VPIT Monthly Report For August 2015

Vice President for Information Technology
Status and Activity Report for August 2015

Prepared by Timothy M. Chester, Vice President for Information Technology (VPIT)
1.! Announcements for Faculty and Staff Meetings
! Free Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac Available: An upgraded version of Microsoft Office is
now available for UGA students, faculty and staff to install for free on their personallyowned Mac computers. Office 2016 for Mac includes all of the programs in the Microsoft
Office suite such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote but
with improved functionality for formatting documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
Mac users can update to Office 2016 by logging in their web-based UGAMail account
(ugamail.uga.edu) to download and install the software. Office 2016 for Windows will be
available later this year. The EITS website has more information about Office 2016 for
Mac, including installation instructions, at http://t.uga.edu/1Ew.
! New Associate CIO for Data Reporting & Analytics Selected: Sharon Logan has been
named the Associate CIO for Data Reporting and Analytics, a new position that reports
directly to the Vice President for Information Technology. Logan is currently Director of
the Project Management Office at the University System of Georgia. She previously served
as Director of Strategic Communications at the USG. As Associate CIO for Data Reporting
and Analytics, Logan will focus on leading better data governance, architectures, policies,
practices and procedures that properly support the full data lifecycle and analytics needs
of the University. This is a senior-level position to meet the growing need for a strategic
focus on data analytics across the University. Logan will begin her new position on August
17. For more information about the Associate CIO position, please contact Dr. Timothy M.
Chester, Vice President for Information Technology, at tchester@uga.edu.
2.! Support for Student Technology Services
! UGA Mobile App to Include Athens Transit Buses: The Universitys official mobile app
will include a new bus tracking feature with Athens Transit on August 7. The existing bus
tracker with Campus Transit has been the most popular feature of the UGA Mobile App.
With an updated app coming to the App Store and Google Play on August 7, UGA
students, faculty, staff and visitors will be able to view buses for Campus Transit and
Athens Transit within the UGA Mobile App. EITS has worked closely with Athens Transit
and the Student Government Association to offer city buses on the UGA Mobile App,
based on student feedback. For more information, please visit http://mobileapps.uga.edu
or contact Lance Peiper at lpeiper@uga.edu.
! vLab Upgrades Offer Faster Performance, Video Streaming: UGAs virtual computer lab,
called vLab, has been upgraded to a new version with enhanced video capabilities and
faster response times. The vLab allows students, faculty and staff to access lab software,
just like in a physical computer lab, anytime on their own devices. The vLab includes
Adobe Digital Editions, Microsoft Office, Blender, SPSS and Stata. To access the vLab,
visit vlab.uga.edu. For more information about the UGA vLab, please visit
http://eits.uga.edu/support/vlab/. For questions, please contact Keith Martin at
keith.martin@uga.edu.
VPIT Status and Activity Report for August 2015
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3.! Support for Academic and Administrative Computing

