Presentation on IT fall startup at Harvard

1. FAS Fall Startup 2014
Administrative Technologies, Digital Video Services,
Teaching and Learning and Support Services
Dianne Stronach, Kim Edelman, Chi-Man Lock, Courtney Harwood
July 31, 2014

2. Fall Startup High Level Steps
• Incoming Freshmen – Add Student Records
• Planning for Fall Enrollment
• Advising & Placement of Students
– Online Placement Exams
– Placement Report
– Advisor Matching
• Setting up of Courses
• Registration and Enrollment
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3. Communications
HUIT Fall Startup Prep Meetings
- Weekly meeting starting in August. Sponsored by Support Services.
- Participants: ATS, AcTS, Infrastructure, Support Services
HUIT/FAS
- Bi-weekly meetings starting in July. Sponsored by ATS.
- Participants: ATS, Support Services, ICAPS, FAS RO, Office for
Undergraduate Education, Advising Program Office.
- Issues and Action Items tracked through the Fall Startup Dashboard
HUIT/RO Kickoff
- Monthly meetings sponsored by the RO.
- Participants: ATS, RO sysops, Support Services.
- Detail action items in checklist maintained by RO.
Incident Report for Fall Startup - Maintained by ATS-CAP. To be reviewed at
Fall Startup Debrief by Mike Burke and Jay Harris.
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4. ATS Application Production Support
• Support Activities include: Adhoc reporting and running of cyclical
jobs, emails to students, application modifications, testing, and
troubleshooting.
• Coordination with business owners: FAS faculty, Students, FAS
departments including the FAS RO, OUE, FDO, APO.
• Support runs from May (Student acceptances) through September
(Study Card Day).
• 40 + applications involved in term startup including HERS1, HERS2,
Online Placement Exams, the Advising Network, and Registration &
Enrollment.
4* Application to be replaced by SIS

5. Application Support Issues
• Highly manual processes, increasing possibility of errors and need for
troubleshooting
• Gaps in expertise in outdated technology
• Programs need to be changed and rebuilt because much of the text
is hard-coded
• Testing – Complicated and complex environments, environments
sometimes outdated, needs automation
• Recruitment of students for testing
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6. Mitigation of Issues
• Improved communications between HUIT organizations and between
HUIT and Business Owners.
• Detailed checklists of operations and action items with dates and
updated status
• Contract with HERS1 technology expert
• Contacts with Athletics Dept. and APO for larger pool of students.
• Introduction of join.me for remote student testing
• Improved staging environment for Faculty UAT
• Tracking of Incidents for Debrief at end of the Fall Startup
• SIS Wave 1
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7. TLT fall term preparation
• Canvas:
– Working with school partners to support Canvas courses
– Activating tier 1 support by Instructure
– Finalizing section management functionality
• iSites: no major changes
– Standard start-of-term preparation and validation
• Wiki, Blogs, Qualtrics
• Coordination with other technical groups such as IAM and SIS
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8. TLT start-up readiness
• Participation in HUIT Fall Startup Prep Meetings
• On-call schedule and procedures reviewed and with clear escalation
paths
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9. Overall plan:
Majority of the students and faculty will continue to use the current
production Video Publishing Tool (VPT) in iSites to handle lecture videos
A small set of classes that are taught in Science Center Hall B (and C)
will leverage Mediasite (new lecture capture solution) to capture and
deliver classroom lectures in Canvas
No new VPT changes will be released to production before the Fall start
up. A VPT release aiming to add redundancy for the tool is tentatively
scheduled to go into production in October.
A separate project is being managed for the controlled roll-out of
Mediasite in a few classrooms in the Fall
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DVS Fall Start Up Plan

10. Start up plan for Video Publishing Tool (VPT):
- 8/18 – Configure FAS current lecture capture system for auto-publish
of lecture videos to VPT
- 8/18 – 8/22 – Conduct end to end test after configuration is completed
- Sept – Ongoing monitoring & support
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DVS Fall Start Up Plan

11. Start up plan for Mediasite:
- 8/15 – Complete systems setup
- 8/22 – Complete End to End test
- 8/29 – Complete manual scheduling and Canvas integration
- Sept – Ongoing monitoring
Risks:
1. Serious issues found with new system
- Mitigation: Continue to record lectures using existing system as back
up and switch back to existing system if serious issues arise with the
new systems
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DVS Fall Start Up Plan

12. Communication and Outreach:
FAS
– Partner with Freshman Dean’s Office on mailings to students
– Produce “Get Connected” brochure for students
– Communicate with Faculty and Lab Admins to prep computing labs
– Participate in student orientation and welcome events; First Year Fair,
Parents Fair, GSAS Dudley Fest & English Language Program
HUIT
– Coordinate and lead weekly check-in meetings with all service areas prior
to Startup
– Review Service Management practices
• Validate HUIT critical services and readiness
• Term startup guidelines, exception request and major incident processes
– Lead daily check-in conf call with all Service Areas first week of Startup
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Support Services

13. Support:
Prepare Staff
– Review major incident procedures
– Review high volume support peaks by service from prior years
– Ensure technical documentation and ServiceNow are up to date
– Review DR plan for a building or phone system interruption
Have Contingency Plans Ready
– SWAT teams ready for unforeseen issues or supplemental support
– ITSM fully staffed and ready to help service areas with SM practices or MI
coordination
– ID contacts in partner-provided underlying services (ie, electrical)
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Support Services