CIT Annual Conference 2022

Catch up with colleagues over a light breakfast in the SFHB Atrium area (basement level).

Canvas is Coming! Canvas is Coming! (SFHB 147)

In this session, we are excited to share various plans to get YOU in the know about our upcoming move from Sakai to the Canvas LMS. Topics that we plan to cover include our plans for transition from Sakai to Canvas, support for the transition, student impact, expanded platforms, and training.

• Rosie Hauck
  Dr. Hauck is a tenured BIS faculty member in the College of Business and is currently serving as the Executive Director of the Office of Advanced Technology Support for Faculty. Her goal is to leverage her experience in teaching, research, and academics to effectively to bridge the academic needs of the campus with IT resources and capabilities.

• Dave Hyland
  Dave is a Project Manager in the Office of Digital Transformation and Process Improvement. He has been at ISU for over 3 years, coming to ISU from a career in financial services technology. He has contributed to many successful projects, and was the project manager for helping to build the LMS vendor recommendation.

Canvas is Coming! Canvas is Coming! Session Recording

Canvas is Coming! Canvas is Coming! Slide Deck

 

New Listserv – You Get Better List Emails, and You Get Better List Emails, and YOU Get Better List Emails! (SFHB 148)

The ISU community absolutely loves sending and receiving mass emails to promote and learn about all the great activities the campus conducts on a daily basis. The Unified Communications team has upgraded our Listserv service and this session will review all those awesome enhanced features, such as moderating lists and keeping spam from your lists. This session will provide information for how the department you represent can utilize New Listserv.

• Mike Gibson
  Gibson is a dedicated employee at ISU and responsible for leading the Unified Communications team, which includes voice/phone services, Zoom, and O365.

• Dominique Schauer
  Dominique has been doing great work on the UC team to better ISU. She was a successful student worker and easily transitioned to the phone side of the UC team. She is primary on Zoom administration.

New Listserv Session Recording

 

VDI: New Directions (SFHB 149)

The team members will review the new efforts we have developed to enhance security and assist IT staff. We will discuss several focused virtual desktop versions: One for IT staff to test apps in Windows 10 and Windows 11, one for IT staff to use for work that requires elevated privileges and separates that work from their day-to-day computer work, and a virtual desktop that focuses on supporting faculty with software titles focused on research (SPSS, R, SAS, NVIVO, etc ). We will also take feedback from IT staff regarding tweaks and enhancements for these three virtual desktops to improve the user experience.

• Majeed Abu-Qulbain
  Majeed began work at ISU as a student in 2000, transitioning to full-time in 2001 with the University Computer Help Desk (now TSC). After receiving a degree in Telecommunications Mgt. in 2004 he shifted to the UNIX systems team, where he was able to implement the full stack of server and storage hardware, virtualization, operating systems, and the applications above. He currently serves ISU as an Enterprise Architect and Interim CCA Manager.

• Devin Carlson
  Carlson is an Assistant Director in ION, responsible for the UC team, CCA team, and Enterprise Architecture practice.

• Jim Johnson
  Johnson has worked at ISU for many years and is now leading the configuration and patch management efforts.

• Tim Walsh
  Tim Walsh has been with ISU for several years and has responsibility for assisting with research computing resources, including the HPC nodes and other ways to make it easier for faculty to use research tools.

VDI: New Directions Session Recording

VDI: New Directions Slide Deck

 

Campus Network Update (SFHB 145)

We are in the middle of upgrading our entire Campus LAN from access layer to distribution layer to core. We're also upgrading the campus WAN routers, and expanding the network at the ISU Farm in Lexington, IL. We'll discuss the campus network architecture and all recent updates to it, and welcome your questions.

• Rachal Roach
  Rachal Roach is the manager of the network team in Technology Solutions. She earned a B.S in Computer Information Systems in 2003, and a Master of Science in Computer Technology in 2004, both from Eastern Illinois University. She worked as as a student, GA, and temporary staff member at EIU before beginning her journey at ISU in 2005 as a Videoconference Coordinator in Learning Spaces. She joined the network team as a network engineer in 2011, and was promoted to manager in 2014. She taught 4 semesters of IT 276, Introduction to Networking, for the School of IT from 2016-2018.

