FEATURE
EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY | IT SHOWCASE
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THISISSUE
Summer 2021
IT SHOWCASE: THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
ONE GIANT LEAP..................... TEAMS WORK........................... BEHIND THE DESK................... TECHSITE RETURNS............... IDLE HANDS............................. STAYING ENGAGED................ SOUND CHECK......................... MEET THE TEAM......................
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CONTRIBUTORS CORY FALLDINE BRIAN OSBOURN MELANIE JONES SAANDHYARAG SASIDHAR DAKOTA TAYLOR THEO BELMONTE
©2021 EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY. IT SHOWCASE, SPRING 2021 EDITION. AN OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. ALL CONTENT IS LICENSED TO EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY. QUESTION OR COMMENTS MAY BE SENT TO BOSBOURN@EMPORIA.EDU.
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FEATURE
EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY | IT SHOWCASE
ONE GIANT LEAP
IN A TIME OF COVID UNCERTAINTY, IT EMBRACED THE CHALLENGE TO MOVE EMPORIA STATE’S TECHNOLOGY AND INFRASTRUCTURE FORWARD--BY A LOT.
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t's a given fact that innovation and stagnation can be simultaneously prevalent in the world of information technology. For every technological success, there can be any number of barriers to realizing the rewards. In the Spring of 2020, Emporia State University, like countless others, found us facing the COVID-19 pandemic with an onslaught of paradigm-shifting needs. In borrowing the phrase "the show must go on", one could not, at the time, truly appreciate the enormity of the work needed to make it so. But, over the course of the past year much has changed in a very progressive manner. Old biases were shattered. New concepts have been adopted and surprisingly, even embraced. And as we look back to the distant, almost hazy past of March 2020, we find ourselves enamored--not by opportunities lost in a world of Zoom and social distancing, but by the achievements that have moved our institution significantly forward. From Anywhere - While ESU has traditionally had a strong IT digital presence
across web and social media, we didn't have a dedicated site focused solely on remote technology support in a pandemic. To that end, we developed a multi-team approach to develop three pillars of our "From Anywhere" website. "Work from Anywhere" was targeted at our office staff and general remote computing that covered everything from how to request a loaner laptop to how to access Banner via the VPN. Similarly, our "Learn from Anywhere" gave students the information they needed to be as successful as possible in the shift to online and hybrid learning. And finally, our "Teach from Anywhere" site was dedicated to providing faculty the resources necessary to reposition their classes to an online setting. These sites served their purpose during the early days of the pandemic and have since shifted to be permanent fixtures of TechSite, our IT website. Rapid Online Course Development - With many courses having little or no online element, it left an incredible challenge facing faculty members when all classes transitioned to online or hybrid. In addition to online resources, development of course models, and the acquisition of hardware and software, the Learning Technologies team worked directly with over half of the ESU faculty to ensure instructors could continue delivering their courses in the best manner available. Redundant Infrastructure - ESU had been implementing a multi-year plan to replace an aging infrastructure, while simultaneously evolving that infrastructure to a multi-tenant, redundant offsite location. And then the pandemic hit. With the need for firewall changes, updated VPN services and other infrastructure alignment, IT was able to reposition the plans for the network and server infrastructure to address the new reality of remote working. While the evolution continues, significant redesigns have advanced ESU's infrastructure in ways that were hardly attainable only a year ago. Equipment Deployment and Resiliency The deployment of equipment can almost be described as happening in two distinct waves during the pandemic. The first was in the scramble for resources only hours and days after the decision was made to move classes online and send employees to work remotely. Most employees didn't have laptops--with the majority having only a desktop tower or All-in-One. Similarly, some employees didn't have internet access at home, leaving a major need for mobile
hotspots. IT teamed up with other departments on campus to collect enough checkout laptops and hotspots to provide location resiliency to the students and faculty in need. The next major wave came with the plan to refresh many of the traditional employee desktop with laptops and docking stations. Over the course of a year, ESU has distributed nearly 400 new laptops and positioned these employees with the equipment to work and teach from anywhere. Virtual Events - Perhaps the most drastic challenge was to reimagine events, meetings, and performances that had once been fully in-person to be completely virtual. Using existing tools, including Zoom, our YouTube-powered streaming platform Hornet TV, and our websites we were able to develop a structured plan for event delivery that could be adapted to meet the special needs of each unique broadcast. Avoiding security-related incidents, including Zoom bombs, became an important priority in convincing those hosting events to adapt our new framework Continued on page 13
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EMPORIA EMPORIASTATE STATEUNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY| | IT ITSHOWCASE SHOWCASE
WORK LIFE
WORK LIFE
TEAMSWORK
MICROSOFT’S ENTERPRISE CHAT TOOL IS READY TO STAND ALONGSIDE ITS BIG BROTHERS--WORD, POWERPOINT AND EXCEL. HERE’S HOW WE’RE USING IT?
