help Desk Specialist, 100% FTE, Range 4P1. Steve McLenegan, Hiring Manager.

Receive, analyze, resolve and/or triage computing hardware, software, telecommunications, billing, and networking problems reported by Stanford faculty, staff, students and residential clients by way of telephone (live phone calls), voicemail, email, and self-submitted requests through HelpSU system.

Req. #22827: Sr. Order Processing Coordinator, 100% FTE, Range 4P2. Karen Cox, Hiring Manager.

The Senior Order Processor works primarily with the following organizations: I&M for creating and distributing daily workload packages and assisting technicians in the field regarding records and bible sheet location lookups; Facilities Engineering for cable orders; Systems Engineering for LEN adds and balances.

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

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.”

- Mark Twain

A Note from Bill...

Thanks to all of you who came to the Town Hall last week, especially to those who arrived early. It was great to see so many folks, and I enjoyed our discussion in the Q&A session.

Randy Livingston joined us and gave us news from the top. Overall, Stanford has had a terrific year. This is especially true financially as Stanford set records in both endowment growth and gifts. As you have no doubt noticed, there is a lot of construction going on around campus; many buildings were completed, and there are more on the way. Of course, the news of the recent awards of two Nobel Prizes was huge. This is a great time for Stanford on many levels.

Many of you have heard or read about the Stanford Challenge campaign to raise $4.3B, and that Stanford is well on the way towards that goal having already raised $2.2B. For those who do not know about this challenge to become more inter-disciplinary in solving the world’s problems, educating the leaders of tomorrow, and sustaining our foundation of excellence, I urge you to look at the Stanford Challenge web site.

This campaign will impact IT Services in many ways, and has already shaped the goals and initiatives we have for this year. These include a major Data Center strategy for repairing Forsythe, building a new state-of-the-art Data Center, developing collaboration tools for a mobile workforce, looking at new models for central storage and web-based services, and implementing key projects like disaster recovery and next-generation voice services. You can see the key initiatives for the coming year at:

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/its/group/allstaff/its/

We also discussed how far IT Services has come in the last year. At this time last year, we had no approved budget and a multi-million dollar expenditure gap. We had a complete spending and hiring freeze in place. We had received very little project funding for infrastructure and our big-ticket items like the Departmental Firewalls and Data Center projects lacked University backing.

And yet, we had quite a year. We got our budgets and funding, we delivered most of our projects, and we had substantial improvement in our Client Survey results about keeping IT systems up and running. This speaks volumes about the character of our organization.

So, where are we today? Our annual budget for FY07 is funded. We have also received over $2M in funding for our projects. We have received another $2M for the Departmental Firewalls projects, and our Data Center strategy is gaining support in many areas of the University. Finally, we have focused on the number of initiatives we have in place to concentrate our resources and to be more successful in what we deliver.

Thanks to all of you, we have come an incredibly long way over the last year. That said, there are huge infrastructure challenges for IT Services to deliver that Stanford is anticipating. That infrastructure is a key component to the University attaining its transformational goals. I look forward to working together to accomplish these goals for Stanford.

- Bill Clebsch
IT Services

DocuShare Upgrade

DocuShare is about to undergo a major upgrade which also includes a document migration effort. The cutover date is currently planned for November 21st. Along with the upgrade will be an expansion of the number of licenses from 500 to 2,000. The current version of DocuShare has been in use at Stanford since early 2000. DocuShare started as an internal application for our repository of documentation, but it quickly spread outside of IT Services and Administrative Systems for several different reasons.

We will be upgrading DocuShare from version 2.2 to 5.0.5. As you can tell from these two numbers, we are skipping two significant upgrades and jumping directly to the latest version. From a functional point of view, users will not see very much that is different. The URLs to the documents will not change, nor will internal references of one document to another. Initially, the biggest functional change will be full indexing of all documents, which will make searching much easier. In the future, this release provides for a number of new capabilities including a workflow engine, an interface with Outlook, scanned documents, support for blogs and wikis, and much more.

As a major part of the upgrade and data migration project we will be adding WebAuth authentication. Also, the web server, application server, and database server will be behind a firewall. This will enable users to be confident that they can safely store Class A data within DocuShare. Documents can be further protected by assigning a DocuShare group to further restrict access.

Authentication after the upgrade will require valid SUNet IDs. Group access (i.e., several people sharing one DocuShare account) will no longer be possible. Guest access will still be possible, but only for authenticated accounts.

