Workday@Richmond
Since Spring 2022, Information Services has collaborated with Business and Finance, Human Resources, and the Payroll Office, on a replacement for their current Enterprise Resource Planning system, Banner. In April 2023 Workday was selected by the University. Since then, Information Services has dedicated several team members to the project, supporting the technology, the project's management, and communications. In September, the project celebrated its official kickoff, and since then the project team has been hard at work preparing for the January 1, 2025 go-live date.
Shortly after the project kickoff, the technical team did an outstanding job on the first data load into a test version of Workday. One consultant wrote:
For the first build, we usually see an 80-95% overall success rate. Richmond knocked it out of the park with a 99.32% success rate! These results show a solid understanding of your data and how it will all work together in Workday...Congrats and keep up the great work!
Priority Registration
Priority Registration is the period each semester wherein the Registrar configures Banner such that each class year has the opportunity to register for courses. It's also a priority time for Systems & Networks because the team has the responsibility of assuring Banner is ready for the demand. At the start of a Priority Registration window, roughly 700 students simultaneously ask Banner to place them in the classes of their choice. This represents a workload on the database & servers much more punishing that during any other business processes.
In the Spring's final priority registration period, the group watched as rising Sophomores (the class of 2026) registered for Fall classes: success relies on preparatory work; many members of Systems & Networks performed this work months in advance. At its peak, student registration activity at 7:00 AM was 150% of what the same class caused when registering last fall.
Computer Replacement Summer 2023
The annual computer replacement project drew to a close in August. That marked the completion of the schedule for "primary" computer installations for campus faculty and staff users. With the exception of a few rescheduled users, and a number of the classroom and lab systems that still needed to be deployed, Information Services was excited to complete another successful year of replacements for the campus community. Summer 2023 represents the 3rd year of installations after the transition to the four-year replacement schedule. Thanks also to the many User Services team members that have been involved in the process, from the early planning meetings last fall, to the product reviews, procurement process, imaging and delivery logistics, and ultimately the deployment to campus users.
A few 2023 metrics include:
- 323 PCs replaced for users
- 174 PCs replaced for labs/classrooms
- 146 Macs replaced for users
- 35 Macs replaced for labs/classrooms
Information Services E-Waste Recycling
The annual computer replacement project accounts for 500 to 600 new systems being installed every summer. Those systems that are replaced come back to IS to be wiped, cleaned, re-imaged, and as needed, redeployed into the campus community as secondary systems, often replacing older secondary systems. It is this inventory of older secondary systems that tends to make up the majority of the e-waste that gets picked up for recycle/disposal. In addition to the replacement turnover, IS generates e-waste in other ways as well: older computer products and peripherals that have reached end of life through failure; telephone equipment, older equipment from the data center or the network team. Additionally, IS helps to coordinate e-waste pickups in other areas, such as Gottwald Science Center.
Information Services generally accomplishes about three pickups per year; it depends on the churn of equipment coming in and going out, and storage also has an impact on the pick-up schedule. IS does include many "working" systems in the pickups; generally, these systems are six to seven years of age or even older. The monies that IS gets back from the "working" systems goes to help offset the cost of the e-waste pack up.
Banner Upgrade Day!
July 21, 2023 was Banner Upgrade Day. For about 6 months, Senior Programmer/Analyst Andrea Zinski led a sizeable group of technicians through detailed planning and rehearsals of both technical and administrative tasks in order to perform the upgrade. While we have upgraded Banner at least annually for 30 years, each upgrade offers new opportunities for improvements. In addition to application & database technical currency, we implemented all new virtual servers. This year's upgrade took advantage of new backup efficiencies which cut hours off the team's work.
Disaster Recovery Test 2023
The 17th annual disaster recovery test was successfully completed on November 14. The project team, which included 44 people from several departments, successfully recovered and tested 11 enterprise applications including Banner, Onbase, Onecard, and Degreeworks. Rubrik's Orchestrated Recovery feature proved to be a major benefit: it significantly improved server recovery speed and removed complexities from the recovery process. To illustrate, Rubrik reduced total server recovery time from 6 hours 51 minutes to 1 hour and 7 minutes this year. A huge shout-out to the entire project team for all the effort that went into preparing for this year's test: thanks for helping us validate the new DR solution and exceed our test objectives!