EA Showcase October 22, 2019

Transformative change in higher education and at the UW is creating new opportunities to improve teaching and learning, research, and administration. These opportunities challenge us to find new ways to adapt and collaborate.

Please join the Enterprise Architecture (EA) team and your colleagues from across the UW in a hands-on workshop to:

Explore the digital transformation already under way and national trends in higher education with a panel of experts
Discuss how this context impacts your work
Learn how architecture work is changing in this context
Work with peers to scan the landscape and plan collaborations to address architectural problems
Understand how the EA team and its resources can support you in this work

UPDATE: Registration is now closed. Summary and resource materials from the event can be found here.

When: October 22, 2019 at 9:00am-12:00pm – Meet & greet over coffee starting at 8:30am

Where: Husky Union Building (HUB) Lyceum (1st floor)

More information on Enterprise Architecture

New Report and Data Release: Cost Share Commitments and Contributions

Now Available in the EDW: Cost Share Commitments and Contributions data and report

Do you find managing Cost Share with the Unmet Cost Share Report difficult because of the way commitments and contribution details are organized? If you could, would you like to dive deeper into how Cost Share commitments roll up to the Financial Organization at the Dean, Major, Department, and Subdivision levels? Would it make your life easier if you could filter out closed Cost Share Commitments or analyze data by the Award End Date?

Thanks to the partnership between Information Management team in UW-IT and Kirsten DeFries, Andra Sawyer, and Matt Gardner of the Post Award Fiscal Compliance team, access to this information and more is now available in the EDW, BI Portal, and Knowledge Navigator.

New Report:

The new Cost Share Commitments and Contributions report, available in the BI Portal, shows summary information on all active Sponsored Awards with a Cost Share Commitment entered into the Cost Share Summary system.

The report gives users detailed and summary information and the ability to analyze Cost Share commitments by the four levels of the Org Code (Dean, Major, Department, Subdivision), Award PI, and days until award end date.

New Data:

The report sources all of the data from a new table in the EDW. The new EDW data sourced from the Sponsored Award as entered into the SAGE suite and the Cost Share Summary system.

This data can be accessed via ODS.sec.CostShareBalancePeriod. You will find fields that relate revenue source, object code, expiration days, commitment descriptions, Cost Share type (mandatory or voluntary), and more. The table can be easily joined using budget number or account code to other financial tables within ODS.

Server: edwpub.s.uw.edu
Database: ODS
View: sec.CostShareBalancePeriod

Questions:

If you have any questions about the meaning of Cost Share or any other terms referenced in this report, please visit Knowledge Navigator.

If you have any questions about the report or would like to provide feedback, please write gcafco@uw.edu and put “BI Portal Cost Share Commitments and Contributions Report” in the subject line.

Introducing Ally: Accessible formats for course files

Ally, provided by Blackboard, generates alternative formats of course files uploaded by instructors—such as text that is readable by a screen reader, electronic braille, or audio—that students can download and use to support their learning.

Ally’s alternative formats feature is now available in all Canvas courses. To make course content easily accessible to all students, Ally converts files to formats that work better for everyone, not just those with particular learning requirements. For example, some students may prefer to listen rather than read. Ally provides audio conversions of text-based files. Or some students may need an electronic braille format or a format that is more easily used by a screen reader. Ally alternative formats are designed to make course content more accessible to everyone.

New features and updates

Newly added LTI tools available for all courses

Office 365 LTI This LTI tool offers integration with Microsoft Office 365 in Assignments, Collaborations, Modules, and the Rich Content Editor. Students and instructors can use, create, share, and collaborate on Office 365 files within Canvas. Providing an easy selection and embedding of files from OneDrive, students can submit files from OneDrive. Using the Office 365 LTI instructors can also share a template for student assignments. Prefer Google to Office 365? A Google LTI to use with Canvas will be released in winter quarter 2019.
GALE virtual reference library Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) is a collection of over 60 Reference eBooks that can be cross-searched, browsed, and viewed on your e-reader. Now you can make the GVRL available to students directly in your course; just make the GVRL visible in the course navigation.

Newly released features from Canvas

Anonymous grading Graders cannot identify students associated with each submission that helps remove grading bias. When anonymous grading is enabled in a course, content creators can create assignments with the option to hide student names from graders.
Non-scoring rubrics Rubrics can be created without point values to create a non-scoring rubric. This feature promotes learning engagement by helping students focus on assignment feedback instead of point values.
Analytics BETA An all new course analytics tool that provides average course grade analytics, comparisons for selected assignments, sections, or students, and the ability to message students individually or based on specific criteria. You can opt-in to the analytics beta by adding it to your course navigation in course settings. Analytics is visible only to instructors, TAs, and admins.

UW-IT teams plan approach to container-based applications

Container technology has had a significant impact on automating software delivery practices. As Docker and Kubernetes have become de facto container standards, automated pipeline tools have emerged that can result in increased speed and reliability of application release and operation. Vendors, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, now provide managed Kubernetes services that simplify the complexity of running container clusters.

In response to the opportunities presented by container technology, the EA team worked with UW-IT application and infrastructure teams to develop a discovery project. In an eleven week period from May to July, 2018, teams from across UW-IT participated in a project to assess the viability of leveraging container-based applications (CBAs) in the organization.

In partnership with the UW-IT PMO, the EA team ran weekly three hour working meetings to develop an assessment framework and review research on application containers conducted by project team members.

The outputs of the project are a reference architecture and a whitepaper.

