Information
Technology Activity
Contact Information
Technology
Anytime Support Desk
Available 24 hours a day,
7 days a week
(310) 506-HELP (4357)
or (866) 767-8623
Tech Central
for Students
Payson Library, 2nd Floor
Mon. - Thur. 10:00 am- 8:00 pm
Fridays 10:00 am- 6:00 pm
(310) 506-4811
Office of the Chief
Information Officer and
Vice Provost
(310) 506-4501
Request IT Services
http://services.pepperdine.edu/it
/forms
and Status Report
November 2009
Announcements for Faculty and Staff Meetings
NetworkID Profile Implementation. Starting Thursday, November
19, all faculty, students, and staff who log into web applications via Pep-
perdine's Central Authentication Service (CAS) will be required to create a
NetworkID profile. Use these links to learn more about or create a Net-
workID profile. Users who do not have a NetworkID profile created be-
fore November 16 will be required to create a profile before logging into a
CAS application.
Faculty Support and Services
Online Course Evaluations in WaveNet. Faculty and students
can now access online course evaluations by logging into Wavenet. Once
inside WaveNet, course evaluations can be found by selecting "Faculty" or
"Student" tabs, followed by "Academic Resources" in the left navigation area.
Then, select "Online Course Evaluations" under the Academic Services area.
Faculty and students will be automatically logged into the course evaluation
system so they no longer need to remember their external password.
Process for Posting Student Grades Has Changed. In order to
provide adequate technical support for the new online course evaluation
system, the grading process within PeopleSoft has changed. The Registrar's
office will now post all grades to ensure that there is no conflict between
the closing dates for online course evaluations and when grades are re-
leased to students. Faculty will still approve grades within PeopleSoft, but
the Registrar's office will post the grades at dedicated intervals.
Photo Class Rosters Now Available in WaveNet. Student
photos are now available on class rosters. When users view class roster in-
formation in WaveNet, they will find a link for a "Photo Roster." The photo
roster displays individual student names and associated photographs. The
1 Information Technology Activity and Status Report, November 2009
photographs are pulled from the Pepperdine Student ID card system; if a student has not yet taken a
photograph for their Student ID card, their photograph will not appear on the photo roster.

Administrative Support for the University

Rate Reduction for Blackberry Enterprise Service. Beginning December 1, the Blackberry
Enterprise Service (BES) license recharge rate will be reduced from $50/month to $40/month per ac-
count. This reduction is made possible through the volume subscription and discount from CDW-G. BES
allows University employees to access their Pepperdine email on their Blackberry. Obtain a BES license.

Pepperdine's Email System to be Upgraded. Pepperdine IT staff are testing Exchange

Server 2007, an upgrade to Pepperdine's current email Exchange Server. The new server will provide
improved compatibility with Apple's Mail, Address Book, and iCal applications, but will not affect current
Microsoft Office Outlook users. Pepperdine Webmail users will notice that their email platform looks
more like Microsoft Office Outlook. The current testing will ensure that there is little to no disruption in
email service for mobile devices. Phase one of the upgrade begins this December and will include IT
staff and select University stakeholders; phase two, which begins in spring 2010, includes full migration of
all faculty, staff, and student email to Exchange Server 2007.

Spam Filter Improves Email Experience. The central spam filter service checks all external
mail transmissions to Pepperdine email addresses and attempts to stop spam. On a typical day, Pep-
perdine receives over half a million computer connections attempting to spam the University commu-
nity, and rejects about 80 percent of those computers outright as well-known spam bots. In the last 30
days, 4.86 million total messages were received; 2.64 million of them were identified as spam and
blocked.

Computer Registration System Update. The Computer Registration system, implemented in

August 2008, has improved the blocking of viruses, malware, or copyright infringement on campus. An
improvement was recently made to the computer registration system that directs a blocked user to an
informative web page that explains why their computer was blocked and what to do next. Under the
previous system, there was no notice and many users thought the network connection was broken.

Windows 7 Testing at Pepperdine. On October 22, Microsoft released the latest version of its
Windows operating system, Windows 7. For the past several months, IT staff members tested and will
continue to test the operating system's compatibility with Blackboard, PeopleSoft applications, PGP
Whole Disk Encryption, and Trend Micro virus protection software. When testing is complete, Windows
7 will be available on new University computer purchases for departments and staff.

Discounted Personal Purchase of Window 7. Pepperdine students and employees may pur-
chase Windows 7 beginning the week of November 16 for their home computers for a discounted
price of $49.99 at Tech Central in Payson Library (in-person purchase only). Windows 7 retails for
$319.99. New home computers purchased through Tech Central can request the Windows 7 operating
system.

Infrastructure, Systems, and Networking Updates

Single Sign-on Implementation for Pepperdine Applications. The new single sign-on
service, which allows users to log in only once to access multiple applications, was implemented for sev-

2 Information Technology Activity and Status Report, November 2009

eral web-based applications at Pep-
perdine University including Sakai, library
databases, iTunes U, VoiceThread, and
the NetworkID profile. For one month,
from September 28 to October 27, the
service averaged 2,500 sign-ons per day.
In addition to providing convenience to
end users, this service makes application
use more secure.

