July 25, 2002 Minutes

Video Subcommittee Request for Assistance - Jim Coble & Wayne Miller

The subcommittee has been gathering information from the Duke community - who is doing what, what they think we need in regards to video.The 2 groups the subcommittee is working to solicit input from are Duke administrators and Duke faculty. They have been trying to figure out how to get their input.

They decided to develop a survey that would hopefully be distributed as widely as possible to administrators and faculty about how they are using video now or would like to use video services. They would also like to get members for some focus groups and hoping the input will help shape the focus groups

What they are asking of ITAC members is to distribute the survey to their individual groups Jim will send the survey to Mike, who will forward it to the ITAC list. In turn, it is asked that members forward the invitation to administrators and faculty in their particular areas.

It is a short survey - 16 questions - URL will be in the email, forward on to admins and faculty in your area, you can personalize the email if you would like.. Please everyone help get this out, the more responses the better. The goal is to turn it around quickly. They really want to get to people they don't know and don't know what their interests are so that they can have a good representation.

II. ITAC Academic Technology Committee Proposed members - Mike Pickett

ITAC Academic Technology Steering Committee Recommendations - July 25, 2002 (passed out list of possible people for the committee not confirmed with people, so they may say no... barring any changes, move rapidly and make group functional)

Approach: Seek approximately 3 ISIS, 3 CIT advisory, 3 ITAC, 3 Administrative, and at least 1 professional school representative with a preference for teaching faculty (especially faculty who have won teaching awards).

David Jamieson Drake - Is this group focused on teaching technology?

Mike Pickett- Teaching and using technology, not intended to be extremely technical - the attempt is to have a blend of people. It balances an interest in both research and instructional computing support.

David Jamieson Drake - Since we have people who won teaching awards, maybe we should have someone who has won an award teaching w/ technology have teaching leaders, maybe have technology leaders too?

John Board - there is a committee focusing on research computing support. Perhaps there should be some kind of knowledge sharing between the two committees.

David Ferriero and Dean Thompson were moved to the Sponsors committee level, since this ITAC subcommittee is intended to be a working group.

III. Introduction to DSG student rep and observations on students and technology - Brandon Taylor

Brandon was not able to attend the meeting and this topic was cancelled. It will be rescheduled for another meeting.

IV. Calendaring and event management - David Jarmul & Rob Little Duke.edu Centralized Event Calendar - July 25, 2002

Background- In March 2002, David Jarmul, Associate VP of News and Communications requested assistance in finding a quick solution to a problem facing Duke. He acknowledged that Duke's web site, as well as the associated departmental, school, and organization sites now offer an array of incompatible calendars that make it impossible to find in one place any related event listings.

He also outlines a series of quick goals:

Stakeholder Interviews - A select group of key calendar stakeholders was identified and interviewed to determine what features and specific needs they might have and to encourage participation in a centralized effort.

Recommendation - The scope and goal of this project, as validated by the stakeholder interviews, required a product with heavy workflow and content management features. Most of the products reviewed as web event solutions were either cost-prohibitive, focused specifically on personal time management, or did not include the features we identified in the stakeholder interviews.

After reviewing all the purchase options and based on the fact that we wanted a solution implemented before the beginning of the fall semester, it was suggested we proceed with the DukeHeath.org Lotus Notes solution. This option offers most of the features requested by realizing several existing support and development efficiencies. Compared with other calendar projects, many of the initial implementation hurdles would be avoided and most of the expense focused on customizing the existing software product to meet the specific campus needs.

It has been expressed that the University will be working toward a comprehensive enterprise-wide time management solution. This will most likely encompass a public web calendar event solution. Although Lotus Notes solution is considered a stopgap or a throwaway system, it should be noted that many of the features and business rule changes would lay an important groundwork for a replacement system.

Features:

The Lotus/Domino solution will offer the following features and benefits. Many of these can be viewed as part of the existing Dukehealth.org calendar: http://forms.dukehealth.org/dukehealth/calendar.nsf

The office of news and communications gets phone calls and emails regularly from people in Durham or alumni who just want to find out what is going on tonight at Duke. They say, they go to The Duke website and try to find a calendar and get a long list, but are not able to find what they need.

Talk started about integrating all calendars

It was a doable task

The goals were to make a more robust and easy to use calendar, easier to search - not create more work or cost for anyone involved.

Any solution had to be one that would work well with all groups involved

Rob Little: There was a centralized calendar tool, supported lightly, they started dialogues with groups of who were or would like to be participating. He asked how their participation was or why were they not participating. They were able to get a feel for what was in the way of those who would not participate.

One item that came up was usability issues: What should a calendar be? They went around and documented what features the groups were looking for. They looked at whether they should purchase an event calendar, was it feasible, etc. However, most were time management calendars, and they were not ready to get into that - they wanted a quick solution for the public events calendar. They took a look at dukehealth.org, which is based on lotus notes, and decided if they tweaked it slightly, it would meet the recommendations people were looking for.It is a medium range stop gap solution, because the university will be looking at more of a universal based time management solution at some point.

