Weekly Update

IT Services update for week of May 13, 2013

Critical Services (Banner, Moodle, Wireless, Internet, Telephony)

One of our commercial internet providers had a problem yesterday morning at about 1:00am, and our systems automatically and seamlessly failed over to our backup provider.  Service was returned to our primary provided at about 4:00pm.  There was no indication that any of our clients was impacted through these transitions.

The graphs below show our traffic being switched to the secondary provider (bottom), and then back to our primary connections (top and middle.)

cyberaoutagemay2013-2

All other critical services functioning normally.

Canada-wide Science Fair

IT Services was heavily involved in supporting the Canada-wide Science Fair that was hosted on campus over the past week.  We deployed a high-density wireless network in the gymnasium area, and provided wireless access to delegates who were staying in our student residences as well.  We saw over 20,000 accesses of the wireless network on Wednesday alone.  We also provided a number of workstations and printers for use of the judges.

All reports from CWSF organizers indicate that everything went very smoothly, and all the technology performed exactly as expected.

Wireless access points installed on CWSF booths:

wifitree

Computers installed for delegate and judge use:

workstations

IT Services update for week of April 29, 2013

 

CRITICAL SERVICES: (Banner, Moodle, Wireless, Internet, Telephony)

  • All critical services functioning normally.
  • A SPAM attack on Saturday April 27 caused intermittent problems for users trying to access university services from off-campus.  Corrective measures were implemented over the weekend.

KPI SPOTLIGHT:

Test Centre – Final Exam Success

The Centre supervised approximately 4000 student exams during the final exam period, averaging 88 exams per hour on the two busiest days, and peaking at 776 exams on the last day.

Test Centre graph #1

The Centre experienced the highest attendance at exams from opening at 10 am until 3 pm.

Test Centre graph #2

SERVICE IMPROVEMENTS:

Canada-wide Science Fair

Preparations to support the fair are in their final stages.  A detailed activity plan will guide installation and support work starting Monday May 6 through to the end of the event.  Wireless services, mobile devices, and support processes are tested ready to be commissioned for the event.

IT Services update for week of April 22, 2013

 

CRITICAL SERVICES (Banner, Moodle, Wireless, Internet, Telephony):

  • All critical services functioning normally.

KPI SPOTLIGHT:

Test Centre new peak usage

The University Test Centre successfully hosted students completing 726 exams on Thursday, April 25th.  This new peak level of usage was delivered while meeting service quality standards set for student experience.

University Internet outage greatly minimized

All Internet services experienced a five-minute outage April 25th at 8:51 am.  Off-campus connectivity, including the uleth.ca website, was impacted.  The recently implemented redundant Telus connectivity was automatically activated, mitigating service interruptions caused by a Cybera Telus 14.5 hour outage.  No client complaints related to the internet service outage were received as a result of the outage.

The graphs below illustrate service traffic.  The first graph provides a view of the end-user experience, showing only a slight interruption at 8:51 am.  Graphs 2 and 3 show the Cybera connectivity and the outage.  Graph 4 indicates our alternate Telus connection activating and carrying the load.

Service traffic graphs

SERVICE IMPROVEMENTS:

Penny Building network 20 times faster!

On April 26th, Information Technology along with the City of Lethbridge completed commissioning of the fiber network to the Penny Building.  The old network consisted of a 50 Mbps wireless connection with antennas on UHall and the Penny building roofs.  The new connection is all fiber and gives the network users a 1000 Mbps connection or 1 Gbps back to the U of L.

This will remove the barrier of limited network bandwidth at the Penny Building and allow the U of L to program the space just as if it was on the U of L property.  Life safety, wireless, Alumni Relations staff and Advancement’s call centre will all benefit from increased capacity and reliability.

The following graphic is a representation of  the differences:

Penny fiber upgrade

 

 

IT Services update for week of April 8, 2013

CRITICAL SERVICES: (Banner, Moodle, Wireless, Internet, Telephony)

Apart from the Moodle problems identified last week and corrected on Saturday April 6, all critical services are functioning normally.

SERVICE IMPROVEMENTS:

IT Services staff visited the Calgary campus to update technology in the administrative areas.  This included the installation new desktop PCs, collaboration software, and updates to the ID card production station.  The feedback we received from the staff and Calgary Campus Manager was very positive.

Calgary Equipment

Canada Wide Science Fair Preparations

We will be testing our “wifi trees” at the Regional Science Fair that is being held this weekend.  As mentioned previously, these trees will allow us to create a high density zone of wifi access in the First Choice Savings Centre during the Canada Wide Science Fair in May.

Wifi tree

 

IT Services update for week of April 1, 2013

CRITICAL SERVICES: (Banner, Moodle, Wireless, Internet, Telephony)

  • Some students in the Testing Centre experienced intermittent error messages in Moodle this afternoon.  We have changed out a network device that may have been causing the problem, and will be monitoring Moodle closely when the Testing Centre opens tomorrow morning.

