Technology Team

Meeting Minutes
01/07/08

Present:  Ann Miller, Dan Reke, Theron Niekamp, Nathan Walters, Carol Marion, Carol Rigola, Harry Lawhorn, Lisa Allred (guest), Dr. Salisbury

Absent: Chuck Steel

Exchange 2007 Upgrade

• IT is currently working on the upgrade from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.

  • Harry reported that users will be in charge of their own junk mail folder.

  • Training and documentation will illustrate the changes made in Exchange 2007 as well as the documentation pertaining to junk mail and quarantine folders.

• When Exchange 2007 is implemented, users will see a difference in the user interface when they are off campus and use the web version of mail, because then they will be using the Exchange 2007 version instead of the 2003 version.

  • E-mail users on campus will not see a difference in the user interface until they are upgraded to Office 2007 and use the related version of Outlook.

• Any authenticated user has permission to view individual My Site pages within SharePoint 2007.My Site

  • Anticipated college-wide employee rollout of SharePoint 2007 is scheduled for fall of 2008.

• Users will need to enter domain name/user name for SharePoint2007.

• User-installed toolbars (e.g. Google) that modify custom security settings will cause problems because the modified settings may prevent the user from accessing components of Exchange 2007 or SharePoint.

• The IT team will have in place Exchange 2007 for the anticipated rollout of Microsoft Office 2007 per the schedule documented by the CQI Committee for Professional Development Training and Office 2007 Deployment Team.

  • That will only affect web access users.

• With the rollout of Exchange 2007, IT will be investigating a software upgrade and related cost to the college’s Unity (IP Telephone) software.

• CORE Services will contact Paul Foster at UC about the need to acquire a test account for Blackboard.

Spam/Security Options

• Microsoft would like us to use their tool: Forefront.

  • It is complex and costs $7,000/year.

• The team is also investigating other means for providing Spam/Security options to the Edison community.

• Another option would be to purchase an appliance where all e-mail would be routed.

  • That would require an upfront investment, but cost about 50% less/year.

Certificates

• Harry is looking at public key infrastructure to generate SSL certificates.

• It would also enable us to create certificates on demand for new applications.

Non-standard Student Accounts

• Dan needs to talk with David Gansz about the two options we have identified for providing public (i.e. non student) users at the library.

• B&I Students: B&I will need to provide us with information prior to classes so that ITS can create temporary, class accounts which will be disabled after the classes.

• The Notification and Communication Team will be speaking with Urbana & Bluffton (our affiliate college representatives) to discuss a process by which notifying IT of their need for student user accounts.  These accounts will be manually created for the affiliate colleges. 

Next Meeting

The next regularly scheduled meeting is for the first day of classes when several team members will be extremely busy. However, the following meeting will not be held due to the Martin Luther King holiday. Dan will schedule a special meeting for the Thursday of that week.