DOIT Newsletter - Fall 2019

In August 2019, partnered with the Office of Procurement and Contract Services, the Division of IT introduced a new technology purchase management system to provide a one-stop service solution for reviewing and approving technology purchase requests and contract renewals. As part of the improvement, an online E&IT (Electronic & Information Technology) checklist was created as a front-end interface for initiating technology procurement requests. The online form, when completed, automatically generates a purchase request ticket for requestors to track the progress of their submitted technology procurement request and communicate with the involved procurement and technology staff. In fewer than 8 weeks, various campus offices and units have used this new technology purchase management system to submit over 350 purchase requests for review and approval. The new technology purchase request management system proved to be easy to use and saves time.

Visit the IT Procurement Compliance Review (PCR) Process service page for more information regarding this new technology procurement review and approval process including additional resources.

A new artificial-intelligent based technology helpdesk chatbot is currently in development to assist online visitors to the Technology Help Desk (THD) website. The chatbot conducts text-based conversations with visitors to the IT Help website and intelligently provides assistance and needed information. The chatbot will help visitors quickly and easily find the technology service or information for which they are looking. This chatbot will be released soon and will enhance helpdesk service in addition to assistance in-person by phone, email, or by submitting a ticket.

Over 10 new Telecommunication services have been added to the campus IT service catalog, allowing users to make requests and report incidents using the IT Help Ticketing system.  This replaces the legacy telecom request system and provides a one-stop service location for employees to submit telecom requests and trouble reports, check on their progress, and search past ticket history.  In addition, an automated workflow helps route requests to ASM’s or the delegated authority approver.

Between April and September, over 900 telecom service tickets have been submitted by employees using the online system.

An exciting Smart Campus service currently in deployment is a web-based campus interactive map. To help the campus community and visitors quickly and easily find their way around the campus, the interactive map will feature the ability to view the campus map with “layers” of information, filtered by individual interest. Some of the map layers include wheelchair accessible pathways, frequently requested services, active construction projects, food and dining options, and virtual campus tours. With the ability to view the campus interactive map on mobile devices, users will be able to embed or share maps via text, email, and other social media methods. This new interactive map will become a convenient method for sharing helpful campus location information.

The Student Virtual Lab (SVL) is in its fourth semester of use this fall. Using SVL, students and faculty are able to access approved campus software anytime and anywhere (without being on campus) as long as they have an Internet connection. As of the end of September 2019, over 74 classes are utilizing the SVL service - which is double the number of classes that used the service during the Spring 2019 semester. Since last spring, three new software applications - Mathematica, Python, and Orange - have been added to the virtual lab environment. This brings the total number of software applications available in the SVL service to 13.

The Division of Information Technology (DoIT) provides a central high performance computing (HPC) service for faculty and their research assistants to conduct computing-intensive research and teaching projects. This service includes shared computing cycles on several high performance clusters equipped with a variety of research software packages. Over the past year, the HPC has been used to complete 36,490 computational jobs. There are currently 41 active users of the HPC service.