This calendar will have:

In the first phase, the frame set can be called into its own frame in the page. Many groups are excited about, no longer do they have to link outside of their page.Public currently sees long list, they are looking at how many of those calendars can be rolled into one space, so that you can find everything you need in one place by defining the parameters. Graphical interface will be more text based, abstract - will work well when we get into CMS

You can click for more information

Mike Baptiste- He would like to be able to pull out XML data

Rob Little- The first phase is html, The second phase, has XML push, allowing them to push data to news agencies, etc.

Mike Baptiste- They use meeting maker, and it can do the same thing. If they want to push and pull info in and out of meeting maker they can. It is important to be able to push as XML - then you can syndicate the info.

Would student type events be in here?

Currently students would be able to enter information and note it is not a public event

Kyle: Events outside on campus that have alcohol cannot be posted off campus or be posted to a webpage, they can be advertised in the chronicle.

John Board: How is advertising in the chronicle any different from posting it on a webpage?

Kyle: Not sure, those are just the rules they have to follow.

David Jarmul: this is a public calendar so will have to be careful

Rob Little: At one point they thought maybe the system could filter based whether or not you were on Duke's network

Molly Tamarkin - they could login or have disclaimer

David Jamieson- Drake - Can items have multiple filters?

Rob Little - You can add sub categories and metadata, find text searching

David Jamieson- Drake - multiple filters would be helpful

Rob Little - trying to find a way to solve that problem

David Jarmul - point well taken, we will roll out before end of August and over next few weeks, if anyone wants to see the categorizations before that and provide feedback, please let Rob Little know.

John Board - The IPAQs do not work with the dukehealth.org calendar

Molly Tamarkin - Is there a way to browse without using filters, so you can see everything?

Rob Little - It will default to a top layer. It is browser based, admin logon, aiming for Kerberos. Once authenticated, the admin page allows you to enter your info. It is very intuitive.

David Ferriero - Is there a thesaurus?

Rob Little - not sure. Right now there are established owners of calendar central, they still need to go out to other groups and get participation

Kyle - Need to dispel with idea that there is a low training impact there has to be ongoing training, need a body in front of people

Nevin - Need to establish content owners

David Jamieson- Drake - if people can copy events, it might make it easier, things repeat, can you go in and copy? Yes, that is the archiving, and that is built in

Mike Baptiste- Not always is it that the owner of the calendar entry is the owner of the event

Rob Little - phase 2 - that is where they will look at first phase and what it is missing

Molly Tamarkin - Probably need to control vocabulary - have pull downs, and avoid free text, need a limited set of options

Rob Little - That goes along with multiple filters, multiple checks, usability, is it doable.

Kyle - To get buy in, maybe this would be the way you would get things published in dialogue, to enter them in the calendar

David Ferriero - what is relationship between calendar and dialogue.. He would want to stream in calendar stuff - when we know what is really working, etc..

Nevin - Agrees, have a button that you can click to add to dialogue, this will show it is "the" calendar

Rob Little - The rollout will be a data dump into calendar and then another one a month later. At that point it will be end of support, and then at another date they will turn off the old calendars.

VI. Enterprise Directory - data and process flows - Suzanne Maupin & Rob Carter

The background on this topic is that when the directory was brought up last time at ITAC, there were many questions about how the directory was set up and many people expressed interest in knowing the technical underpinnings

Phase one rollout - August 2 - rollout, won't be feeding systems till 2 or 3 days after that. Other phases coming later.

Initial rollout - deal with data, need to be organized and loaded. Make sure data loaded in is correct data, etc. Trying to replace online phonebook and prepare for the future life of the Enterprise Directory.

Broad overview of how data flows in and through the systemÑ7 systems primary feeds of data

Key goal later in the process is to provide a gateway to authenticate. Logic is built into system and works to integrate the data feeds as they .flow from top to bottom (see handout). External systems feed data into unique sets of attributes within LDAP. It is important to track info from one primary source to another.

There 7 main sections to load into

Different data gives different info. web based data entry form is used because a lot of people do not appear in the Enterprise Directory, such as contractors, etc. The web based form is used to enter those people in

Mike Baptiste- is it OIT's wish to use LDAP authentication for accounts of non-duke people? Is it intended to be the single sign-on for non-duke people?

Rob Carter- We don't want everyone to do something different, but at this time we are not sure if that should come out of the Enterprise Directory.

Other feeds worth noting are those with arrows in both directions, feeding all authentication into directory because it is needed by the directory to participate, can also feed additional info - It will help with account maintenance - who is here and who is not here and who has accounts, etc. As the person changes roles, etc - all of the account information associated will also change automatically.

John Board - is LDAP scalable?

Rob Carter - Yes

John Board - where do conflicts in data get resolved?

Suzanne - Corrections are made in authoritative source systems (SAP for some attributes) , which is then fed into LDAP. When the connection is built to the alumni database, changes will propagate to and from that. SAP will own most of the attributes associated with employees.

Rob Carter - Live updates of everything will happen on the fly eventually

John Board - Is there a list of those systems that are not yet tied to the Enterprise Directory?

Rob - Could probably get a listing, but it might not be complete

There are 7 eduPersonAffiliation:

How does data get outside? iDAR - directory access router multiple LDAPs can sit behind router and be load balanced. For access to current directory - that system will be forwarding to same port. Day one you will get new data and not have to make any changes on your clients. See handout for detailed information or contact Rob Carter or Suzanne Maupin

VII.Other business

Happy Birthday Tracy!

Adjourned: 5:31