Technical Support & Repair

LITS Annual Report 2004-2005

What We Do:

The Department of Technical Support and Repair (TSR) is responsible for providing technological support for the staff, faculty and students at Mount Holyoke College. Our mission is to integrate technology within the College community and to facilitate its utilization by providing education and support services. In addition, we are responsible for the purchase, installation and maintenance of all College computers. Our responsibilities are focused in researching new technologies, configuring and installing new machines, inventory tracking, reallocating equipment, repairing hardware, providing software support and technical consulting services. We maintain a call management system, and oversee the Call Center for Technical Support. We provide consulting on both the hardware and software level and in collaboration with other LITS departments develop hardware and software standards for the entire campus. We coordinate with Media Services, in the purchase and installation of all mediated classroom computers. We assist the Dean of Faculty in purchasing equipment for individual departmental labs. The total amount of equipment supported on campus during this academic year is 2000 cpu’s; 1950 monitors and 115 printers.

TSR is responsible for all staff and faculty computer installs on campus throughout the academic year. Our computers are upgraded on a 4 year replacement cycle. Sue Rusiecki from TSR orchestrates our installs by compiling a list of those who are eligible for upgraded machines. This is done through a Web form which is available on-line. Requests should be submitted by the end of the year in order to be considered for the next budgetary cycle. Sue works closely with those eligible on discussing their computer needs. She works with vendors to get the best possible price in purchasing all of our computers and then coordinates the scheduled the installs. We usually are looking at a figure of approximately 300-400 machines a year.

In an effort to provide equitable service across campus and to set manageable expectations, we have established computer policies on equipment allocations which can be viewed online.

Summer of 04
While a lot of offices and folks are on vacation, summer is extremely hectic for TSR. As the campus empties out to enjoy the summer months, TSR utilizes the “quite” summer days to set our installation plan in motion. One of our major challenges is attempting to orchestrate with departments and faculty times when offices will be available to us. Our upgrade list this year reflected 394 requests (374 desktops and 20 laptops).

By the end of August, we were at 99% completion – 350 computers. The remaining small percentage of outstanding installs were the departments, who requested that we hold off on their upgrades until they were back on campus for the fall. In reality, we did complete what we needed to do within the time allotted. Great job by the team!

Plans for upgrading our LITS labs were completed during the summer months. FRC (Faculty Resource Center), VRC (Video Resource Center), SPL (Special Projects Lab), LRC (Language Resource Center) and the Information Commons received new Dell GX70’s with LCD monitors. This is our first step in a college-wide plan of replacing College-owned CRT monitors with LCD’s.

Besides upgrading our labs with new machines, a print management system was installed in LITS labs and ready for the September start. Print management is nothing new in the Five College area – Amherst, Smith, and UMass have already implemented the system. It has proved to be successful in addressing issues of inadvertent waste of paper and excessive printing in public areas.

Our search for an enterprise support management system culminated in late July with the purchase of a product called Track-It! The enterprise system provides modules for maintaining support call management , electronic audit and inventory of College owned computers as well as software deployment. Our first module to make live was the call management tracking system. Much training, testing and configuration was necessary to achieve our goal for the beginning of the academic year. It was a huge undertaking with ambitious time lines.

Fall 04
By September, the module for our new call management system was in production and ready for the opening of the new academic year. We accomplished our goal!

Like all other departments within LITS, September is always a rush to get new students on campus ready for the new academic year. With TSR, our main focus is to assist new students as well as returning students in connecting their computers to the network as quickly as possible. Our call center as well as the Diagnostic Center was busy resolving questions and problems regarding configuration issues, software support issues, hardware drive issues and resnet connectivity issues.

Orientation was a success. This was the first year that LITS staffed dorms over the Labor Day Weekend to welcome new students as well as to provide technical information. Our participation was well received by the new students and their parents. It was a joy to be able to greet and help the new arrivals.

Networking went live with a web ip-registration page which facilitated our network registration process and at the same time checked each computer to make sure it was updated with latest windows security patches. This was not only a win for students in making the process easier but it also provided us with a method to proactively enhance the security of our network. By December, 95% of the students in resident halls had registered computers.

Winter 04-05
During the winter months we were able to complete the task of installing the Track-IT client on all administrative office machines on campus. The Track-IT workstation manager client will allow us to centrally deploy software upgrades to these areas on campus. We are also able to electronically audit machines and enter serial numbers and hardware information electronically into our inventory database.

