its in bits

A Note From Bill...

Conservation of energy and natural resources is a universal priority. Stanford is a leader in this effort, having, for example, created the Woods Institute for the Environment which conducts collaborative core research in areas including energy and climate, land use and conservation, oceans and estuaries, and fresh water. This Institute will soon be housed right next door to us in the new Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy (Y2E2) building expected to open later this month. I'm pleased to say that IT Services, along with a number of other departments, is also playing a role in helping the University reduce its carbon footprint through the Sustainable Stanford effort.

Starting next week, IT Services console operators will turn on power management for desktop systems. The pilot precedes a larger rollout to all BigFix console operators on campus. In January, we will encourage schools and departments around campus to join us in reducing our power consumption. PG&E is also offering a rebate for every computer with power management enforced by BigFix. Departments that choose to participate will receive their share of the rebate money and we’ll encourage them to use the funds to replace old computer monitors and equipment with new hardware that is more power efficient.

This program has been developed by a cross-University working group called Sustainable Stanford IT, which includes representatives from IT Services, Office of Research Administration, School of Medicine, H&S, and Land, Buildings & Real Estate. Sustainable Stanford IT is supporting a broader University effort called Sustainable Stanford, whose mission is to develop guidelines for the University on how we can reduce our carbon footprint.

This BigFix Power Management program will add four new power schemes to your computers:

Stanford Red: No power management.
Stanford Yellow: Monitor is automatically turned off after 25 minutes of inactivity.
Stanford Green: Monitor is automatically turned off after 15 minutes of inactivity.
Stanford Super Green: Monitor is automatically turned off after 15 minutes and system goes into standby after 60 minutes.

IT Services will enable Stanford Green for the pilot. We expect that most of you will not notice the change, but talk to your CRC support representative if you encounter a problem.

While I was out of the office last week to greet my new baby granddaughter, I did get an amazing amount of feedback about what a terrific event the IT Open House was. There was fantastic attendance, the talks were well received, and the raffles were, as always, a big hit. Mostly, people across campus had fun while learning a lot about IT at Stanford. I’d like to thank everyone for all of their work in making this such a successful event for IT Services, and for Stanford.

- Bill Clebsch
IT Services

IT Open House Draws a Crowd

Neither the Benefits Fair nor the Bookstore's costume party could keep the throng away from this year's IT Open House, held on Halloween last week at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center. Greeters officially counted over 800 attendees as they stopped by to pick up their welcome materials. With the many others who bypassed the greeters (estimated at over 150), attendance was nearly triple that of last year's event. Everyone had the chance to interact with over 75 service representatives from more than 35 campus technology providers and vendor partners. If you missed it, check out the pictures.

The IT Open House speaker series was new this year. Faculty and academic staff involved in technology-related research and support discussed their work and answered questions: Hilary Beech, Senior Associate Dean for Administration, School of Engineering, spoke about a vision for technology-enabled administration at Stanford; Nick McKeown, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, spoke about Stanford research on designing a new global communications infrastructure; Dr. Neil Gesundheit, Associate Professor of Medicine, Associate Dean for Advising, School of Medicine summarized the use of computer-based cases to simulate clinical encounters; and Hector Garcia-Molina, Professor, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, previewed PhotoSpread, a spreadsheet system for organizing and analyzing photo collections. All sessions were well attended.

For those who couldn't make it to the talks, the planning team is preparing podcasts that should be available from the IT Open House site by Friday.

Special thanks to all of you who represented IT Services at one of our many exhibit tables. Your support and participation helped make this the best IT Open House ever! Thanks to staff who assisted setting up/cleaning up the event and greeting attendees: Crystal Ayala, Christopher Kittle, Karla Koch, Dave Ream, Sonia Siu, Greg Steiger, Virginia Tang, and Tom Wiggins.

Thanks too to our partners in Campus-Wide Agreements who, along with IT Services, co-sponsored the event: Stefani Fukushima, Trinka Gillis, and Terrance Stokes. And last, but not least, thanks to the IT Services staff who helped plan and implement the event: Donna Cummings, Nuriya Janss, Jim Knox, Jane Marcus, Sean Riordan, Kevin Stephens, and Carlos Zertuche.