Campus Network Update Session Recording

Campus Network Update Slide Deck

Break! Take a few minutes to recharge between sessions. Any goodies left over from the Networking Breakfast can be found in the Atrium.

Keynote Address, 9:45 - 10:30 am (SFHB 139)

CIT is honored to welcome President Terri Goss Kinzy, who will provide the Keynote Address.

IT News and Presentation of the CIT MVP Award,10:30 am- 12:00 pm (SFHB 139)

IT News features the latest announcements and news from campus technology leaders.

The annual CIT MVP Award recipient will also be announced during IT News. This award recognizes a full-time IT staff member who has made outstanding contributions to the support of faculty, staff, students, and operations over the previous fiscal year.   

Keynote Address and IT News Session Recording

IT News Slide Deck

Avanti's lunch is back! After IT News, pick up your lunch outside the Caterpillar Auditorium and then join your colleagues in the basement Atrium. Vegetarian choices will be available, and gluten-free options are available as well.

ISU's Private Cloud Infrastructure: The Now and the Future (SFHB 145)

When we use the term "Private Cloud Infrastructure" we are referring to the hardware (storage/networking/compute) and software (VMware, Openshift , etc.) technologies that makes up the virtualization and platform environment where we deploy and manage services. The hardware supporting this environment will be undergoing significant changes beginning this fall and the Cloud, Compute and Authentication (CCA) Team within Technology Solutions would like to share some details around these changes with the IT community.

• Majeed Abu-Qulbain
  Majeed began work at ISU as a student in 2000, transitioning to full-time in 2001 with the University Computer Help Desk (now TSC). After receiving a degree in Telecommunications Mgt. in 2004 he shifted to the UNIX systems team, where he was able to implement the full stack of server and storage hardware, virtualization, operating systems, and the applications above. He currently serves ISU as an Enterprise Architect and Interim CCA Manager.

• Zach Parker
  Zach has been with ISU for a decade and is currently a private and public cloud focused sysadmin with ION's Cloud, Compute and Authentication team within Technology Solutions. Zach began his student work experience with the infrastructure team where he rapidly learned his way around infrastructure applications and the underlying virtualization, and storage hardware layers quickly becoming a highly experienced FTE helping the team design the future state.

• Kevin Selinger
  Kevin has been with ISU for 14 years, starting as a student worker. He started at the University Computer Help Desk and took it upon himself to get Microsoft certified to become a system administrator. He moved to the Unified Communications team, building a solid foundation of enterprise system administration. When the position opened up on what is now the CCA team, Kevin applied and his skills and knowledge have skyrocketed. Kevin was shifted to focus on ISU's public and private cloud, where he has excelled and continues to provide solid landing zones for ISU's services.

• Craig Watts
  Craig has been with ISU for well over 10 years and is currently a private and public cloud focused sysadmin with ION's Cloud, Compute and Authentication team within Technology Solutions. Craig began his work at ISU on backend systems infrastructure, initially focusing on infrastructure applications such as mail and web servers but eventually touching every layer of the stack from applications to the underlying operating system, hypervisor, and physical hardware and networking layers. He has built up an incredible amount of experience over the years that makes him the veteran he is today.

ISU's Private Cloud Infrastructure Session Recording

ISU's Private Cloud Infrastructure Slide Deck

 

IT Customer Satisfaction: 2022 MISO Survey Results Revealed (SFHB 139)

2022 marked the second distribution of the MISO Survey at ISU, measuring customer satisfaction with technology services. The full set of 2022 results will be presented in this session, answering questions as to whether the high marks received from users in 2021 were validated in 2022, and where we should focus our improvement efforts.

• Carla Birckelbaw
  Birckelbaw is the Director of Client Services in the Office of Technology Solutions, responsible for the Technology Support Center and Endpoint Support teams, along with a list of side projects that includes measuring IT customer satisfaction.

