IRAP January 1996 Status Report
Significant progress was made in moving UMOL to a production state.
Transition of the project leader role from Gordon Leacock to Ellen Vaughan began during the second week of January. A new staffing structure for the UM online project was implemented-- Project Leader (100% FTE)-- Ellen Vaughan Technical coordinator (50% FTE)-- Brian Vaughan Content coordinator (50% FTE) -- Carrie Edlund Marketing (35% FTE)--Linda Green
Pricing for U-M online was announced, the service at $19.95 a month includes Five hours connectivity, additional connectivity will be billed at $1.00/hour, regardless of time of day.
Move to production activities included:
Marketing /Documentation: Significant discussions were held regarding the logistics involved in identifying the recent alumni who need to receive a UM olnine service announcement. Email messages and letters announcing U-M Online's availability were developed and customized for targeted groups -- grads with active accounts, all other recent grads, alumni on wait lists. Conversion of pilot materials to production documentation began in earnest.
WEB: A dedicated UM online server was deployed. Through the dedicated efforts of Sandy Ackermen, Linda Green, Carol Kamm, Zoe Gurevich, and Neda Gholizadeh U-M online home page (http://www.umonline.umich.edu) materials were developed and deployed on the target date of February 1st. Significant progress was made in developing auto generated personal web pages for subscribers.
Infrastructure: A fact finding meeting was held with 4-help staff in preparation for developing a support plan proposal for UM online as a production service. Account and billing issues discussions continued with the Business Office. Plans are in place that will facilitate close communication links between the Accounts office and U-M online -- Karen & Ellen will work directly with each other. Progress was made in efforts to provide National Dial-in, UM online will ask to participate in pilot activities.
Pilot: The UM online Pilot closed January 31. The schedule for transitioning pilot users to the production service will be developed during February. In conjunction with the change in the status of the project, from pilot to production, the existing MOL Steering team has been dissolved, final meeting took place January 31, two separate groups are being established. The production team is Ellen, Brian, Carrie, and Linda-- plus Gordon until the transition is complete. Mike Clark will be included in production meetings until accounting and billing processes are stable. The second group, a strategic advisory team, will include the school/college/unit members of the MOL steering team. Additional members will be drawn from other school/college/unit groups that have an interest in establishing a relationship to UM online. Members of the MOL steering team have been asked to suggest potential members for the new group. Initially meetings will be held bi-weekly, the first will be on February 14.
Significant activity will occur during February as move to production activities continue. (EV)
Four sample predefined queries attached to buttons (with built-in prompts) for Round 1 were demonstrated at yesterday's DAC Reporting Group meeting. A subgroup of uses will develop additional queries, using these four as a template, and even further input for canned queries attached to buttons will be sought from invited representatives of the development community on 02/16/96. Tuning continues in order to improve performance of new canned queries; developers are working with DBAS on cost-based optimization (rather than rule-based, as is currently being used for all other Data Access datasets). ITD developers and users have redesigned the GQL diagram to incorporate Round 2 data. Adequate server space was just secured on Oradev for loading the Round 2 tables. This weekend will be the first time a refresh of the combined Rounds 1 and 2 will be attempted. Centrally-funded development of the PowerBuilder front-end to the Round 1 dataset in the Business School continues to progress. The Development Office itself plans to assume future development of this (called the "EIS," Executive Information System); ITD support is requested for installations and connectivity (this is being discussed internally). A second demonstration of the front-end and GQL portions of the new environment is scheduled for this afternoon. The Development Office is still just in the beginning stages of responding to ITD's ongoing recommendation to begin developing support (training, consulting) for the DAC reporting dataset (this issue was first raised by ITD in March of 1994!). Plans continue to call for completion of development of Rounds 1 and 2 by the end of this fiscal year. As with O3WC and the dynamic student dataset, whether further development will be called for next fiscal year remains to be seen. (PB)
CAMPUS WIDE DIGITAL LIBRARY PROGRAM
MUSEUM EDUCATIONAL SITE LICENSE (MESL) PROJECT
Distribution: Four museums are participating in an optional redistribution of their first distribution text data. Michigan has set up temporary FTP directories for the receipt and distribution of this data. Soon a more permanent FTP service will be established for future distributions of the textual data. Image data will continue to be distributed on CD-ROM.
Educational Use: Five classes are using the MESL system this term. History of Art Professor Diane Kirpatrick is using the MESL system in conjuction with HA 471, "Investigations of Recent Art" and HA 272, " Arts of the Twentieth Century". At times, the MESL Web interface is being used in the classroom via Ethernet, a Powerbook 5300, and an NEC LCD projector. Students are also using MESL outside of class to complete assignments.
