Information Technology Services activities

Information Technology Services (ITS) worked to implement new services for campus, provide vital upgrades to our campus technical infrastructure and worked collaboratively across campus to move forward grant applications to support research technology needs this quarter.

Upgraded services

At the end of December, the Telecommunications area within ITS completed the upgrade of the ShoreTel phone system to Mitel. This upgrade was completed by the time faculty and staff returned at the beginning of the year. The ShoreTel company was acquired by Mitel in 2017 and the system has been rebranded to Mitel Connect. The Mitel phone system is a Voice over IP (VoIP) system, and provides the Connect client desktop application (Windows and Mac), or the Google Chrome extension. The Connect software allows users to set options, see call logs, listen and manage voicemail messages, and much more. ShoreTel Communicator application was replaced with the Mitel Connect client. More information can be found about the transition on the Telecommunications’ website. 

Staff in the Enterprise Systems and Applications area within ITS completed an upgrade of the Maximo system for Physical Facilities. This upgrade was the culmination of over six months of work to upgrade the user interface and provides new features and functionality on the Physical Facilities work application.

ITS staff from the Physical Security area conducted training sessions for the University Police Department (UPD) on the new Genetec Video Management system. There were six 4-hour sessions. The Physical Security staff also worked with the Physical Facilities cleaning staff in Mountainview College to deploy a test of a new key management system, the Morse Watchman’s system. This test will be used by 16 cleaners and supervised by a senior custodial supervisor. The campus continues to test key management systems and options across campus to increase security and replace the old model of a building pass system. Another box was deployed in Fine Arts.

The Technology Support Services (TSS) area within ITS replaced an old Scantron test scanner with a newer device. The new scanner is more reliable and efficient for test scanning. TSS staff are working to repair and rebuild the old test scanner and give it to the Chemistry Department, the heaviest user of the Scantron for scanning exams.

A National Science Foundation Campus Cyberinfrastructure grant proposal was prepared and submitted by ITS Research Support Services staff with support from Networking and Operations staff. The proposal and recommendations are the result of many meetings that were held with faculty and researchers to better understand their needs and what Binghamton University can do to support research efforts. A team consisting of Sushma Madduri, Tim Cortesi and Joe Roth worked together on the proposal with a goal to invest in Binghamton’s core infrastructure. Work continues on the project to build out the technology infrastructure to support the needs of researchers at the University.

Chief information officer search update

ITS continues to work to serve the technology needs of the University and prioritize the strategies outlined in the Information Technology Strategic Plan that align with the goals of the University, while searching for a new chief information officer (CIO). The CIO search is active and a search firm is leading the efforts to fill the vacancy. The search committee has selected four candidates for the position and on-campus interviews were held in March.

Planning for Technology Maintenance Day

ITS staff completed critical maintenance work Monday, March 5, in preparation for Technology Maintenance Day that will be held April 3. This critical maintenance was necessary to allow for access to other services on Technology Maintenance Day.

Other completed projects:
    • Completed the redesign and build of a new pre-health checklist for academic affairs. The new application is more secure and uses CAS integration, creating a more user-friendly interface for staff and students to monitor the progress of their pre-health credentials file.
    • Modified the ChemungV adds process so that mag stripe card numbers are not processed for access level adds in the Lenel system. The system now only consists of proximity card readers so the extra data was not needed. This will reduce the database by 50 percent in size and also allow for faster downloads to the controller panels.
    • Installed the new KeyCardChanges program into the Lenel system. This adds true error checking along with better selection criteria for card access and removes the mag stripe code from the system to clean up the database.
    • Removed the following objects from the Oregon AWS site to clear this out: remaining security groups, four sets of key pairs that were no longer used, S3 bucket bingwwwtrail which was used for the AWS Cloud Trail logging. This will be re-setup on the east coast region.