Work on a major campus network upgrade will begin in Summer 2013 and will continue into the fall. Venture Technologies and Cisco Systems, Inc. are implementation partners. The network team will be scheduling the upgrade of switching equipment and wireless access at various campus locations.
Numerous DAS antenna changes and additions are being made to improve AT&T service as well as provide the 4G LTE coverage in the stadium and the Grove/Circle. UM's DAS partnership with Crown Castle continues to grow with the addition of Verizon in the Grove/Circle in Spring 2013.
A project is underway to implement SAP's Grants Management module. When UM went live with SAP financials in 1999, Grants Management was not available. Currently, high level grant information is stored in SAP, but details are managed in a separate database. With Grants Management, all financial processing of grants will take place in SAP, allowing for more up to date and accurate reporting and full automation. Go live is planned for July 1, 2014.
The Mississippi Center for Supercomputing Research (MCSR) is now offering storage services for UM research data by means of an InfiniteStorage 55000 disk array. Initial capacity of the array is 44TB of usable space; this is expandable, as usage grows, to 1.2PB. The unit is professionally administered by MCSR and IT staff members and protected by the power, cooling, and other infrastructure of the UM Data Center. Most types of common research data can be accommodated, and we can work with researchers to develop appropriate security and access restrictions. MCSR will provide a limited amount of space (1-5TB) for researchers on a first-come, first-served basis. As the initial space fills or as individual research groups come to require much larger storage spaces, we will be able to provide additional space at high reliability and low cost. For more information, contact Brian Hopkins at bwhopkin@olemiss.edu or by telephone at (662) 915-5683.
Beginning in the summer of 2013 and continuing through the fall, the TouchNet Payment Gateway, the engine that handles all e-commerce transactions at UM, will be relocated to TouchNet's PCI certified data center, and TouchNet's Marketplace software will be implemented. Marketplace will provide university merchants with a comprehensive e-commerce/storefront solution. Students wishing to pay their account balances online will enjoy a new, more streamlined application within myOleMiss for credit card and ACH payments.
Blackboard Learn will receive a new look this summer. The newly redesigned user interface (UI) will provide a cleaner, more modern look and feel, while providing more options for user customization. However, the interface functionality will remain the same. Announcements will be made on the cutover date along with training options once we have completed the testing phase. Minimal downtime is expected.
In the fall, IT Labs will go live with UM WebID sign-on in the Weir Hall computer labs, namely the PC teaching lab, the Mac teaching lab and the public lab. Faculty, staff and students will simply log on to any computer using UM WebID and corresponding password.
Attendance scanners will be installed in additional classrooms in Summer 2013. Also, a new interface will be added to myOleMiss for students to view their attendance data. Other planned features include differentiated scanner beeps, detailed scanner log access for instructors, and automated email alerts to absent students during the first week of classes. For more information on the attendance scanner project, see the related TECHNews article.
IT, in partnership with University Communications, deployed a new campus website on April 13, 2013. The website employs responsive web design, i.e., each page has four views ... smartphone, tablet portrait, tablet landscape / laptop, and HD computer screen. Options for converting departmental websites to the new look will be made available in June 2013. The redesign includes a new search capability that was developed by UM Computer Science graduate student, Sai Kiran Vudutala.
UM partnered with Mercury Intermedia, a current world leader for mobile news application development, to create the Official Ole Miss App ~ iPad Edition, which was first offered in April 2012. An iPhone version was deployed in January 2013. An Android version is being developed now and will be offered in Fall 2013. Included among the various app features are news stories, photo and video galleries, Twitter feeds, announcements, directories, a campus map, blogs, events, scores and weather reports. To download the app, go to olemiss.edu/mobile.
Continuing the focus on self-service applications for employees, Time Entry/Time Approval is being rolled out to University departments. Many departments are already live.
A new Degree Progress report is available as an alternative to full-blown degree audit as a means to quickly assess a student's progress towards degree completion. See the related TECHNews article for more details.
In December 2012, UM deployed Internet2's NetPlus Box service. Box accounts are available for all UM students and employees. For more information, see Box Frequently Asked Questions.
Symantec Enterprise Vault is a content archiving system that moves emails and their attachments to an online storage area called a vault. Contact the IT Helpdesk to have your account configured for Vault access. Read more in the related TECHNews article.
In Fall 2011, UM made the decision to offer Google Apps for Education to students. The migration to Gmail for student email was completed in Summer 2012. UM Google accounts have the extension "@go.olemiss.edu." See Go for more details.
IT partnered with the Office of the University Attorney to develop a digital repository of all University contracts. Employees who are authorized to sign contracts on behalf of the University will have access to the system to upload PDFs of their signed contracts for storage within the University's digital imaging system.
The process new students use to register for Orientation has been overhauled and enhanced so that the students have an overall better experience registering for new student orientation. The processes/reports administrative offices use to manage students enrolled in Orientation have also been improved with additional functionality.
Significant updates have been implemented to the General SLcM reports. First, all Enrollment and Admissions reports now contain student contact information including email, cell phone, and standard address. Additionally, two new reports were introduced to assist with administrative processes in chairs' and deans' offices: A Status and Holds report and an Enrollment report that will list students enrolled in the current term (Fall/Spring) but who do not yet have a schedule for a future term.