The reference architecture provides recommendations to application teams considering CBAs and shared services teams considering how best to enable CBAs regarding:

Scenarios in which CBAs are recommended
Team readiness, roles, and responsibilities for using CBAs
Effective and safe configuration of container clusters (such as accounts, clusters, pods, services, and networking)
Design of container based applications in different scenarios
Use of an effective pipeline for changes to applications and clusters

The whitepaper recommends a roadmap for opportunistic adoption of container based applications (CBAs) by UW-IT on behalf of the UW. That roadmap consists of three phases:

In Phase I (Early Adoption), we expect that a handful of application teams will adopt CBAs, relying on their own learning and the recommended reference architecture, with minimal change to shared services.
In Phase II (Invest in Expertise), UW-IT should support increased adoption of CBAs through training, consultation, and some growth in shared services.
In Phase III (Containers as a Service), UW-IT should develop an infrastructure shared service that enables teams with limited expertise in infrastructure to run applications, enabling the widest adoption.

Reminder: End-of-quarter checklist

The end-of-quarter checklist provides pointers for wrapping up your Canvas course: submitting grades, conducting an inventory of course content for use in a future session, exporting course content, and marking the course read-only for students. And because quarters come and go so quickly, you may want to check out the start-of-quarter UW Canvas checklist.

New imaging process available

Managed Workstation has a new process available for imaging a workstation called Operation System Deployment (OSD). The old process, called Litetouch or MDT, will remain available until October 31, 2019.

Why should I use this new process?

There are a number of enhancements immediately available via OSD including:

Computer is automatically joined to the domain as part of the process
You can choose to enable Bitlocker¹ as part of the process
The computer name by default is the serial number (you can override)
You can choose a custom image, if you’ve previously requested creation of a custom image that meets your needs

¹ Bitlocker encrypts the hard disk so that if the computer is stolen, the data is protected

How do I use this new process?

To use the new OSD imaging process: https://it.uw.edu/wares/mws/hardware/osd-image-installation/.

Can you tell me more about the custom image option?

Use this form to request a new computer image from the Managed Workstation service.

One of the enhancements possible with our new imaging process is the ability to easily create a custom image that builds on top of the standard MWS image. You may have a set of computers that need a specific set of applications installed. We can create a custom image that installs those applications as part of the imaging process, so that you don’t have to manually install them after imaging. Because your custom image is built on top of our standard image, it will be kept up to date with the latest Windows version.

How do I get local administrator privileges using this new image option?

When you ask for a computer account to be created via the Enable a computer for Managed Workstation services form, you can specify which users should be added to the local administrator group. In most cases, this should happen nearly immediately after the image completes, but in some cases, it may take up to 30 minutes.

What if I have more questions?

Please send email to help@uw.edu with a subject of “MWS OSD imaging process” with any additional questions.

Brian Arkills
Managed Workstation service manager & owner
UW-IT

MWS file service maintenance

On January 14th, 2019 starting at 7pm, maintenance will be performed on the MWS file service. This maintenance period will end on January 15th at 5am.

During this period, users may not be able to access their files.

After this period, if you experience problems accessing your files, please logout and log back in–this should clear the issue.

New desktop icon

What changed

Yesterday, we prematurely delivered a new desktop icon as a planned enhancement–please accept our apologies for any surprises this caused.

This new desktop icon is named ‘Upgrade Windows to current version‘. Depending on screen resolution and font choices on your computer, this name may be shortened. If you don’t see this icon, you likely will in the near future.

New feature

This icon allows any managed workstation which is not running the latest Windows 10 release, to upgrade to the latest Windows 10 release. It is very similar to the icon we delivered in January 2017, for upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10, but it allows you to manually initiate an update from one Windows 10 feature release to the latest.

We are still working on another desired feature of this icon–that it only appear on computers which are not already running the latest Windows 10 release. The intention being that you will know you aren’t on the latest version when you see the icon appear. That feature has not yet been completed, but we’ll continue to work on that.

This feature is part of an overhaul of our approach to keeping Windows updated. We’ll have more to share about that in the near future.

What to expect

If you manually upgrade, you should be prepared for some interruption of service. Windows 10 feature upgrades are not as lengthy as the upgrade from Windows 7. When the computer restarts, there will be a period of time when your computer is not usable. That period is generally 10-30 minutes on current computers, but could be longer.

Brian Arkills
Managed Workstation service owner and manager
UW-IT

Antivirus update within Managed Workstation

The antivirus solution and process within Managed Workstation has changed.

What and When

During the month of August, we slowly replaced the prior Sophos product with an entirely new Sophos product with two components. The new product is called Sophos Intercept X.

This change was initially made to all Windows 7 computers to help support our efforts to upgrade them to Windows 10, because the older Sophos product was identified as blocking upgrades in some cases. As we gained trust that it demonstrated no problems with larger numbers of computers, we deployed it across all of the Managed Workstation service.

Note: With a service of this size, any broad change we make takes a long time to be complete. So at this time only 83% of all managed workstations have the new solution–primarily because those remaining have not been on the UW network to receive the update. So you may not have this change.

What this means for you

There are a couple improvements with this new solution:

When you leave the UW network, your computer is now able to report infections and get new virus updates
We have additional insight on the specific origin of an infection. We’re still analyzing how we might provide that information to you.
Our process for addressing infections has shifted so that for most infections you are not required to take action–we take actions when it does not threaten your data. Where data might be destroyed, we will still contact customers before we take action–your data is important to us.

More Info

Some customer units which have IT support have noted that the new solution does not allow for local control or configuration changes. This is by design because this solution is part of what you pay Managed Workstation for each month.

Brian Arkills
Managed Workstation service owner and manager
UW-IT