Absent: Kathy Beal, Shannon Covey, Brian Hamrin, Bart Lytel, Daniel Manson, Ballard McCleskey, Deann Moran, Carmen Plummer

Chair’s Announcements

Department equipment inventories. Property Control will not be tagging certain computer-related equipment from now on, but a subset of inventory tags will be used by the System Support Office to tag computer-related equipment and maintain the inventory. The Enterprise Systems Support Office will do the tagging; if a department moves equipment (rather than Enterprise Systems Support doing it), Enterprise Systems Support needs to be informed of the move and new location of the tagged item.

Upcoming power outages. Over Memorial Day Weekend, there will be major power outages: full days on May 25^th and on either May 26^th or May 27^th (which date to be determined and announced soon). These outages will affect about 1/3 of the campus, including residence halls, Nelson Smith Building, Julian and others. All machines should be powered off before leaving for the weekend.on May 24^th.

Remote Control Issues

NetMeeting is a product that Enterprise Systems Support has discovered is already on Windows computers, but we haven’t yet used. A remote desktop piece exists to allow Enterprise Systems Support to do remote procedures and also for users to remote into the office from home. This product also impacts the internet and browsers. NetMeeting is free, good, fast, and uses central security that already exists. A pilot testing is currently being done with Collections.

File Storage and Clean Up

Backup files (ghost images) are consuming an inordinate amount of space on servers. Immediate relief has been accomplished by Enterprise Systems Support moving many of their backup files (80+G) to disks. However, since the this year’s budget request to purchase additional server space was denied—and it is not optimistic that next year’s request will be received any differently, the threat of diminishing storage space needs to be addressed sometime during this year. A year from now we may have a much greater concern than we do today.

Enterprise Systems Support has about 175 computers remaining to convert to Windows 2000 (taking 2G each). All 400 computers that Enterprise Systems Support supports will be redone through AIS. As soon as that work is accomplished, Enterprise Systems Support will be focusing on the backup space problems. Duplicate backup copies need to be eliminated. Through training, essential documents will be identified, unessential documents/duplicates will be eliminated, and other files will be burned to disks to archive them. Users should begin to review their files now to prepare for the “purging” that will occur after July. Enterprise Systems Support will arrange to work with each user on individual computers and a DVD burner will be available for these sessions.

File management sessions. The Users Group suggested the clean up effort begin with files management workshops, including reports from various departments on what works for them and information about document management tools. The actual cleanup will then follow these training/informational sessions.

Information Item

Chat/Net Meeting feature. This feature connects through the Windows network, is encrypted and secure. It works like Instant Messenger and is useful for many purposes, i.e., faster communications with individuals and/or conference-type communications.

Future Discussion Items

No future discussion topics were presented at the meeting; topics that arise between now and the next meeting should be shared with the group via the listserv.

Meeting brief prepared by

Cheryl Young and Kathy Beal

4/19/02

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