Spring 05
Spring is our usual time for reviewing and determining hardware and software which we will be moving forward to implement during our summer our upgrade process for the next academic year. The process is called “standards” and is reviewed each spring. It is an interdepartmental project encompassing several LITs departments: RIS, TSR, Networking and Desktop Technologies. A lot of development time goes into researching new technologies, testing and integrating them into our environment. Below is a listing of the outcome of our meeting:

Supported Software for 04-05

***The campus has a site license for McAfee Antivirus and Virex allowing faculty, staff and students to install the software and update the dat files on all campus owned as well as personally owned computers.

Below is a list of Tools and Courseware supported by RIS

Additional software that will be supported by LITS, which may or may not appear on our desktop image:

Alternative Operating Systems:
OS X +
Windows 2000
Windows 2003 Server
Unix – several flavors of Unix such as Ultrix, Digital Unix, Linux, HPUX, IRIX

Limited Support for the following Operating Systems:
MAC OS 9
W98
XP Home
Windows NT

For addition information on supported software, please refer to our site: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/tsr/standards/software2005-6.shtml

Standard Hardware Configuration for New Installs Which Will Take Place in the Summer of 2005

Desktop:

Dell
CPU/Model: Optiplex GX280, Pentium 4, 3.2 GHz
Memory: 1 GB of RAM
Monitor: 19 inch LCD
Disk space: 80 GB Hard Drive
Operating System: Windows XP Pro
CD Drive: CDRW/DVD "Combo" drive
Ethernet adapter: Onboard Gigabit 10/100/1000
Audio: Integrated/Sound Blaster Compatible
Additional: USB 2.0 Ports

Laptop:

Dell
CPU/Model: Latitude D810, 1.73 GHz, Pentium M
Memory: 1 GB of RAM
Monitor: 15.4 inch built-in LCD
Disk space: 60 GB Hard Drive
Operating System: Windows XP Pro
CD Drive: CDRW/DVD "Combo" drive
Ethernet adapter: Integrated Gigabit 10/100/1000
Wireless Ethernet: Dell True Mobile 802.11 Compatible 54Mbps
Audio: Integrated/Sound Blaster Compatible
Modem: Built-in 56Kbps
Additional: USB2 Ports, Port Replicator & Stand, Bag/Carrying Case

Macintosh Desktop (iMac):
CPU: G4, 2.0 GHzMemory: 1 GB RAM
Monitor: 20 inch LCD (attached)
Disk space: 250 GB Hard Drive
Operating System: OSX 10.4
CD Drive: "Superdrive" (CD-Recordable & Rewritable, DVD(+) Recordable& Rewritable)
Ethernet adapters: Built-in Ethernet

Macintosh Laptop:
CPU: PowerBOOK / G4 1.5 GHz
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Monitor: 15 inch LCD (Built-in)
Disk space: 80 GB Hard Drive
Operating System: OSX 10.3
CD Drive: "Combo Drive" - CD-Recordable & Rewritable/DVD Player
Ethernet adapters: Built-in Ethernet
Wireless Ethernet: Airport Extreme (802.11 Compatible)
Modem: Built-in 56Kbps
Additional: Laptop Stand, Bag/Carrying Case

Printers:

Printer Laser: HP LaserJet 4200TN or 4300TN
(Consider DTN Model for Duplexing)

Printer Non-Laser : HP Brand Inkjet printers

Additional information on supported hardware can be found at: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/tsr/standards/hardware2005-6.shtml

Our Labs:

During the fall 2004 and spring 2005 semesters, 35,741 students made use of the Information Commons – an increase in student usage of 13,366 from last year. Our student usage rate increased also for the Reference Reading Room computers from 15,180 student count to 29,544. See chart below (linked breaking down the usage monthly.

LITS Building Complex – Sampling of Relative Lab Usage 2004-2005

Our Support Stats:
2004-2005

Top Three Support Issues at the Call Center: File space quotas, spyware on student machines, hardware

Total number of calls handled by our call center for the 2004-2005 academic year is 5276 which includes the first two weeks of September.

Diagnostic Center/Walk-in Support Summary 2004-2005
Total volume of Diagnostic/Walk-in Support
Provided: 2511

Top three support issues handled by Diagnostic Center: Spyware, Virus and Hardware diagnostics.

Summary:
All and all the year again, was a very busy one and we accomplished a lot of our goals and objectives. One thing remains outstanding however, that the work was accomplished through the collaboration, teamwork and motivation of a dedicated staff pulling together to make things happen.

Prepared by
Susan LeDuc
August 2005