Technology Team

Minutes
02/25/08

Attending: Dan Reke, Theron Niekamp, Nathan Walters, Carol Marion, Carol Rigola, Chuck Steel, Ann Miller, Dr. Salisbury, Harry Lawhorn

Absent: No one

Celebrate Successes

Theron has the core portion of the database program working that will maintain the 365 day list of Edison users.

Network services have installed the new spam filtering software and devices. It is working very well.

New Items

Q: Can the creation of WebAdvisor accounts be automated?

A: Carol Marion is checking on the possibility, and if it is possible, the process will be completed after June 2008. We can keep working on this beyond the launch of student e-mail and accounts.

Q: Manual deletion of student accounts (e.g. in instances of abuse, death) – Theron

A:  Network Services will manually handle situations like this. If one account is disabled for a person, then all of their accounts will be. However, e-mail boxes can be locked so that a disciplined student can be prevented from using e-mail and still have access to BlackBoard and WebAdvisor so that they can continue their academic coursework. There are no requirements for Theron’s program to provide any data to facilitate this.

Follow Up on Items from previous meetings:

Q: Has Ann had an opportunity to talk to the library about putting Student ID Nos. on the Library cards?

A:  Yes. The Library staff has analyzed this, and they think the best way to handle it is to start the Student ID Card process in Student Services, and then the students would bring the card to the Library to get a sticker with their Library number. This information was sent to members of the communication team as well as Gail Lee, Becki Lawhorn and Sandy Brubaker for review and consideration.  Ann is waiting to hear from Student Development about this proposed change in process.

Q: Because we are disabling the link in WebAdvisor to reset passwords, do we want the policy to read:

a.    All employees and adjuncts requesting their User Account Passwords reset must contact the Edison Help Desk by phoning 711 or by emailing the Helpdesk to request a password reset at helpdesk@edisonohio.edu during regular business hours. [Adjunct faculty members will not be able to access their accounts if they are hired the week before classes begin, late in the week.  If they are teaching online, they will not be able to access their accounts to build their classes in Blackboard.]

b.    Students would be a similar phrasing, only during regular Library hours.

A: That was discussed and settled. No change is necessary for the LAN. We do need to include relevant information in the forms that HR will be using. We also need to work out a process to verify the identity of adjuncts. Nathan said that Faculty Support uses Datatel to look up information about them and asks them questions to verify their identity. Perhaps Client Services could do the same. We will continue to work on the issue of verifying adjunct identities when they call the HelpDesk.

This was from 2/04/08:

Q: Question from B & I – Shirley Moore posed the following question…”When will we have to send Network Services the number of students? We take registrations up until the class begins. However, we do make a go/no-go decision at least 24 hours before the class begins. If we have 6 students and we want to hedge for 3 more, can we tell you 9 students 24 hours before the class begins?  We always know the start and end date and class name. For computer classes, we usually know the rooms.”

A:  Updated policy change, please refer to the paragraph below.  We will only use one account per class (see below for more details), so it won’t take that long to create, nor will it matter if a student signs up even after a class begins. If Core Services creates the accounts a week in advance, and then B&I cancels the class, that work will be for naught. However, if Client Service waits until the go/no-go decision is made 24 hours before the class is scheduled to begin, the account might not get created if there are vacations, illnesses, or crises to attend to. Chuck and Harry will need to think about this and get back to the Team with a suggestion about the timing of the notice from B&I.

Q: How are we going to handle account for B&I now?

A: Network Services will create one generic account per work station per room used by B&I for training. Those accounts will be disabled until needed. B&I will need to inform Network Services when a class and where classes are scheduled to occur, then Network Services will enable the accounts for that room and day(s). Harry will work with B&I to identify a spare room or two that can handle emergency situations.

Q: Will we delete employee WebAdvisor accounts? If so when and how?

A: We need to do that to avoid tying up software licenses by unused accounts. However, the real issue is freeing up NT and Exchange accounts.  As it stands now, staff will show up continuously on the import list (.csv file) because the 365 day rule does not apply to them. Dan asked how WebAdvisor accounts are deleted, and Carol M. answered that it’s done by running a Datatel mnemonic. Dan asked if HR could run that mnemonic. The answer was yes, they can run it, but Academics might be a better department to annually run some type of process to purge unused adjunct accounts because of their knowledge of which adjuncts will or will not be returning to teach. That will require further discussion. We discussed options to the Datatel processes that delete WebAdvisor accounts such as creating a web page to enable someone to manually delete people from the import list. Theron will give this some more thought/analysis, and then let us know when he has a recommendation to put on the agenda.

Q: Do we need accounts for Kids’ College? If so, how should we handle that?

A:  Yes. We will do this the same way as it will be done for B&I.

Process Diagram

Dan reiterated the need and his expectation for a diagram of the account creation process. Carol Marion reminded him of the tables she brought to the last meeting. Dan asked her to make the document the changes we discussed  on those tables and distribute them.