IT Customer Satisfaction Session Recording

IT Customer Satisfaction Slide Deck

 

The Future of Classrooms and Learning Spaces (SFHB 147)

Come join us as we take the Learning Spaces virtual time machine through a tour of where classrooms are going in 2022 what technologies we’re likely to have encounter in five, ten, fifteen, and twenty years. How will things be different for faculty, staff, and students? How will we be different? What will support look like? Let’s find out!*

*Some educated guesses necessary, safety not guaranteed when time travel is involved

• Ted Coussens
  Coussens is the Asst Chf Instrl Media Syst Eng, Learning Spaces and Audio Visual Technology (LSAVT)

• Jeff Grabb
  Grabb is the Director of Learning Spaces and Audio Visual Technology (LSAVT)

• Logan Vaughn
  Vaughn is the Lead Designer for Learning Spaces and Audio Visual Technology (LSAVT)

Future of Classrooms Session Recording

 

Cyber Hygiene, Automation, and Defense - with live scenario! (SFHB 148)

Cyber threats and attacks are at an all-time high. No industry, organization, or individual is free from risk of a cyber compromise, breach, or impact. There is a critical need to continually maintain awareness, operations, and technology that efficiently and effectively mitigate active vulnerabilities.

Join Dan Taube, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for Illinois State University, and the Information Security Office (ISO) to learn about the current state of cyber risks and how you can do your part to Secure the Bird.

This session will include a live cyber event response tabletop scenario with voluntary audience participation.

• Dan Taube
  Taube is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and will be joined by members of his team

Cyber Hygiene Session Recording

Cyber Hygiene Slide Deck

Break! Take a few minutes to stretch or check (briefly) back in with work before the conference resumes at 2:15 pm.

Power BI - Creating and Publishing Power BI Content (SFHB 145)

Endless amounts of data are available to each of us every day. However, we rarely have the ability to view data in a way that is meaningful and can provide insights for our work. Microsoft Power BI is a tool that allows us to gather, prepare, and present data in ways that are meaningful for ourselves and/or our end users.

This session will provide an introduction to the use of Power BI. We will explore how to pull in the data you need, how to transform that data in order to make it more usable in visualizations, and how to create reports and dashboards. Additionally, we will discuss the processes you’ll need to follow in order to share your content with others in your office, around the ISU campus, or around the world.

• Brian Smiser
  Smiser is the Assistant Director for Business Intelligence in the office of Enterprise Data and Analytics, within the Office of Technology Solutions. His team develops, maintains, and administers business intelligence content in IBM Cognos Analytics and Microsoft Power BI.

Power BI Session Recording

 

Confluence: Campus-Wide Knowledge (SHFB 147)

A walkthrough of creating, maintaining, and finding content in Confluence. During the demo we will highlight various features of the system, best practices, and answer questions the audience may have. We will also discuss the benefits of a campus-wide knowledge base and the future for knowledge management at ISU.

• Tony Brook
  An application administrator for Administrative Technologies since January 2014, Brook has been working in the IT field officially since 2010, and with computers in general since before he could read. He is a graduate of ISU with a bachelor's in English studies, with a particular interest in rhetoric and prose. Ask anyone who has seen his documentation to get an idea how those interests mesh. Brook is the primary administrator of Ellucian Colleague, TouchNet, and GitLab.

• Kristen Grimes
  Grimes is an IT Technical Associate in the Office of Technology Solutions - Web and Interactive Communications. She is a founding member of the Women in Technology affinity group, is on the Social Media Analysis and Response Team (SMART), and previously a Civil Service Council member.

• Tyler Piper
  Piper is an Assistant Director within Client Services, leading the Technology Support Center, Knowledge & Training, and Incident Coordinator teams.

Confluence Session Recording

Confluence Slide Deck

 

InsightVM , Vulnerability Management, and You! (SFHB 139)

Join us for an overview of the InsightVM vulnerability management services, a demonstration of the product and its features, and an analysis of what you and the ISO do to help Secure The Bird!

