Information Technology Services

If you’ve ever had trouble with technology, either PSU-owned or your personal equipment you may have sought assistance from the ITS Help Desk.  Located at the Lamson Learning Commons in Lamson Library, students and staff  are available to answer questions 7 days a week.  The most familiar ways to reach the Help Desk are over the phone, 603-535-2929, in person or through email, helpdesk@plymouth.edu.  However, last year we also added the ability to Live Chat with the Help Desk.

When you speak with someone at the Help Desk, they will log a support ticket for you.  You also have the ability to log your own support tickets without calling, emailing or visiting the Help Desk.  This can be useful for a number of reasons:

• In the Support Ticket System you can see any tickets you currently have open as well as the history of tickets you’ve logged.
• You can attach screen shots or files to your ticket, which can be helpful if you have an error message you’d like a technician to see.
• If you happen to be in a time zone that does not match up with the Eastern Standard Time hours that the Help Desk is open, you can submit a ticket any time day or night and ensure that the next available technician will review it.

You can access the Support Ticket System through myPlymouth.  The link is in the sidebar under the ITS heading.  The next time you have a technology question please consider submitting a ticket.  We would love to hear from you!

You may have noticed a Campus Communication email this week regarding a new Anti-virus software rolling out soon.  For several years we’ve used a product called Avira.  We have had relatively good luck with Avira, but our contract with them expires on June 22nd.  As we often do near the end of a contract, we evaluated Avira against other options on the market.

The Microsoft Protection Suite met all of our required criteria.  There were several factors that lead to our decision to switch to Endpoint Protection which include: cost, system impact (performance), level of protection and ease of management.   Incidentally, for computers not owned by PSU we generally recommend Microsoft Security Essentials, which is the free, single license version in the same suite of products.

If you are using a PSU-owned PC, in the next week or so you will see your red Avira umbrella go away, to be replaced by a green Endpoint Protection shield.  You might be asked to restart your machine during this process, and that is normal.  If your PSU-owned machine does not spend much time on campus, or if the install does not work properly you can bring your computer to the Help Desk in Lamson Library and we will help you get it working.

We will continue to perform full system scans on Fridays at noon.  Endpoint Protection allows us to set the percentage of the processor that can be dedicated to the scan, and as a result, it has been throttled back so you should see much less of a slow down if you happen to be using your computer on Friday at noon.  You can of course perform a scan (full, partial or quick) on your system at any time by double clicking on the green shield and following the prompts.

If Endpoint Protection does find a virus on your system, it will quarantine it.  At that point you can call the Help Desk at 603-535-2929 for further assistance in removing the virus.

We are excited about this new Anti-virus software.  It works well, and is the best solution for our community.  Hopefully you find it to be a valuable piece of software, and we welcome your feedback.

As you can imagine, the technology systems involved in tracking the life cycle of a student are daunting to manage.  From applying, to acceptance, registering for classes, obtaining financial aid, attending classes, receiving grades, graduating and becoming an alumnus.  All of this data must flow smoothly between the students and professors as well as between offices such as the Registrar and Student Account Services.  At PSU we use a product called Banner from SunGard Higher Education to manage a majority of our data.

Every year, SunGard Higher Education hosts a conference called Summit.  PSU regularly sends representatives from ITS and other offices to this conference to learn about new products, creative ways of using existing products and to network with other schools. This year Summit was held in Las Vegas from March 26-March 29.  Over 6,000 people attended from across the globe.  PSU sent three members of ITS, Dan Bramer, Nathan Porter and Phil Manseau as well as Amy Morrill from the Registrar’s Office and Judy Ciesielski from the College of Graduate Studies.  There were over 600 sessions offered on a wide variety of topics and products.  ITS also attended Virtual Summit where a smaller subsection of sessions were available through a video stream. An important moment this year at Summit surrounded the merger of Sungard Higher Education and Datatel (a competitor company with many similar products).  They used the conference to announce their new company name, Ellucian.

Members of ITS also spent some time learning about the newest version of Banner to be released, Banner 9.  At PSU we are currently running Banner version 8.  Banner 9 has some fundamental changes in the structure as well as changes to the look and feel.  Upgrades in the past have been large projects that require detailed planning, testing and significant down time for the actual upgrade.  Starting with Banner 9, the modules have been divided into much smaller pieces and upgrades will behave much more like small patches.  We expect to see some of these small patches to Banner 9 here at PSU as early as this summer.

This year Dan Bramer presented two sessions, one about the paper-free admissions process and one about workflow (a product we use at PSU to automate business processes, often repetitive tasks that can be automated and streamlined).  Nathan Porter also presented a session about the integration between Banner and Moodle.  This is an excellent way to contribute to the Banner community, as well as save a little money for attendance.

The members of PSU who attended Summit 2012 both contributed to the Banner community by presenting and networking and also returned with valuable information to share with their colleagues.  The information gathered at this year’s Summit will help to guide us in planning upgrades like Banner 9.  Summit 2012 was a valuable experience, one that translates into valuable services to the PSU community.

The opening and closing keynote speakers at Summit 2012 were both interesting and informative.  John Legend, the opening keynote speaker has won nine Grammy awards and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people.  John’s talk focused on his Show Me Campaign, an initiative that uses education to break the cycle of poverty.  The closing keynote speaker was Jane McGonigal who spoke about gamification, which has some interesting implications for higher education teaching and learning.  Jane has an interesting 20 minute TED talk about gamification for those who are interested in learning more.

We look forward to working with Ellucian this year as we embark on some exciting projects like the Banner 9 upgrade.  Summit 2013 is scheduled for Philadelphia and is sure to offer us with some interesting teaching and learning opportunities.