Students of History of Art Professor Rebecca Zurier's classes will use MESL to complete selected assignments. The classes are, HA 194, section 001, "Metropolitan Lives; the Ashcan School and their New York", and American Culture 499, "The Arts in American Life".
School of Information and Library Studies Associate Dean C. Olivia Frost is using the MESL system with ILS 626, "Organization of Nontextual Information Resources". The class is interested in comparing the MESL data dictionary structure to existing metadata structures. Certain aspects of MESL will likely provide subject matter and resources for team-based term projects.
Additionally, Dean Frost is willing to sponsor or pay SILS students who would like to explore MESL as an independent study or work on an hourly basis. A posting will go out to SILS students soon.
Web System: Improvements to the systems continue, mostly on an as needed basis. It is now possible to search most of the museums by date. A brief technical guide to image viewing is now online. The "details" page is in the process of being redesigned. Multiple image sizes will be made available, making the system much friendlier for modem users.
Hardware: The new Sun Sparcstation has been configured and will be used for development. The original MESL Sun Sparcstation will be used only as a production server. (JW)
There were miscellaneous problems that the Library folks took care of. We are waiting for talks to complete with Dearborn (and Flint) folks in order to start charging for their printers. (NG)
| January 1996 Core Journals statistics | |
|---|---|
| Total Articles Requested | 5343 |
| Total Successful Prints | 4955 |
| Total Pages Printed | 28924 |
| Average Article size (pages) | 5.83 |
| Total Unsuccessful attempts | 388 |
| Test printing (i.e. printer=none) | 4 |
Discussions are underway about the implications of adding the online data dictionary and enabling the GQL split model feature for the Data Access financial and CRAS tables, which are both in production. The payroll subgroup is concerned about effects on its timeline of building in cross-functionality to the personnel tables. The subgroup was recently advised by the Data Availability Plan Committee to target rollout of a core set of payroll data this fiscal year, even if that involves fewer links to the personnel tables. The Official Third Week Count (O3WC) dataset is still targeted for a move to the production server by 02/28/96 and a rollout to the university planned for April. Whether another phase of development will be conducted next fiscal year remains to be seen. Degree information is now being added to the dynamic student dataset and the population of the dataset modified to comply with a previous Student Data Subgroup (SDS) decision on the contents. Progress has been made in the area of data validation by the SDS. Plans still call for a rollout to a first group of users in June/July. As with the O3WC dataset, whether another phase of development will be called for next fiscal year remains to be seen. ITD developers in the Personnel Data Subgroup (PDS) continue work on the final enhancements to the dataset: addition of historical jobclasses, enabling of direct cross-functionality with the financial tables, backloading data to 1978, and the addition of a few useful tenure-related canned queries. A final testing timeline is being developed with the target of 06/30/96 for completion. The feedback of "Help Each Other Program" participants is being collected to inform changes to the training curriculum and possible establishment of mentor groups on campus. The procurement subgroup continues to meet on a monthly basis while ITD works on automation of the refresh process; the training subcommittee is making progress; canned queries are being developed. All work is slated for completion this fiscal year. The December Data Availability Plan Committee (DAPC) continues to oversee the efforts of the subgroups as well as the integration of differently-funded datasets into the warehouse (a few Data Access users will soon participate in UMTel data modeling, e.g.). There has still been no final word on possible funding cuts for Data Access this fiscal year. The group is currently discussing whether and what to request for central funding for 96-97 and outlining criteria for the data warehouse for submission to the PeopleSoft Core Process Management Team. Considerable end-user concern is being expressed about the lack of academic unit and professional school representation on the PMLT and high-level PeopleSoft implementation teams on campus. A full-time ITD resource has been secured for developing the access/compliance database (for tracking requests for access, attendance at training, signing of compliance forms, etc.). This application is slated for completion this fiscal year. The composite online data dictionary in Oracle (for all datasets) is being added in its current state (i.e., no further enhancements) to each Data Access dataset in production and development. The UIS "TechDev" group continues to meet to share information, develop standards, and ensure consistency among the datasets. One important current agenda item is planning for annual upgrades of GQL on an ongoing basis. Some Data Access support issues have again been encountered in terms of adequate hotline assistance and especially of the seemingly broken process established in 1993 for Data Access installations. It seems to be a recurring problem that the "whole product" aspect of Data Access is in jeopardy, given levels of service in ITD. Discussions are underway with appropriate staff, PAMs, etc. Margaret Loveless is making good progress on redeveloping the GQL course(s), based on input from the Data Access Training Redesign Curriculum Committee.(PB)
Reorganizational work: . Reassignment of all the DSS jobs has been completed accept for two internal DSS job numbers (0340 & 0209) which still need to be taken care of. Both have an account number of 952450. Many jobs, programs, filenames, etc. need to be reassigned before job 0209 can be closed. More research needs to be completed before job 0340 can be closed. (CE)
One-Time Data Delivery Services: There continues to be a total of 2 jobs (contract programming) currently in progress. (CE)
Production Data Delivery Services: We are waiting on customer sign-off on the last external production request we have in-house. (CE)
There were 39,234 GOpherBLUE client sessions over the period 12/21/95 to 01/20/95. Total gopher calls for the period were 387,374. Total Gopher file accesses for the period were 291,075. The most accessed Gopher resources were:
| X500 | 111,221 | (38.21%) |
| Ann Arbor Jobnet | 90,994 | (31.26%) |
| All Others | 88,860 | (30.53%) |
(BV)
We have been preparing the newly purchased Wolverine Access production server to hold the Beta version of WA on the Web . Many cosmetic changes/corrections were made to the menus this month. We also investigated abend problems with various probes which lend to changes being made to mainframe production code. These problems appeared to happen during heavy usage times. Started development of migrating the web grades transaction program from Perl to C. America On-line is investigating the problem which students who used their service were having connecting to WA over the holidays.