The planning team continues to encourage feedback. If you represented a service, please fill out the Participant Evaluation form. If you came to the event as an attendee, please fill out the Attendee Evaluation form.

- Jim Knox
Client Support

Mobile Equipment and Remote Access Services

IT Services is participating in the Business Affairs pilot of the Stanford policy on Mobile Equipment and Related Services. Effective November 1, 2007, IT Services will only provide mobile equipment (such as cellular phones and PDAs) and remote access service (such as DSL or cable modem) to employees who qualify for the equipment/service based on a requirement to perform Stanford University business.

In addition, if the pertinent equipment or service is used more that 15% of the total time of its usage for personal consumption (non-University related usage), qualified employees who have mobile equipment or remote access service connections that are paid for by Stanford University either directly or through reimbursement are required to pay a $30 per quarter (three months @ $10/month) fee per equipment/service to Stanford University. Finally, University employees are required to complete and sign an Employee's Report on Use of Stanford-provided or Reimbursed Equipment for each piece of mobile equipment or service. The form requires a manager's approval.

For the initial implementation, there will only be two months in the pilot period, 11/01/07 through 12/31/07. The first payment is due to your local administrator by November 30, 2007. The amount will be prorated to $20 for this pilot period.

For the pilot we will only accept checks, as we have not identified alternate methods of payment. For those who use electronic banking, you can set up your payment to mail to your admin staff (local administrator) as long as you allow adequate time for the payment to arrive by the due date. We will be investigating the possibility of a post-tax payroll deduction, Campus Card, PayPal, etc., as alternatives.

A complete copy of the policy, including the Report on Use form, was distributed on October 31st to all managers and directors. Please contact your manager or director if you have any questions.

- Jay Kohn
Shared Communication Services

New Student Orientation

On September 18th, the Office of Housing was joined by a number of volunteers from IT Services to help check in over 1,800 freshmen arriving on campus to move into their residence halls.

Resident Assistants (RAs) wore customized shirts to match their dorm's theme and crowds of welcoming students were everywhere, wearing red "welcome" shirts that said "How can I help you?" on their backs. Music blared from sound systems and red and white balloons danced to the beat.

Unsuspecting freshman arriving at the check-in tables were greeted by RAs shouting "All the way from East Osh Kosh, Stanford University would like to welcome Mary Smith!" The freshman and their parents would ask, stunned, "how did you know?" (RA's spent the summer memorizing photos of incoming students sent to the ID Card Office.) IT Services partnered with the Office of Student Housing to help check in students, validating their ID, issuing their ID cards and room keys, directing them to their room, and answering all manner of questions.

It was a wonderful day, and a great opportunity to meet a lot of delighted students and parents. Thanks to everyone who participated!

- Suzanne Schiessler
Shared Communication Services; Order Management

Facilities Engineering Finance

As you may have noticed, construction on campus is on the rise. The IT Services Facilities Engineering (FE) group has been very busy working with other groups on campus to coordinate the cabling facilities for new and renovated sites. We are also including many other IT Services work groups and staff to help with these projects.

In addition to all of the construction on campus, the Stanford and Packard hospitals have huge expansion projects planned over the next six to eight years. There are also numerous off-campus projects—such as School of Medicine move to Menlo Park and the 3145 Porter Drive buildings.

To process all of the contractor invoices that we deal with on these projects, we use something called the “rebill” account. This account is used as a clearing house for all of the contractor invoices we receive. We use this account as a benchmark to help determine our workload. Only two years ago, we processed approximately $2.75M through the rebill account. This last year we processed over $5.5M. This means we have doubled in two years! And we are estimating over $6M for FY08.

In the past, balancing the rebill account has been very difficult. Over the past year, Facilities Engineering has worked closely with Finance to tighten the tracking and balancing of this account. I have created a Facilities Engineering Finance Associate position, which has been filled by Raj Singh. He is tasked with tracking all of our contractor invoices from the minute they come in the door to final contractor payment and reconciliation in Oracle and Pinnacle. We have a work order for all of the work we are doing. Christine Soldahl has developed reports that run regularly to help track all of the funds. Everyone has been conscientious about receiving the correct invoices and promptly processing these for payment. It has been a real team effort.