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f the 2020 was the year of Zoom, Microsoft Teams may very well be positioning itself for that spot in 2021. With numerous feature enhancements and AI integration with other Office products, Teams is rapidly becoming a full-featured communication and conferencing app that we can’t live without. At ESU, Microsoft Teams has steadily grown into a very large piece of the puzzle of the intercommunication puzzle when it comes to learning, working, and communicating from home, which was only highlighted in greater detail over the past year. Integrating Microsoft Teams into everyday use for our teams in IT was an easy way to promote more productive and notable progress with instant access to our colleagues. Even with distance, Teams allows us to solicit a simple one sentence answer or engage in a lengthy video call.
How is ESU Using Teams? •
Most Teams users are using Windows with the Teams website, iOS, and MacOS coming in with smaller numbers.
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On any given workday, ESU sees more around 5000 chat messages and anywhere from 40 to 75 video calls.
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During the pandemic, ESU added students to Teams, giving them another option to communicate with ESU departments or each other.
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Bookings was also introduced to allow ESU departments, advisors, and event attendees an option for making online reservations. At the heart of it was the ability to instantly generate a Teams meeting for the booking.
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Teams has become an integral part of live events at ESU. While streaming to the world via Zoom sessions, speakers and panelists have Teams running on the side as a backchannel for communicating with the IT team and each other.
FEEDBACK PAGE6
“Microsoft Teams aids in safe and secure ways to communicate with your team, colleague, professor, or even family members. Teams provides different ways to talk to each other including voice or video calls, instant messaging, file sharing, and more. Utilizing Microsoft Teams has boosted the productivity of you and your colleagues to be able to get work done ahead of schedule and to stay in touch each other promptly and effectively.”
BEHINDTHEDESK IN A YEAR THAT SAW THE TEAM RUNNING THE HELP DESK OUT OF THEIR HOMES, WE SHARE AN UPDATE ON THE CURRENT HAPPENINGS IT Customer Service and the Help Desk were busy much of 2020 developing and rolling out a new IT SelfService Support portal. Building on the current myIT site, we implemented new software to manage tickets and a whole lot more! The site has a robust searchable Knowledge Base, Self-service option for making service requests or reporting incidents, better asset tracking, and a place to track IT projects and resources. Check it out by going to the myIT tile at Hornet365.com. Each year, ESU participates in a Regents-wide technology conference. 2020 was our year to host the conference. Usually it takes place on campus, but in March we started planning for a virtual conference due to COVID-19 restrictions. The first ever virtual CHECK conference, held in May, was very well-received by over 300 attendees – all virtual! Another opportunity due to COVID-19 was to jump-start our plan to get laptops into the hands of many ESU employees as possible to enable working from home. So far, we have been able to plan for almost 400 laptops. Some were received earlier this summer and have been distributed. The rest are expected this winter. In order to stay as safe as possible during the pandemic, IT Help Desk staff are working more from home, with limited exposure on site. We have started using and encouraging everyone to use our online scheduler to make appointments with the Help Desk. You may find the scheduler on myIT.
TECHSITERETURNS RELAUNCHING A CLASSIC PART OF OUR WEB PRESENCE This year, one of our classic IT support sites made a major comeback. TechSite, which was created in the mid-2000's as a software portal, has been refreshed, rebuilt, and now includes a plethora of IT updates including purchasing information, specialized IT services, and downloads. We've also added a new myIT menu bar to give you direct access to requesting services and placing tickets with the Help Desk. Similarly, you'll find direct access to IT staff including chatting with the Help Desk or booking an appointment. TechSite also includes subsites that are focused on one specific topic. With the rollout of MFA or multi-factor authentication, we built an information site to provide users guidance on how to prepare for the changes as their scheduled date arrives. Another subsite was created in partnership with the Office of the Registrar to inform students, faculty, and staff on the importance of FERPA at ESU. We encourage everyone to checkout the new TechSite, conveniently available at esutechsite.com!
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EMPORIA EMPORIASTATE STATEUNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY| | IT ITSHOWCASE SHOWCASE
WORK LIFE
WORK LIFE
IDLEHANDS IT MAY HAVE BEEN ALL HANDS ON DECK TO GET ESU TECHNOLOGY, COURSES, PHONE CALLS, AND EVENTS TO YOUR HOME OFFICES AND KITCHEN TABLE CLASSROOMS, BUT WE DIDN’T STOP THERE...
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ere is a glimpse at a few of the projects, goals, and initiatives IT has completed, achieved, help with or is presently engaged with over the last 1218 months.
COVID Response – While we still have a long way to go, we (institutionally) leapt forward in some areas by about 5+ years.