Completed several code changes to the student transcript application mainframe program due to EDI/SPEEDE file layout requirement modifications. Infrastructure work, server and new encryption bag routines, has been completed. The new routines have been installed and tested on server and client applications. Revised timeline again due to requirement changes. Anticipated ITD move to production date is now set for 2/7/96. Production adjustments, adding UMID logic to the applications will occur after that. We hope to have customer sign off on 2/26/96.
The Office of Financial Aid transaction continues to be on hold due lack of resources. It is uncertain, at this time, when Financial Aid resources will be available to complete this project.
No progress on the Payroll sick & vacation accrual transaction for Wolverine Access.
Met with ITD technical Telcom staff to discuss possibility of developing a Student Phone Bill Statement transaction. (CE)
January has been a busy month, with a great deal of activity going toward transitioning U-M Online from pilot to production service. We are still in the process of filling our 50% position - one team member is considering increasing his commitment to the project, and we hope to work out his transition to accomplish that.
We currently have 8 projects w/active black borders:
Chemistry - Bret: Not as busy this month, but continuing to make changes as requested. There is more to come, so this is a lull, not the end.
MI Sea Grant - Sascha: Developed some preliminary pages for internal review with customer.
Pharmacy - Bret: Development work continues, focusing on Faculty info and changes to main pages. At customer's request, Bret is attending meetings with other Pharmacy staff and faculty to identify new content.
ITD HTRM - Bret: Now working with Suzanne Schleuderberg. She has given him documents and style guide. He will translate to HTML so they can use immediately and then test conversion packages to see how they compare to what he did by hand.
U-M Library - Maureen: Nothing this month. Waiting for response from Library on mockups we submitted.
U-M Online/Athletics - Jimi Lee: transition of Jimi Lee off these projects is now complete. Neda and Zoe, working with Sandy Ackerman and Linda Green of the communications group, developed several web pages for the new U-M Online server (http://www.umonline.umich.edu). They also completed a mockup of a web input form and resulting member information page (to be auto-generated from the form). Delivery of this service for production use by U-M Online participants is scheduled for May 1.
Athletics has hired a student to continue supporting their web site. They know we are available if they would like our assistance.
Slavic Languages - Sandy W: web site development is complete. Sandy will be meeting with the customer to instruct them on how to update and maintain pages in IFS.
Faculty Senate - Sandy W, Sandy A: development work has begun, using content supplied by customer.
In addition, we have met with Development Communications (commencement information) and expect to begin web site development for them in February. Rackham Graduate School has also discussed potential web applications, but are still resolving some internal issues before we continue. In the meantime, we assisted them with some information on setting up a local newsgroup to be used by Rackham students for a discussion area.
We are developing a business plan for our Web Services offerings, including providing web hosting services to external customers. Gordon Good has developed extensive pricing information and we believe we have a good model in place. Interest in this service has been expressed by Banyan and Parke-Davis (Warner Lambert). Discussions are underway with Merit (coordinated with Ann Doyle as their CRM) to determine the feasibility of partnering on some of these efforts. (CK)
Sascha continues to add resources to the Gateway as requests are submitted. Carol's appointment is increasing to 60% as of February 1, and she hopes to spend additional time focused on improving the Gateway organization and content.(CK)
IRAP One-Time Data Delivery Services: Two new request were received this month, we now have a total of 11 external jobs and 6 internal jobs currently in progress. (CE)
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