There are a number of tasks that current users can help with now. These include:

• Clean up old user accounts. If you know of people that have left the University or who no longer need access to DocuShare please let Bill Bauriedel know. If these people own documents, those documents must be transferred to another active user account before the account can be closed.
• Clean up documents that are no longer needed. If documents are no longer useful, then they should be moved to the Trash. The Trash will not be moved as part of the data migration.
• If you would like to restructure the hierarchy of documents under your control this can be done either before or after the upgrade, but in general the sooner the better. Entire collections can move to new locations. It is not difficult and will help us move to a more structured hierarchy.

Feel free to contact Bryan Wear, project sponsor; Caren Kammeyer, project manager; or Bill Bauriedel, DocuShare administrator if you have questions or concerns.

- Bill Bauriedel
Shared Application Services; Application Support & Database Administration

Email Improvements

Following is a recap and update on IT Services' efforts to strengthen and improve the @stanford email systems, and what we have planned to complete before 2007.

On October 3, we began automatic deletion of SPAM tagged at the "most confident" level (SPAM:#####) on all email servers, as well as the Mailman and Majordomo mailing list servers. This has significantly reduced the incoming SPAM volume delivered to mailboxes.

On October 5, we brought an additional email server into the pool and did some preliminary mailbox redistribution.

Over the weekend of October 14–15, we upgraded the email server software and performed data consistency checks on all stored email, as well as rebooting each server. That work went very well, and we have had no reported problems. We also brought five additional email servers online, readying them for deployment.

Beginning October 28–29, we began redistributing IMAP users (principally students) across the five new email servers, thereby lessening the load on each server. At the conclusion of this work, we will have approximately 4,000 users per machine, down from 6,000 each, spread across twelve production email servers (with two spares).

On November 11, we plan to upgrade our campus Webmail system in a number of ways:

• Hardware: Five new Webmail servers will be brought online, with twice the memory and processor speed of their predecessors.
• Software: We are upgrading to the most current version of the IMP Webmail package. There are numerous interface improvements, but the most significant change is in the efficiency of the caching. With the new caching method, our testing indicates the traffic from the Webmail servers to the mailbox servers is reduced by half.
• Before the new year we plan to connect all email servers to newer, faster disk storage devices.

We believe the steps above will make the @stanford email system much more resilient and robust. The email team in our UNIX Systems group has been working very hard to enable these changes and we appreciate their expertise and effort.

- Chris Lundin
Client Support; Help Desk Services

Flu Shots

Vaden Health Center will hold flu immunization clinics on the following Tuesdays from 3 to 6 p.m.: October 31; November 7, 14, and 28; and December 5. The shot is free for University employees, and a valid Stanford ID must be presented at the time of vaccination. Those eligible include faculty, staff, emeritus faculty, retired staff, Medical School, and research faculty and staff.

The shot is $22 for spouses and domestic partners of University employees.

The vaccine is plentiful at Vaden this year, so anyone who might be hesitant to attend one of the upcoming clinics, in light of last year's shortage, should not be concerned according to the health center's associate director.

- The Editors

Making Winter Vacation Plans?

We know many people are beginning to make or finalize winter vacation plans. With that in mind, we wanted to re-run an earlier article that announced the official University 2006 Holiday Schedule, including details regarding this year's Winter Closure.

In February, the University announced the official 2006 Holiday schedule.

HR also announced that President Hennessy and Provost Etchemendy approved a closing schedule for the winter of 2006. IT Services will observe this planned shutdown, although detailed planning has not been completed in certain key work groups that support the Hospital and other client areas that are unable to close.

The official announcement states: The University will shut down to the fullest extent possible beginning effective Wednesday, December 20, 2006 i.e., as of the close of business on Tuesday, December 19, 2006. It will reopen with the start of business on Tuesday, January 2, 2007.

Three (3) paid holidays will be observed during the winter closing period. In addition to the holidays, the University will provide one (1) additional day off with pay for employees in operating units observing the shut down. Operating units observing the shut down are authorized to designate a day between December 20, 2006 and December 31, 2006, as the additional day off with pay. Employees may use available vacation, PTO, or floating holiday, or approved time off without pay to cover the remaining days of the closure.

Stanford University will observe the following dates as holidays during the period of December 20, 2006 through January 2, 2007:

Monday, December 25, 2006
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Monday, January 1, 2007

Since IT Services will observe this planned shutdown, employees will receive one additional day off with pay. Just as in previous years, employees who do not have enough accrued time to cover the Winter Closure schedule may borrow from their December and January accruals as well as from their floating holiday and PTO that they will receive on January 1, 2007. We will provide additional details about how to report this in Kronos as we approach Winter Closure. 

- Nancy Ware
Planning and Communication

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 new subscription list itsinbits-subscribers@lists.stanford.edu. People outside of IT Services can self-subscribe via majordomo.

The next its in bits will be published on Wednesday, November 15, 2006