! New Report Request Process Available on ConnectUGA website: A new, streamlined
process to obtain reports for student information is now available on the ConnectUGA
website. This one-stop shop process allows people to access reports developed out of the
Banner Student Information System. Users can view a list of reports already available to
the University community, request access to an existing report, request creation of a new
report and view the status of report requests being developed as part of the ConnectUGA
initiative and functional units, such as the Registrars Office. For requests submitted
through this new process, the appropriate office will contact requestors to facilitate the
data access. The new report request process is available on the ConnectUGA website
(http://connectuga.uga.edu) under the Reporting tab. For questions, please send an email
to reports@uga.edu.
4.! Support for Research
! New Cluster Available to Researchers: The Georgia Advanced Computing Resource
Centers (GACRC) new cluster is available for researchers to meet their advanced
computational needs. The new cluster, called Egret (also known as Sapelo), includes 7,200
compute cores, spanning general-purpose compute nodes (128 GB of RAM), high-memory
nodes (512 GB and 1 TB of RAM), CPU/GPU hybrid nodes (nvidia K40 GPUs).
Researchers may also take advantage of the GACRC buy-in program for their own
compute nodes. For more information, please visit http://gacrc.uga.edu/systems, or
contact Dr. Guy Cormier, Director of Research Computing, at gcormier@uga.edu by email.
! Training Required for New GACRC Users: The Georgia Advanced Computing Resource
Center (GACRC) now requires researchers using the GACRCs resources for the first time
to complete an introductory training session. The training sessions help researchers
understand how to use the computational and storage resources available through the
GACRC. Training is available for individual researchers and research groups on an ad hoc
basis and through scheduled training sessions. Once new GACRC accounts are
established, additional information about training opportunities is shared with
researchers. Training opportunities are also posted on the GACRCs website at:
http://gacrc.uga.edu/help/training. For more information, please contact Dr. Guy
Cormier, Director of Research Computing, at gcormier@uga.edu by email.
! Buy-In Program Extended for Researchers: The Vice President for Information
Technology is continuing a matching program to encourage faculty to use the new cluster
for the Georgia Advanced Computing Resource Center (GACRC). This program was
offered in FY15 and has been extended to FY16 with an additional $100,000 commitment
from the Vice President for Information Technology. The program provides an additional
computing node at no cost to researchers who purchase through the options available in
the buy-in program. For more information, including details about the buy-in program,
please contact Dr. Guy Cormier, Director of Research Computing, at gcormier@uga.edu by
email.
5.! Data Reporting and Analytics
! New Function to Track College Completion Rates: As part of an effort to assist colleges at
the University with student success, the Office of Institutional Research has developed a
new function that allows each college to track its cohort completion rates. This new
function is available at OIRs FACTS website (http://facts.oir.uga.edu) under the Student
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Success section. The completion rate is based on students graduating with a bachelors
degree or matriculating into a professional program at UGA. By selecting a school from
the School pull-down menu, the user can get the completion rate for the college. By
drilling to the cell detail, the user can get detailed summary of the students who started
from one college, but graduated either within or outside the college. For example, if a
student started at the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, but graduates with a
bachelors degree from the College of Engineering, the completion rate is given to Franklin
College, but the user can see the total number of students who started from Franklin
College, but graduated in the College of Engineering. For more information about this
application, please contact Meihua Zhai at mzhai@uga.edu.
6.! Core Campus Infrastructure
! Identity Federation Available for Third-Party Websites, Applications: EITS now offers
Identity Federation, a single sign-on service that makes it easier for UGA students, faculty
and staff to access online resources that require authentication with approved partners
outside of the University. By using Identity Federation with approved partners, UGA
students, faculty and staff can use their MyID and password to authenticate to non-UGA
websites. A number of commercial websites use this type of method to authenticate users
across partner organizations into their sites. Identity Federation is a new service provided
by the Identity Management team within EITS. For more information, including
submitting a request to register third-party websites and applications, please visit
http://t.uga.edu/1Gm or contact Keith Martin at keith.martin@uga.edu by email.
! New Version of UGAAlert Software Program Available to Install: The UGAAlert
emergency notification system has been transitioned to a new technical vendor. As part of
the transition, the UGAAlert desktop software has been updated. In the event of an
emergency, the desktop app scrolls a message by UGAAlert on a users computer screen.
The new version is available for Mac and PCs using Windows, and for the Athens or
Gwinnett campuses. UGA students, faculty and staff are advised to update the UGAAlert
desktop software on their computers. Departments that require an IT professional to
install any software on University-owned computes should contact their IT professional
for assistance. Students and employees are asked to review their contact information for
phone and email alerts at www.ugaalert.uga.edu. For questions about UGAAlert, please
contact the Office of Emergency Preparedness at ugaalert@uga.edu. For more information
about the UGAAlert desktop program, please visit
http://eits.uga.edu/hardware_and_software/software and click on the section for
UGAAlert Desktop.
7.! Did You Know?
! More people are turning to the UGA Mobile App to connect to campus resources,
including new students attending classes for the first time this fall. More than 3,200 iOS
users and 1,000 Android users have downloaded the app since UGA orientation sessions
for incoming first-year students and transfer students began in June. In the summer, the
average number of UGA mobile app downloads from the Apple Store is 25 to 30 per day;
the average number of downloads from the Android store is 10 to 15 per day. On
orientation days, those numbers climb to about 150 and 40, respectively. The app has
several features that make it attractive to new students, including a campus map with a
building locator that allows users to search by building name or number and a bus tracker
that shows the routes for Campus Transit buses in real time. About 12,000 iOS users and
5,700 Android users have downloaded the app since September 2014. For more
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information about the UGA Mobile App, visit the EITS website at http://t.uga.edu/1Gh or
contact Lance Peiper, IT manager for the mobile app, at lpeiper@uga.edu.
University of Georgia students, faculty, and staff, as well as interested others, may subscribe to
this monthly report by sending an email to listserv@listserv.uga.edu with the phrase subscribe
vpit-news as the body of the message.
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Vice President for Information Technology

Status and Activity Report for August 2015

VPIT Status and Activity Report for August 2015

3.! Support for Academic and Administrative Computing

VPIT Status and Activity Report for August 2015

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