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Created a comprehensive “From Anywhere” resource site
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Assisted over half the faculty with rapid training in online course development
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Rapidly deployed redundant infrastructure
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Rapidly modified firewall(s) and provided secure access to University business systems
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Equipped students, faculty, and staff with the laptops and hotspots they needed within days of closing the institution, and then dramatically shifted our faculty and staff to mobile devices to be more “location resilient”
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Stood the institution up for virtual conferencing presence through Web/ Digital team – Virtual Events sites with new video, streaming and media portal Hornet.Digtal
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Retrofitted over 100 classrooms and other learning spaces to provide hybrid capabilities
Microsoft Teams – widespread adoption for staff/faculty. Rollout and introduction for students.
Completed the move to VOIP—over a single weekend, which just happened to be the weekend before classes started!
Microsoft Bookings – widespread adoption as campus standard
Installed all of the technology infrastructure for the remodeled Abigail residence hall using in-house staff
Created ESU virtual tour Created Barnes & Noble portal New Website and Portal now entering 2nd year of full operation
Implemented SignalVine for SMS texting of students
Retention Database Assessment Significant strategic alignment of Ellucian licensing
Hosted the regional CHECK 2020 conference fully virtual Hosted SIDLIT conference
Data Reporting volume increased by a substantial percent over previous years Secure Email – new service for employees
Completed technology work on the University House (aka President’s Residence) University process improvements
Secure File Upload – new service for employees/departments Blackboard A11Y experienced widespread adoption Otter.ai implemented to offer live transcribing in Zoom Digitalization of processes •
Academic Accommodations
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HR accommodations
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Curriculum Change Process
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Hazardous Waste Pickup
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FinAid SAP process
AOP Enhancements with RN-BSN and MSN Consolidated/Improved the “Name Change” process
Decommissioned Sun hardware Banner ODS upgrade Implementation of Multi-factor authentication for Office 365 using Azure MFA Implemented new campus wide and departmental systems including: •
Fuel Meter System
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Axiom Budget System
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NextGen Scholarship Management solution
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Target X Recruitment solution (replacing both EMAS and Recruit)
Countless assessments to rapidly assist campus with implementing new technologies
Updated hiring process (aka Form A/ Form B) New Service Management Portal, myIT Developed new version of technology portal TechSite and new IT public website
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WORK LIFE
WORK LIFE
EMPORIA EMPORIASTATE STATEUNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY| | IT ITSHOWCASE SHOWCASE
STAYING ENGAGED INFORMATIVE AND FUN FROM HOME. When the pandemic was clearly encroaching on our part of the country and it was seemingly clear Emporia was not immune to the changes literally spreading across the globe, we immediately began planning our response. From laptops, to VPN's, to moving courses online, to building all-new websites, we spent nearly all of those initial weeks making sure our students, faculty, and staff were able to carry on the mission of the university. For the Web + Digital Strategies team, that meant that we had to develop a process for hosting virtual events. After all, events, communication, and engagement are extremely important to making a university function in today's 24 x7 connected world. But that's not what this article is about. Once we got the bugs worked out of the town halls, online conferences and endless Zoom sessions, we turned our sites back to another one of our tasks--engaging with the campus community about information technology at ESU! But how could we reach out to our Zoom-fatigued audience when we were quarantined away in our home offices? Here's what we came up with: IT Takes a Series…or Three We expanded our Hornet TV web series, IT Only Takes a Minute, to highlight and communicate topics related to working from home and learning and teaching in the pandemic. We then expanded our video series by adding two additional titles. The first new one, Across Campus, took us out of IT proper and let us explore how IT and technology itself impacted students and other departments on campus. We checked in with a group of students to see how they were using tech from home to stay engaged. Then, we hosted a roundtable discussion to talk about HIPAA, FERPA, and cybersecurity. What sounds like a pretty dry subject--was anything but! Our third video series takes services or topics and breaks them down into short, simple how-to clips. In this series, called Instant Messages, we showed users how to download Teams for the first time or send an encrypted email in Outlook. Donʼt Forget the Fun
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Yes, we did have a little, light-hearted fun-and set out to do our part to keep enrollment numbers up. Our plan to give all new students a free puppy was…very popular. And as the cold weather set in and the holiday approached, we spent an episode of
IT Only Takes a Minute searching for the missing holiday spirit. And we looked extremely hard with correspondents in locations across the globe including Paris, New Zealand, and right here in Emporia. Spoiler alert…we found it. And Informational, Too Our plans weren't just about videos. For our annual cybersecurity campaign, we opted to bring out our dark sides--and we encouraged you to do the same. For our annual contest, we had participants create their own security-inspired supervillain that was showcased on our security website, social media, and on Hornet TV!