Stellent: To be Decommissioned on November 30. The previous document management

system, Stellent, will be decommissioned on November 30, 2009. All users have been notified of the
scheduled decommission. If there are any previous Stellent users without access to Nolij, the new
document management system, they should contact Scott Bolan, developer, at
Scott.Bolan@pepperdine.edu to request access.

Benchmarks and Accountability

Statistics Show Improvement in Anytime Support Desk Operations. Jerry Hoover,
director of Anytime Support at Pepperdine IT, recently compared Anytime Support Desk statistics from
Spring 2008, when the Anytime Support Desk was managed at Pepperdine University to Spring 2009,
when the Anytime Support Desk was outsourced to SunGard Higher Education. Under SunGard, the
average speed to answer the phone decreased to 55 seconds (from 90 seconds), and the number of
calls abandoned by the caller decreased by 10 percent. Also, the number of tickets, or support requests,
closed by the Anytime Support Desk on the first call increased by 24 percent.

Anytime Support Desk Support Statistics for October. During October 2009, there
were 1,404 requests for support managed through the Anytime Support Desk. Of these requests, 79
percent were resolved within one day and 90 percent were resolved in fewer than five days. The aver-
age wait time for individuals calling the Anytime Support Desk was 65 seconds. Seventy-five percent of
requests were resolved by the Anytime Support Desk on the first call.

Anytime Support Desk User Survey Results for October. Through an automated feed-
back process, all Anytime Support Desk callers are provided the opportunity to complete a web-based
satisfaction survey. In October 2009, 116 (9%) of 1,357 survey requests sent to customers were com-
pleted. The five-question survey uses a “1 to 9” sliding scale with “7.00-9.00” equal to Excellent.

Response Overall Response Skill Communi- Resolution

Month
Rate Satisfaction Timeliness Set cation Timeliness
August 9% 7.50 7.57 7.85 7.48 7.50
September 7% 7.94 7.75 8.15 7.8 7.74
October 9% 7.54 7.61 7.77 7.50 7.53

3 Information Technology Activity and Status Report, November 2009

Staff Support by Major Area. All Pepperdine IT staff allocate their day-to-day efforts using cli-
ent, project, and task codes; using this data, total division-wide staff effort for October 2009 was distrib-
uted as follows:

University Administration Support 1,600 hours 10.73% $84,719.82

Colleges, Academic Affairs 3,060 hours 20.53% $81,684.49

University-Wide, Common Services 5,109 hours 34.27% $237,646.74

IT Administration and Management 3,154 hours 21.16% $131,185.64

General Overhead (Leave, Holiday) 1,983 hours 13.31% $83,899.17

Total: 14,907 hours 100% $619,135.86

Support for Schools. Pepperdine IT staff effort provided to Pepperdine Schools, is as follows:

Month Seaver GSBM GSEP SOL SPP

August 61.24% 19.85% 16.60% 0.73% 1.58%

September 56.21% 22.71% 17.38% 1.86% 1.86%
October 56.48% 23.14% 17.18% 0.83% 2.37%

Conferences and Presentations by Pepperdine IT

Pepperdine IT Staff Presented at Educause 2009. Several Pepperdine IT staff presented at
the EDUCAUSE 2009 Annual Conference in Denver this month. Gerard Flynn, director of the Technol-
ogy and Learning group, and Thomas Hoover, director of Instructional Technology, presented "Virtual
Desktops: 60% Cheaper, but Are They Worth It?" Their presentation focused on Pepperdine University's
12-month study and pilot to assess the costs and feasibility of replacing desktop computers with virtual
machines. Virtual machines, also known as NComputing, allow multiple users to share a single computer
processor. Flynn and Hoover shared information gathered during the pilot on expenses, power usage,
user satisfaction, and ease of administration. They also shared recommendations for installation. Over the
past year, Pepperdine University as a whole has saved more than $100,000 in hardware and energy con-
sumption costs using NComputing. In addition, Flynn and Hoover also presented a poster about emerg-
ing technologies and the best practices for using those technologies at Pepperdine University.

Pepperdine vice provost and chief information officer, Timothy Chester, presented along side Ross Can-
ning, executive assistant to the vice provost and CIO, and JoAnn McNayr, assistant to the deputy CIO, on
"Competency-Based Career Ladders for IT Professionals." Their presentation explored how CIOs can
adopt competency-based, human resource practices in their information technology organizations to
enhance the versatility of IT professionals. In 2007, Pepperdine Information Technology embarked on a
project to create competency-based career ladders for all IT professionals across the institution and
reorganize IT practices to emphasize versatility. This presentation highlighted the success of these initia-
tives.

4 Information Technology Activity and Status Report, November 2009

Other News
SCCUR 2010 Conference Preparation Begins. The Technology and Learning group has be-
gun to prepare to host the fall 2010 Southern California Conference on Undergraduate Research
SCCUR. The conference draws awareness to faculty-mentored undergraduate research and other
scholarly activities within institutions. The Technology and Learning staff is developing a web application
that will allow undergraduate students to submit conference presentation proposals online.

Monthly Status & Activity Report. If you would like to be added to the distribution list for this
report, please contact Dana Hoover at extension x4948. Monthly IT Status Report archives are available
online at http://services.pepperdine.edu/it/about/status-reports.htm.

5 Information Technology Activity and Status Report, November 2009