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Departmental Support

Kuali Financial System Nears Release

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Kuali
UCI’s Kuali Financial System (KFS) team is helping UCI departments prepare for transition to KFS next year.

As noted in an earlier article, the Kuali Financial System (KFS) is new, comprehensive software that integrates UC Irvine’s core financial functions, including general ledger, procurement, budget, disbursing, and travel reimbursement. It will replace UC Irvine’s more than 30-year-old financial system, which is paper-intensive and has become increasingly difficult to support.

In addition to the KFS web site, where the project and its goals are described, OIT has created a Wiki which includes resources to help departments plan for the transition, links to training, and other key information.

Kuali Financial System Offers Stability and Efficiency

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UCI’s mission focuses on education and research, but there is a business enterprise which makes that possible.  Accounting and Fiscal Services, in partnership with OIT and other units, are working to implement the Kuali Financial System (KFS) at UCI.  KFS is a product of the Kuali Foundation which aims to provide community sourced software to higher education.

UCI’s current financial system is almost thirty years old and is increasingly difficult to maintain.  Moreover, the campus has grown in size and complexity beyond what the current financial system can readily serve.

KFS is an integrated suite of financial software which will replace a range of financial sub-systems, enhancing ease-of-use, software consolidation, work transparency, and administrative efficiency.  Departments will enjoy a number of benefits including better quality financial data from a single authoritative source.

Community sourced software draws on the knowledge of coalitions of experts and can be used without paying licensing fees.  In the case of Kuali, that coalition comprises higher education institutions.  UCI has been a member of the Kuali Foundation for several years and ramped up KFS implementation efforts in 2011.  The current plan is to deploy KFS in July 2013.

Teach a Process? Do it with a Screencast

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Screencasting

Academic Personnel has a new way of rapidly training staff to use “Recruit,” UCI’s Web-based faculty hiring system. As the cornerstone for their e-learning solution, the Recruit support team, with the help of Camtasia Studio recording software, has produced a number of screencasts.

A screencast is a video that is produced by capturing motion visuals, text, and audio from a computer screen. Learners are instructed to watch the demonstration screencasts and then follow the exercises in an accompanying training workbook that they download from the site. Both the videos and the workbook reside within the Recruit system, and are reachable via the online Help after the user logs in. This self-paced training is a flexible and efficient way to help new users, or even seasoned users who have been away from the system for a while and are looking for a refresher course.

If you want to teach a computer process, consider screencasting. Your learners will be able to play, pause, and rewind whenever the need arises.

Departmental Servers Go Virtual

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Virtual Servers

With OIT’s new Virtual Server Hosting service, units which need a server for a departmental web site or application hosting can provide those services to their faculty, staff, and students with all the advantages of a professionally managed Data Center but at a much lower cost.

A virtual server or virtual machine (VM) is the software emulation of a physical server’s hardware and services, and can be configured to meet the needs of a particular group of users.  A single high-end physical server or cluster can simulate a large number of servers, and make more efficient use of physical resources such as disk, memory, and network bandwidth than stand-alone servers can.

With OIT’s VM service, customers may install, configure, and manage the operating system and applications of their choosing, to meet local needs. Administrators can quickly configure and deploy VMs without concern for the purchase, maintenance or replacement of the underlying hardware. As the service is hosted on OIT’s enterprise infrastructure in the Academic Data Center, customers enjoy the benefits of redundant, highly available systems which are often beyond the means of smaller departments.

This service helps increase server reliability, as well as achieve campus goals of efficiency in power and cooling. Old, unreliable equipment can be retired, while the server’s software and function is retained.

The VM service is hosted on an HP blade server chassis.  Each blade has four gigabit Ethernet network controllers, and the maximum possible memory. Storage is provided by OIT’s enterprise disk storage from NetApp. In addition to the high-availability features in the hardware components, the VMWare virtual environment allows for dynamic movement of servers across physical hosts, as well as automatic restarts for the VMs.

OIT’s VM service uses the same infrastructure as OIT’s other enterprise services: earthquake protection tables, redundant power sources, large-scale UPS, data center chilled-water cooling, on-site emergency cooling, and generator-backup power.

More information on configuration options and pricing can be found on the Virtual Server Hosting web site.

NACS and DUE Team Up

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In summer 2007, the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) and NACS agreed to partner in providing information technology (IT) support services to DUE departments and programs. Under the new partnership, DUE’s IT support team members joined NACS and became a part of the Web Technologies Group under the direction of Shohreh Bozorgmehri.

DUE has extensive IT needs in the areas of file and web server management, desktop support, database administration, and application development.

Its nearly one hundred staff members administer a wide range of support programs that serve the undergraduate population at UCI, including but not limited to tutorial services, academic advising, and study abroad programs. These needs are currently met by a DUE-IT team consisting of the Director, seven staff, and one student programmer.

The DUE-IT team members in turn have access to a range of technical knowledge and expertise within the NACS organization. Sharon Salinger, Dean of Undergraduate Education who proposed the partnership, praised the success of the venture. “By moving DUE-IT to NACS we capitalized on the depth and breadth of knowledge and support within NACS,” she said.  “Our IT staff joined a more productive environment and the Division benefited from superb leadership and project management.”

In the past year, the NACS DUE-IT team provided a range of services to DUE and through DUE to the campus undergraduate community. Student tracking, previously managed on paper and in Microsoft Office products, is now handled through a web-based system for Student Academic Advancement Services and Transfer Student Services. DUE-IT staff worked with the Office of Admissions to consolidate numerous separate data exchanges into one central and secure feed. Internal code, database, and file permissions audits were conducted and extensive searches were conducted for unsecured sensitive information, greatly enhancing DUE’s IT security.

Currently, the DUE-IT team is working on a range of projects, including the overhaul of the Undecided/Undeclared Office’s workshop systems, the consolidation and streamlining of central DUE data systems, and implementation of a central student ID card reader system to allow DUE offices to more efficiently serve students. Additional information about the DUE-IT partnership can be found online.