iCIT’s own David Delgado and Lorna Wong recently presented several sessions at the 2006 Desire2Learn Users Conference in Toronto. The conference gives D2L users the opportunity to learn a variety of strategies and techniques for making the most of their implementations of Desire2Learn.
Outlook “Deleted Items” Folder
In mid-September a new policy will be implemented regarding the management of Faculty and Staff “Deleted Items” folders. Student “Deleted Items” folders are currently automatically emptied of items with a date older than 30 days. This policy will now apply to Faculty and Staff accounts as well. Messages will be retrievable using the “Recover Deleted Items” function in Outlook for two weeks after they have been removed. Announcement of this change will be made to campus in early September.
Changing Offices
As part of the ongoing restructuring in iCIT, three iCIT team members recently moved to new offices, and four more will shortly follow. A handy guide to their new locations has been prepared for your reference.
James Leckel and Greg Pepper have moved to McGraw 202. Nick Ciesinski now calls MG208a home.
PeopleSoft 8.9 Upgrade
The AIS & NOC units of iCIT are working with offices across campus on the upgrade to PS 8.9 and related systems, which is scheduled for the end of this month. A development environment has been in place since April, allowing the developers to reapply existing modifications and correct issues encountered by the customer offices doing the testing. Beginning in July, migrations of these changes to a pre-production, quality assurance environment began. Customer offices are in the process of verifying system function in QUA now. Plans are underway for the production upgrade. The final practice run to determine time estimates is being conducted by the NOC staff.
Several important issues are still being worked on, the most critical one being Student Financial refunding. iCIT and Student Financials are jointly working with PeopleSoft to resolve this issue. Because this functionality is key to the operation of the university, a resolution is needed or the upgrade may be postponed.
The Registrar’s Office is working on web-based tutorials for both faculty and students. They will also be conducting a training session with Helpdesk and General Access Lab staff and student assistants on August 1st.
New Staff On the Way
The iCIT team will soon experience the addition of several new team members.
- On Monday, July 31, Mike Olson will join our department as a Senior Programmer/Analyst for the Administrative Information Services area.
- Kent Steinike will be joining our team in the new position of IT Project Manager. Kent is an accomplished Project Manager and Customer Service Manager with 12 years experience, and an outstanding record of leading projects to successful completion. He comes to UWW from WPS Health Insurance, where he was a Program/Project Manager.His role in iCIT will move us forward with adopting a project management culture, establishing a Project Portfolio Management (which would help us to coordinate and prioritize resources allocated to competing projects) and facilitate understanding of project management principles with our customers. Kent’s first day here will be Monday, July 31st.
- In light of Kathy Gibbs retirement from UWW, ITS is taking responsibility for the Distance Education program. Katy Bradley will help administer the program beginning August 28th.
Watch for more information about these individuals as they arrive.