KPI SPOTLIGHT:

Anticipating the need to re-develop the University homepage, we have been collecting some data to better understand the needs of those using our site.  The “heatmap” below was generated over 3 days of activity in March (17,352 clicks). Much of this data aligns with areas we are already planning to address.  A few highlights:

  • The search box is well used, which could be a symptom of poor information architecture, or habitual user behaviour
  • The direct links by demographic in the “Apply Now” section is well visited, however the award offer beside it is almost never interacted with
  • Current Students and Faculty & Staff tabs in the lower quadrant are well-used and could be used as justification for a current student / employee portal (intranet) – to better focus our public website content.
  • “Services for Students” is well visited, even with lower positioning and size relationships to other elements on the page.
  • Our social media links in the footer are poorly visited.
  • The flexible messaging area graphic is heavily interacted with; people engage often with the slideshow format.

Heatmap spotlight

SERVICE IMPROVMENTS:

We have engaged an instructor from Lethbridge College to provide training for interested faculty and staff on Microsoft Office software (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.)  We have completed three courses so far and the feedback has been extremely positive.  We have included a few of the comments from participants below, as well as the scorecard showing top marks for the course evaluation.

“Good instructor; made course more fun. Thanks!”

“Excellent course – I learned lots of little tricks even though I’d taken other basic courses.”

Training comments

 

IT Services Update for week of March 25, 2013

 

CRITICAL SERVICES: (Banner, Moodle, Wireless, Internet, Phone)

All services were functioning normally.

SERVICE IMPROVEMENTS:

We have added new storage space to the Testing Centre to ensure that there is sufficient space for bags and backpacks even during peak periods.  Student bags used to be pilled on the floor in these areas, creating a safety hazard.

Testing centre shelving

IT Services Weekly Update

Critical Services (Banner, Moodle, Wireless, Internet, Telephony)

Phone service was unavailable at the Calgary campus from Monday afternoon until Thursday at noon due to a poorly executed change made by our network service provider.  The protracted delay in getting these services back online was caused, in part, by slow support response from our technology provider, which made it difficult to identify the source of the problem.  We have enumerated four corrective measures that we will implement to bolster our monitoring and ensure timely communication with our service and technology providers.

Service Improvements

The Enterprise Services team within ITS recently worked with Sport & Recreation Services to implement an improvement to the SRS check-in process.  Students, employees, and community members will continue to scan their ID cards upon entry to the SRS facility, but the system has been improved to display the user’s photo on screen to the SRS attendant.  This allows easy verification that the card scanned does, in fact, belong to the person entering, preventing a relatively common form of petty fraud.

srs_id_photos_pts

IT Services Weekly Update

Critical Services (Banner, Moodle, Wireless, Internet)

All services functioning normally.

Service Improvements

We have installed arms to allow monitors on classroom lecterns to be easily re-positioned.  This was due to student and faculty feedback that these monitors were causing partially obscured views of the whiteboard from many of the seats near the front of each classroom.  This improvement has already been implemented in Anderson Hall, and will soon be completed in all other classrooms exhibiting this issue.

20130315_160802

 

20130315_160651

IT Services Weekly Update

Critical Services (Banner, Moodle, Wireless, Internet)

All services functioning normally.

KPI Spotlight

The Testing Centre has been seeing higher volume with midterm exams in full swing.  Some relevant statistics are provided below.

Last week (Feb 23 – Mar 1):

Number of students processed:              98-150 per day avg
Peak time of day:                                         1pm,  3pm, and 7pm peaks
Average exam duration:                            20-50 minutes
Total exams approx:                                   750

This week (Mar 2 – Mar 8):

Number of students processed:              140-220 per day avg
Peak time of day:                                         1pm to 3pm
Average exam duration:                            60-90 minutes
Total exams approx:                                   1100

Service Improvements

We have recently purchased and installed quiet keyboards in the Testing Centre and level nine of the Library.  This significantly reduces the noise in these facilities, making it easier for students to concentrate on their examinations and studies.

quiet_keyboard

Canada Wide Science Fair

The University is hosting the Canada Wide Science Fair on May 11, 2013, which will bring students and judges from across Canada to our campus.  All of the judging will be conducted using Blackberry Playbook tablets, so having adequate wifi capacity is critical to the success of the event.  IT Services has constructed seven “wifi trees” (see below) which allow us to position wifi access points to provide optimal coverage and capacity within the 1st Choice Savings Centre.

wifi_tree

IT Services Weekly Update

Critical Services (Banner, Moodle, Wireless, Internet)

All services functioning normally.

KPI Spotlight

Our wireless network infrastructure provides us with detailed monitoring of all access points on campus, including any “dead spots” where coverage isn’t adequate as well as access points that are under heavy load (>25 connections).  An example of the latter is shown below.

This allows us to identify trouble spots and pro-actively address them.

CCBN_wifi

Service Improvements

We have been working to improve the routing of computer cables in our student computer labs in order to create a more orderly environment, and to ensure that cables are routed safely in all cases.  This process in complete in the E6 labs and Learning Commons (Study Centre), and we are currently completing this work in the B5 and B7 labs.

cablemgt