We are grateful to everyone who participated in our contests and social media, joined one of our round tables or just watched. We look forward to all new original content throughout 2021.
SOUNDCHECK PULLING OFF YOUR FIRST ALL DIGITAL CONFERENCE IN A MATTER OF DAYS The Conference on Higher Education Computing in Kansas (CHECK) is an annual gathering of information technology professionals in post-secondary institutions in Kansas to present, discuss, and learn about new technologies and current issues in providing IT services to the higher education community. What started as a solid plan for an "in-person" conference, as we used to call it in the good old days, turned 100% virtual with very short notice. No amount of training or redundancy plans would have prepared for this very day. It was time to handle the 50th year celebration, and handle we did for minimal cost. By utilizing some existing and some new tools like YouTube for live streaming, Zoom Pro Licenses to host individual sessions, Teams to keep in touch behind the scenes, Google Sheets for keeping track of all the moving parts, and Wix Sites to tie the entire conference together; the conference was a HUGE success! We held 3 continuous tracks, of which one track was solely for pre-recorded content. This helped reduce the 'live' load and allowed for presentation submissions ahead of time, in case they were unable to present during the conference. Overall we had 35 sessions, over 2 days. To keep the fun going in between sessions, we even created a digital nook of the past, comics, designs for the originally planned in-person sessions, Trivia, as well as CHECK Bingo! We even had custom Zoom Backgrounds to keep the spirits high. Where there mistakes? PLENTY. Did we stumble and fall? NUMEROUS TIMES. But, through sheer resilience and a can do attitude, we powered through all the challenges that came our way and successfully completed the 50th Check Conference.
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THE TEAM
EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY | IT SHOWCASE
MEETTHETEAM THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP TEAM
Cory Falldine CIO AND ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Gary Dodson ISO AND DIRECTOR, INFORMATION SECURITY
Rob Gibson DIRECTOR, LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES
Dianne Graves DIRECTOR, DATA MANAGEMENT
Chris McMichael DIRECTOR, ADMINISTRATIVE SOLUTIONS
Melanie Jones DIRECTOR, CUSTOMER SERVICE AND ENGAGEMENT
Greg Larson IT BUDGET AND PROJECT COORDINATOR
Brian Osbourn DIRECTOR, WEB AND DIGITAL STRATEGIES
Doug Polston DIRECTOR, INFRASTRUCTURE
Karis Williams ASSISTANT TO THE CIO
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One Giant Leap, Continued from page 5
and eventually it became a standard operation. Throughout 2020, we hosted over 150 presentations ranging from town halls to live-premiere videos to full-on conferences. Telephony - It's a simple prospect--how do you answer the phone when your office is closed? The answer was easy for ESU as we had recently implemented VOIP just months prior to the pandemic. The challenge was that most users were oblivious to its capabilities. This led us to develop a plan where each department across campus had to determine how they were going to handle phone calls to their main lines. Some chose soft phones answered from their laptops, while others chose to check voice mail regularly and respond back. Others relied more heavily on smartphones and text-based communications including Microsoft Teams. Classroom Retrofit - Prior to the pandemic, many classrooms on campus had equipment including cameras, computers, interactive white boards and other technologies. However, a nearequal number did not. To prepare for hybrid learning scenarios, IT began an extensive plan to retrofit over 100 classrooms with new technology. Complicating matters was the global demand for computing and video conferencing hardware, but in the end most orders arrived, equipment was installed, and classrooms that would likely have been lower priority for technology upgrades were enhanced delivering students on campus and off the benefit of the latest instructional capabilities. Bookings - There quickly became a need for departments on campus to connect with students both in-person and virtually. Our solution was to make Microsoft Bookings available to all departments. Discovery meetings were held with each interested party and a rollout plan was developed. Most departments were able to offer their students a way to book advising, financial aid, IT support and other appointments in less than a day. This was also an opportunity to use Bookings' Microsoft Teams integration to offer students the use of Teams, a utility previously reserved for employees. Like the planning of virtual events, each department had a slightly different way of using Bookings and users appreciate the flexibility afforded by these solutions.
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FEATURE
EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY | IT SHOWCASE
Did you Know? You can access our top sites with ESU-branded custom “.com” domains including: • Esutechsite.com - TechSite, our technology portal • Esuhornetcentral.com - Hornet Central, our RSO/FSL portal • Hornet365.com - Hornet 365 Portal • Hornet.Digital - Yes, https://hornet.digital is a custom domain for our Hornet-branded services (Hornet TV, Hornet Announcements, Calendar, etc.) • Esuvirtualtour.com - Explore the ESU campus Current ESU Students, Faculty, & Staff have access to most Office 365 services including Microsoft Forms, To Do, Planner, and Whiteboard.
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FEATURE
EMPORIA STATE UNIVERSITY | IT SHOWCASE
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