• Michaela Cooper
  Cooper is a Windows System Administrator on the Information Security Office team

• Matt Lindstrom
  Lindstrom is the Security Operations Supervisor on the Information Security Office team

• Matthew Tunberg
  Tunberg is a Graduate Student worker on the Information Security Office team

Insight VM Session Recording

 

Ruffling Feathers? User Experience Advocacy in Practice (SFHB 149)

Most poor user experiences happen due to failure of imagination or attention, not design. Some problems are avoided because they are too complex to resolve quickly and others may not have been noticed until they caused a critical incident. All user experience issues require empathy, critical thinking, and often a dash of creativity to resolve. In this session, we will review several scenarios and role-play how to resolve them successfully. The goal for this session is that attendees will feel equipped and empowered to advocate for users and help resolve user issues when they encounter them.

• Ben Bricker
  Ben is a passionate advocate for university technology users. He has been with ISU since 2017 in the role of IT Communication Specialist. His primary responsibility has been to craft communications (typically graphics or presentations) that raise awareness and help the ISU community utilize the services of the Office of Technology Solutions. He has also served with the Web Team on various website creation projects, where he learned a great deal about UX design and usability testing.

Ruffling Feathers Session Recording

Ruffling Feathers Slide Deck

Ruffling Feathers Handout

Break! Take a few minutes to stretch or check (briefly) back in with work before the conference resumes at 3:30 pm. Cookies will be available during this break in the SFHB Atrium.

You Bet your Assets – Update on Improved Asset Management Functionality in Cherwell (SHFB 148)

A while back, Technology Solutions shared that we are working to expand the use case of our ITSM to provide improved Asset Management tools and processes. It has been a while since we have shared updates, but rest assured a lot has been happening to realize this sizable goal.

We will share:

• A quick-facts session that is likely to change the way you think about the campus process
• Asset Tracker used by Technology Solutions Endpoint Support for this year’s inventory (>6K CIs)
• A dashboard designed to aggregate and manage Colleague (Datatel) updates
• What we mean when we say “one-step for consistent record updates for all teams and CI types” (these are no ordinary one-steps)
• Existing methods for ensuring easy, consistent updates to records throughout the year
• How many asset types we have, and intend to enable within the next year
• Ways we intend to improve tools for Property Control to improve the overall campus process
• How we intend to change our process to create records on receipt, rather than afterwards

• Ballard McCleskey
  Ballard has been with the University for 21 years, starting as a nontraditional student following 8 years in the Marine Corps. Initially working as a student in Systems Support, he soon transitioned to full-time and continued as a part-time student, eventually earning a Bachelor’s degree.

  He originally proposed and stood up the space/operation at Property Control that through many iterations has become eRecycling (and won an award for it). He has been primarily focused in IT Service Management solutions and practices for over a decade, and believes that a well-designed and maintained ITSM will continue to mature and improve how the collective IT support groups collaborate to provide technology and support. The Property Control exposure to the campus-wide asset process, in combination with an enthusiasm for the capabilities of ITSM toolsets has led to a current crusade to update how we manage assets as a campus. For years, that goal seemed too grand in scope to propose or discuss. However after teaming up with Andrew over a year ago, and discovering how much their visions have in common – the idea has accelerated into an active pursuit, with support from leadership.

  When not working, Ballard enjoys being an actively involved grandfather, and many things related to the wind like sailing, flying kites, and going topless (in a jeep of course).

• Andrew Nelson
  Andrew Nelson has worked for Illinois State University for over 20 years. He started at the University Computer Help Desk (now Technology Support Center) assisting in the development and distribution of I-Tools CDs and assisting ISU affiliates with the removal of viruses/malware from personally-owned computers. From knowledge gained during that time, he worked jointly with the TechZone Service Center assisting them with cleaning infected student computers. In 2015, he accepted a new position with Endpoint Support where he was assigned the primary duty of tracking and reporting on over 2900 IT assets. Working with a large student staff to support these IT Assets, Andrew learned the importance of validated updates to asset records when deploying, repairing, and moving IT assets. Andrew has worked with a number of tools to track IT assets, starting with Excel spreadsheets and VBA Userforms , Sharepoint , Magic, and now Cherwell with the CMDB. Each tool provided expanded abilities to better track and manage IT assets.

