Great News! ITS will be introducing an update to our 3900 system on Friday,

April 30th!  The address is the same (help.iwu.edu), but the web interface

will look a little different.

We’d also like you to know that our new system offers enhanced communication

mechanisms.  When you call 3900 or log a call on the web site

(help.iwu.edu), you will receive automated email updates as your

request/call is handled by our IT Services Staff.

The IT Services staff are excited about our updated system and trust it will

enhance our ability to effectively meet the needs of our community!

Information Technology Services alerted the campus to a serious hardware issue with the server named Files yesterday.  A hard drive on the server started failing towards the end of last week and immediate repairs were necessary to preserve data.

Thanks go out to the Network Services Group (Chris, Kerri and Michael) for their efforts to restore services promptly.  The server was also re-configured to reduce the chances of a disk drive problem creating extended downtime in the future.

We invited firefighter Capt. McCollum to our All ITS Staff meeting last week to rekindle our thinking about disaster planning in ITS.  Capt. McCollum presented information on fire safety, types of fires, types of fire extinguishers, and how to use fire extinguishers properly.  We each had hands on training on the proper way to extinguish a fire.

We all felt it was a useful and informative exercise.

The 2010 Horizon Report was released today.  The annual Horizon Report is a collaborative effort between the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and the New Media Consortium (NMC). Each year, the report identifies and describes six areas of emerging technology likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression in higher education within three adoption horizons: a year or less, two to three years, and four to five years.

See more at -

http://www.educause.edu/ELI/2010HorizonReport/195400

I heard a good analogy the other day….

Treat your password like your toothbrush!  Don’t share it with anyone, and get a new one every six months.

The Telecommunications Office is cutting back on paper!  Phone bills will be going out on a quarterly basis starting January 2010.  You will receive phone bills in January, April, and July for this fiscal year.  If you have any questions please call Linda Biehl at 309-556-3430.

May Term Registration went very well last evening.  The first group had 677 people logged in to MyIWU.  The second group had 711 people logged in, the third had 550, the final group had 403.  System performance was excellent and most completed the registration process in 30 seconds if the class was not closed.  Thanks go out to the Web Services, Network Services and Administration Services groups for their work to make the registration events successful this Fall.

Last Wednesday’s registration event for the first year students went very well.  The systems involved in the registration process performed as they should.  There were no system degradation problems for the registration event that presented the highest system demands to date due to the number of people registering and the amount of class look ups, etc.

May Term registration begins at 6:00pm on Monday, November 16th.  ITS will be restarting MyIWU 4:45pm in preparation for the registration event.  MyIWU will be unavailable from 4:45 to approximately 5:00pm.  An announcement is posted on MyIWU under Campus Announcements.  May Term registration has the potential to be the largest registration event.  The numbers of potential students registering are listed below.

Group 0 – 623 students – 6:00

Group 1 – 686 students – 6:30

Group 2 – 505 students – 6:45

Group 3 – 254 students – 7:00

After two successful registration events, today’s event for the Sophomore class did not go as well as we planned for.  About 5 minutes into the registration event the Luminis Platform (MyIWU) began having performance issues.  At 7:55am the servers involved in the registration process were restarted in conjunction with some memory allocation adjustments to restore system functionality.  The registration process took some people closer to an hour to complete rather than the typical 15-30 minutes.

At 7:40am 262 students completed registration, an additional 156 completed by 8:30am for a total of 418.

Information Technology Services staff disscussed the registration event at a 9:30 meeting.  At the meeting we discussed possible causes for the service degridation and solutions to put in place for the Freshman registration event on Wednesday.

The Office of Information Technology Services and the Registrar’s Office appologizes for the stress many went through at todays registration.  We work hard to avoid system problems and will work hard to restore your confidence in the registration process.

Information Technology Services conducted two system tests with the help of the campus community to verify systems are working properly for registration that begins on November 2nd.  Tuning and updates have been applied to systems involved with the registration process and the tests indicate all systems are functioning properly.  Thanks to all who participated in the tests!

Registration begins at 7:30am on the following dates -

November 2nd – Seniors

November 4th – Juniors

November 9th – Sophmores

November 11th – Freshmen