Supporting the Pack

NC State celebrated 5 Years of Google on Nov. 30

Nik Davlantis speaks with a Google user at OIT's 5 Years of Google celebration
OIT employee Nik Davlantis talks to an attendee about Google Security.

NC State celebrated “5 Years of Google” on Nov. 30 — exactly five years from “Google Day,” when campus officially completed its move to Google Apps @ NC State!

The celebration featured two breakout sessions with presentations from NC State students, faculty and staff, demonstrating how to maximize the many cool tools in G Suite (formerly Google Apps) to communicate, collaborate and work more efficiently. It also included several information booths to help users learn more about Google Apps services offered on campus.

During the closing session, Jonathan Rochelle, director of Google Product Management and co-founder of Google Docs and Google Drive, delivered the keynote address.

Dr. Marc Hoit opens the 5 Years of Google celebration

The 5 Years of Google celebration featured information tables where attendees could ask Google-related questions

An attendee learns about Google Fiber in the Triangle

Google product manager Jonathan Rochelle delivers the 5 Years of Google keynote address

NC State Google administrator Tim Lowman leads a breakout session

Google Demo Slam

OIT’s 5 Years of Google celebration featured a Google Demo Slam, with user-submitted videos highlighting how Google is used on campus—including the winning entry, “Cassady Is In”

PackTV launches AppleTV and Roku apps

PackTV, NC State’s cable sports channel, launched free AppleTV and Roku apps, expanding its reach beyond the campus community.PackTV, NC State's cable sports channel

Prior to the launch, viewers could only watch PackTV off campus via live feeds on the station’s Web page or via on-demand content on Vimeo and YouTube.

The new apps combine the live feed with on-demand content in one place. Users can search through archived games to view sports and PackTV’s archive of original programming.

PackTV covers varsity, club and intramural sports.

ClassTech-supported classrooms feature new lecture capture changes

OIT worked with DELTA to improve the reliability of lecture capture services provided in ClassTech-supported classrooms.

Users who opted­-in to Classroom Recording with Mediasite for lecture capture saw a change to the recording process. Sessions now automatically start recording at the time the course is scheduled to begin and automatically stop recording at the time the course is scheduled to end. Users can pause or stop the recording at any time during the class session.

To learn more about this change as well as improvements to the room control panel interface, see Technology Changes for Fall 2016.

OIT WordPress multisite services 19 web properties

An ever-increasing number of campus units, divisions, programs, centers, and projects rely on OIT and the WordPress content management system to power their web presence. OIT also leverages the WordPress multisite service for most of its sites.

In the past year, a number of OIT websites received major overhauls and were incorporated into the multisite environment, which now undergirds 19 OIT entities, including these high-visibility websites:

Get involved in Green IT!

To save energy and to reduce its carbon footprint on campus, OIT implemented several new initiatives, including:

  • PowerOn, a power management application that allows campus users to remotely power on certain desktops and servers connected to the campus wired network, when needed. This was a collaborative effort with the College of Natural Resources and the Office of Sustainability.
  • Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) go App that allows iOS users access to the VCL, NC State’s cloud computing system that provides 24×7 remote access to high-end lab computers and software.
  • Two PCard enhancements that dramatically reduced the printing of receipts and statements via the OnBase Document Management System.
  • An all-electric vehicle that will be used by OIT staff to travel to campus locations to assist customers.

OIT also encourages campus IT users to learn new ways to conserve and protect IT resources. During the NC State Earth Fair on April 5 in the Brickyard, OIT sponsored interactive and fun activities to show users how to:

  • reduce the university’s carbon footprint,
  • conserve and protect IT resources, and
  • recycle electronics.
OIT staff participate in NC State's Earth Day activities
OIT intern Jessica Craft helps students and employees learn more about recyclable electronics during NC State’s Earth Fair.

Additional Highlights

  • Software Licensing – Managed software licensing and maintenance totaling $9.1 million, in addition to the $1 million SAS grant. Managed licensing partnerships with colleges and departments totaled $1.1 million. Also:
    • Exceeded 19,000 software downloads for the more popular applications, not including MS Office. Office 365, which is available for free to students, faculty and staff, has been activated on approximately 32,800 devices.
    • Negotiated enterprise agreements for:
      • Adobe Creative Cloud, providing popular Adobe software to students, faculty and staff on university machines.
      • Duo Security Enterprise, providing two-factor authentication to students, faculty and staff.
    • Negotiated an expansion of JAMF Pro licensing to accommodate future campus growth.
    • Designed and implemented a new Software Licensing website to better meet the needs of campus users.
    • Resolved a minimum of 2,409 software licensing support tickets.
    • Reviewed 105 additional clickwrap agreements for risks. A total of 718 have been reviewed on campus since the program’s inception in 2014.
    • Reviewed 83 software purchases over $5,000 for security and accessibility compliance since June 2016. Of the 83 submissions, about 21 percent required security reviews and 58 percent required accessibility reviews.
  • University IT Accessibility
    • Updated the IT Accessibility Regulation to clarify and simplify the language. The process helped renew awareness of the need to provide an accessible environment for everyone in the campus community.
    • Created an online training course for University of North Carolina System faculty to provide an overview of how to ensure course content is fully accessible to all, including individuals with disabilities.
    • Launched IT Accessibility at NC State, a new responsive and mobile friendly site that features OIT’s branding and design, accessible audience-specific information and accessibility training opportunities.
    • Made SortSite available to campus teams to evaluate websites for accessibility requirements.
  • University Dining – Completed a mobile API that saved University Dining about $3,000 per month. It is now used on University Dining’s website and in the On Campus app.
  • High Performance Computing (HPC) – supported 136 research projects, 494 faculty and students and 18 courses.
  • Virtual Computing Lab – Had 121,567 reservations, using more than 1.66 million hours by 9,774 unique users.
  • VCL Go iOS app – Had 3,732 downloads.
  • Research Storage service – Developed a self-service web interface to support both the research storage and HPC services.
  • Wireless Audio/Visual – Developed, in collaboration with campus stakeholders, a campuswide standard that defines recommended and supported equipment for classrooms and conference spaces to project wirelessly.
  • ClassTech Projects – Completed 70 projects, including the work with the Gregg Museum, with completion expected in 2017-18, and several rooms in Reynolds Coliseum.
  • College of Textiles 110 Classrooms – Are now supported by ClassTech. This transition was funded from the Education Technology Fee increase for classroom audio visual that was requested in 2013-14 and became effective this year.
  • Crestron Touch Panels – Deployed a uniform user interface for each ClassTech space, campus branding standards, and workflow changes for Mediasite recordings. Improvements to the Crestron codebase have resulted in a reduction of 60 touch panel-related incidents. There were 110 incidents reported in fiscal year 2015-16.
  • Help Desk Call Center – Received an average of 2,000 phone calls per month and resolved more than 30,000 incidents during the past year.
  • ServiceNow – Had over 145,000 incidents logged from over 100 assignment groups and about 1,000 licensed support and service personnel using the system.
  • InForm – Replaced by new and secure technologies, such as Google Forms, Qualtrics and WordPress forms, which allow users to collect information that is submitted from a web-based form.
  • Web Design Services – Redesigned and deployed numerous university web sites, including frequently visited sites, such as hr.ncsu.edu and policies.ncsu.edu.
  • Drupal – Retired Hosted Drupal service.
  • New Employee Orientation – Made the IT presentation an online tutorial for all university employees.