  In 2018, Andrew was given the additional responsibility of managing eRecycling at Property Control. There he developed processes using Cherwell with the CMDB which are still used today to receive, diagnose, and organize the ever increasing amount of surplus IT assets sent to Property Control. This allowed for the re-issuance of good surplus items back to the ISU community and other state agencies. It was there that Andrew learned the value of a unified asset management system visible and usable by all. In 2021, Andrew passed management of eRecycling to the current manager, Gary Short, and was teamed up with Ballard McCleskey to focus on the development and expansion of IT and non-IT asset management through the current ITSM and CMDB.

  Personal details of Andrew’s life include meeting his wife at the ISU Help Desk at the start of his career and since raising 6 awesome children. At the start of COVID, Andrew moved his family out of the city to a small farm East of town where they have a multitude of farm animals. There they enjoy the open country scenery and starry night sky.

You Bet Your Assets Session Recording

You Bet Your Assets Slide Deck

 

Hiring and Interviews in a Post-COVID Work Reform Movement World (SFHB 139)

COVID has had a significant impact on the way we work, and for many people, their views on work. Social media groups like Reddit’s / WorkReform and / Antiwork are just two locations where millions of followers discuss work environments, hiring practices, and compensation. Websites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor have made information about companies readily available. Communities like these, and various other factors combined with an increase in job openings have impacted the ability to hire and retain staff, which continues to be challenging for organizations to address.

During this session we will look at ISU job postings from a candidate's point of view and discuss how we could improve them to attract the right applicants. In addition, we will discuss the interview process and how we can improve it for candidates and ourselves. What types of interview methods are there? What are their strengths/weaknesses? Let’s talk about what questions we ask, and most importantly why we ask them.

Participants are encouraged to bring examples of job postings, interview questions, or examples from other organizations for discussion.

• Tyler Piper
  Piper is an Assistant Director within Client Services, leading the Technology Support Center, Knowledge & Training, and Incident Coordinator teams. He hires for a lot of positions and participates in even more interviews

• Sarah Starr
  Starr is the Talent Management Coordinator in the Office of Technology Solutions.

Hiring & Interviews Post-COVID Session Recording

Hiring & Interviews Post-COVID Slide Deck

 

Integrations Development at ISU (SFHB 147)

ISU has many software development teams distributed throughout the organization, and we all work in different ways. In this talk, we will explore various tools and resources that the Tech Solutions Integrations team developers use to do our work. We will also discuss major campus systems and data sources, such as how we extract data from PeopleSoft. The team focuses on making Integrations, unseen background software that connects other systems together with custom data flows. However, many of the tools and techniques we use are applicable to software development in general.

• Nathan Stien
  Nathan Stien has been doing software at ISU for over a decade, and currently leads the Tech Solutions Integrations Team. This team uses Java-based technology to connect numerous campus systems together with custom data flows.

Integrations Development at ISU Session Recording

 

Lowering the Threshold to Support Research: A Research Computing Advisory Board (RCAB) Update (SFHB 145)

Faculty greatly appreciate when the technology to support their research is easy to use and there is great support to assist their efforts. The Research Computing Advisory Board (RCAB) is designed with those concepts in mind so our faculty can focus on their research. In addition to making research easier, we also have plans to make research support demands lighter for IT staff, as well.

This session will discuss RCAB’s Fall 2022 plans:

• RCAB Website - information and how to get involved
• AR/VR Mini-courses
• Support for two VR courses
• Monthly lunch-n-learns
• NSF Grant Updates
• RCAB Virtual Desktop for Research - SPSS, R, SAS, NVIVO, and other software

• Rosie Hauck
  Dr. Hauck is a tenured BIS faculty member in the College of Business and is currently serving as the Executive Director of the Office of Advanced Technology Support for Faculty. Her goal is to leverage her experience in teaching, research, and academics to effectively to bridge the academic needs of the campus with IT resources and capabilities.

• Craig Jackson
  Jackson is blessed to serve as the director of a fantastic IT services and support team called Infrastructure, Operations, & Networking (ION). He has been at ISU for nearly 7 years and greatly appreciates the ability of the ISU community to work together on identified common goals.

RCAB Update Session Recording

RCAB Update Slide Deck

Join us at the Pub II to reflect on what you learned at the conference and keep connecting with colleagues! Cheese balls highly recommended, but optional.