I am proud to say that the rebill account balanced within $36 (yes, thirty six dollars) out of the $5.5 Million.

Thank you Christine, Raj, and the FE team. A truly awesome job!

- Erich Snow
Shared Communication Services; Facilities Engineering

Unanet Update

The Unanet Resource Management and Time Tracking tool is scheduled to replace the "timetracking" report currently in use by some groups in IT Services. The project is making progress towards a launch at the beginning of December.

Individual meetings were conducted to determine the reporting needs for the system and analysis has gone forward to ensure that the tool meets the needs of Finance, various team managers, and the needs of the Project Management Office. The team has also kept in mind the user experience of staff who actually have to enter time. With configuration almost complete, we’re moving into the verification and testing phase.

If your group has been using the timetracking tool, it’s important to continue entering your time into timesheet.stanford.edu. Fiscal year 2008 information will be transferred into the new system. On the date of the cutover to Unanet, the timesheet program will automatically redirect you to the new system. More information about Unanet training will be coming soon.

- Ammy Hill
Client Support; Campus Readiness

HelpSU Goals Revised

As you know, in FY07 IT Services established a unit-wide goal of having no more than 15% of HelpSU non-project cases remain unresolved for more than five days. Our current performance against this goal is displayed in the HelpSU Ticket Aging chart.

Through focused attention, we are generally able to exceed our target of 15%; the average for FY07 (February through August 2007) was 14%, but in recent months we averaged right around 10%.

For FY08, the Leadership Team has set a more aggressive target of 10% of the prior week's case volume. The IT Services groups receive an average of 1,600 cases each week, and so the moving target would be 10% of that, or no more than 160 cases open after five days. In a week which had 1,800 new cases, the target would be no more than 180 cases.

The key to achieving this goal is prompt attention to HelpSU cases and working closely with the customer to address their issue. Tips and suggestions for efficiently handling customer cases are available on the HelpSU site.

As you might recall from the Customer Satisfaction Survey, prompt resolution of HelpSU requests is the most important satisfaction "driver" from our customers: when we do this well, satisfaction with our services improves.

- Chris Lundin
Client Support; Help Desk Services

Winter Closure

Just a brief reminder that Stanford plans to shut down to the fullest extent possible during the last week of December 2007. The University will be closed from Monday, December 24, 2007 through Wednesday, January 2, 2008. The University will re-open with the start of business on Thursday, January 3, 2008.

Except where operations must continue, all areas of the University are asked to close down the week of December 24, 2007. For areas that close for the entire period of December 24, 2007, through January 2, 2008, the University will provide one additional day off with pay.

During the 2007 Winter Closure period, the following dates have been designated as University holidays:

Monday, December 24, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Tuesday, January 1, 2008

The list of official 2007 University Holidays (PDF) is available online.

In future columns we will discuss key dates and deadlines as well as provide some tips for closing down your office for the break period.

- Nancy Ware
Planning & Communications

Campus Talk

There will be an interesting talk this month co-sponsored by the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Stanford Center for Professional Development.

The title of the talk is Blending Face-to-Face and Online Teaching: Successes and Challenges by Dr Kim McShane of the Institute for Teaching & Learning, The University of Sydney. It will take place Thursday, November 15th 2007, from 12.00 p.m. to 1.00 p.m. in the Hartley Conference Room at the Mitchell Earth Sciences building for their Brown Bag series. Light refreshments will be served.

Presentation Outline: Drawing on examples from her recent research that investigated faculty experiences of "making the move online," Dr. McShane will cover some of the successes and challenges associated with online and blended teaching. There will be an opportunity for all to share examples of what they know does work well online and face-to-face. In these times of student-centered learning, is it useful to reflect on what learning is, and what it is becoming in our universities and colleges.

In this presentation, Dr. McShane will review how online learning might be changing university teaching and, indeed, changing student learning, in significant ways. When distance learning is not the only option, what case can we make for taking up online teaching, and what case do we make for integrating face-to-face and online teaching?

- Jane Marcus
Client Support; Client Relations