Present:  Lisa Terrier, Joe Durante, Pij Slater, Peggy Fischel, Mike Roy, David Ludwig, Jim Stuart, Joe Antonioli, Joseph Watson, Chris Norris, Carrie Macfarlane, Terry Simpkins, Rebekah Irwin, Mary Backus, Ian Burke, Dan Frostman, Petar Mitreviski and Doreen Bernier

Mike Roy shared early results of the staff survey showing improvements from last year in every area.

Preparations for the Dalai Lama visit were briefly discussed.

Mary reviewed the process for selecting a new incident tracking system (we currently use HEAT) for LIS.  Two finalists were selected,  Parature and Web Helpdesk.  Parature is a hosted solution while Web Helpdesk, after recently having been acquired by Solarwinds, Inc., no longer offers hosting services.  After analysis, Parature was eliminated because they could not find enthusiastically positive reviews of the product.  For a hosting solution with Web Heldesk, a third-party service, Loop1, will be selling hosting for Web Helpdesk.  Cost and impact are being investigated.  Other tidbits from the discussion:

• Dan and Mary also agreed to be application co-administrators.
• A kickoff meeting to analyze how support will flow through the organization and to prepare an implementation plan will be organized soon.
• Jim Stuart asked if departments outside of LIS would also utilize this new ticketing system?  Would it be prudent to look at it in a larger campus wide context?  Mary stated that this was only being looked at for LIS and if it went campus-wide, someone other than LIS would need to organize and budget for it.
• Web Helpdesk will not hold concurrent licensing.  Individual licenses will be needed for staff to use this product. She asked managers to give Dan names of students and other staff who may need access.
• Mike noted that workgroups will be involved in these conversations, and staff should try to find time in our schedules to dedicate to this project within the next 3 -5 months.
• We also recognized the need for Service Level Agreements to be incorporated into any new ticketing system we implement.
• Finally, Mary also asked the workgroups to let Dan know if they have a specific set of data that they want to have tracked.

LIS has launched the LIS Tech Partners group, comprised of LIS staff and department tech leads (i.e. those staff charged with providing tech services to other departments on campus.

Mike created an online form for managers to describe how things went with the startup of the Fall semester.  What went well and what didn’t?

• One of the themes extracted from the results was on Printing.  Suggestions were made to either have a staff member available to assist with printing problems or to develop a  troubleshooting video to assist students.
• Jim Stuart asked why is there still so much printing?  Should there be more of a campaign to promote electronic submissions?   We still have students that prefer to study in print and a conservative faculty.
• Joe Antonioli noted that communications between workgroups seemed better this year.
• Because the pool of student help at the beginning of the year is so small, should we find temporary help to assist with fall semester?  Mary noted that Circulation has a pool of subs who can be trained and to contact Dan if temporary student help is needed.
• There were fewer course data fixes this year.  Data from Banner seemed to be more accurate than in years past.
• Was everyone aware that student workers had not been paid? Student employment said that it  could take them up to 3 weeks to manually enter authorization forms into the system.  We should confirm mid-August next year to make sure the students will get paid in a timely fashion.
• Next year at the July Manager’s meeting, we should discuss the school year startup.  This should also be reviewed in May for Language Schools.
• Petar commented on communications – we should integrate the  ticketing system with events scheduling to assist with venue and event time changes.
• Petar also mentioned that we need more time for classroom tech upgrades

Mike led a conversation about the next phase of staffing requests by indicating we currently have 4 open positions.  Through a voting process, managers believe they need 8 new positions.  He asked managers to be thoughtful in analyzing their staffing needs, and be cognizant of the costs associated with increasing staff resources.  We agreed the managers and ADs need to gather info from workgroup leaders and hold another open meting and discuss ideas.  ADs would then use their next retreat to prepare the phase 2 staffing plan to present to SRC.

Joe Antonioli noted that on August 31st Segue was officially decommissioned.  Woohoo!

Thanks for reading, Terry & Doreen