How was your summer?

OIT spent the hot summer months installing, increasing, enhancing and upgrading a number of our services in addition to relocating several of our teams.  Here are a few of the highlights:

New Quotas for Increased Storage

• Email quota was increased to 2 GB for faculty and staff (1 GB for students)
• Locker quota was increased to 4 GB of personal storage
• Personal webspace was increased to 100 MB
• 600 Wireless Access points were ordered to replace equipment in the Residence Halls and many campus buildings. At this point, over 266 access points have been installed (we currently have over 1000 access points installed on campus!)
• Access.SMU was upgraded
• Courses.SMU (Blackboard) was upgraded
• Other system upgrades include LANDesk, Pharos, Lyris, and several departmental applications
• New Site licenses were signed offering SAS, SAS JMP, NAG, Matlab and Mathematica for all faculty and staff. Many of these are also now available for students.
• Major relocation of entire racks of servers and storage arrays in our data center to allow for greater expansion
• New Firewall appliances and configurations to enhance the security of our data
• The successful migration of almost 300 email accounts from the Cox email servers to the campus email server
• and more...

The Relocation Project

Amidst all of the projects, Academic Technology and Technology Support Services was involved in the renovation of the Fondren Library Center.  Although, we're still waiting on some furniture, we are quickly settling in and enjoying our new location. 

The Academic Technology team moved to Fondren Library East where close proximity to the Information Commons will allow for tighter integration with CUL staff.  The relocation of the Faculty Media Lab will allow for improved access to faculty and staff in need of digital media production facilities and SMU STAR Students to assist!  In addition, the Faculty Media Lab will share resources with the CUL's Multimedia Center to provide assistance for a larger audience.

The Help Desk will soon have a walk up counter in the lobby of Fondren Library West which will be staffed primarily with a team of trained Student Workers. These students will assist with general computing questions, password resets, cell phone activations and configurations, laptop configurations, and more.  By staffing a full Student Help Desk, our full time Help Desk staff are able to focus on answering your phone calls and emails.  If the students need assistance, we are simply a few steps away!

The Help Desk, Field Support, Cellular Support, Training, and Classroom Support teams are now all together in FLW. The Field Support and Help Desk teams are working more closely together to provide a quicker resolution to calls, tickets, and emails.  The two teams are also working together to provide assistance via live chat.  To initiate a chat session, simply go to Remotesupport.smu.edu and submit your question.  A member of the Service Desk team will respond.

In order to add support via live chat as well as increase our services, the ability to leave a voicemail for the help desk during the day has been eliminated.  Many customers would leave a voicemail and then contact us via another method.  The help desk staff would respond to the emails, tickets or additional calls and then return the voicemail as well.  This was simply duplicating the work.  By eliminating voicemail and increasing our contact channels, you will be able to reach us more reliably the first time and we will be able to resolve your issues or questions more quickly.

We are committed to providing the assistance you need in a timely manner.  We look forward to developing these new contact channels as well as developing our student team.  As always, please let us know if there's anything we can do to help support your technology needs.