Faculty/Staff "Focus" group notes from 9-19-2002
John's biased and incomplete notes:
Not many new needs were identified in this round. It was suggested that it would be more productive to have a specific implementation layed out, that folks could use to identify what pieces were lacking or needed emphasis, rather than just make a long list of 'oh yeah, that would be nice' items.
John is going to develop such a specific implementation to share with the group and to solicit feedback from the technical folks on the open lists. The meeting for Thursday, Oct 3, 2002 is CANCELED.
The need for "image safe" data was re-emphasised. Faculty and Staff cannot have their data wiped out when a PC is reimaged to solve problems.
NAL performace is a large barrier to faculty/staff acceptance of lab technologies. John discussed how we plan to speed things up, and will be sure to emphasize this in the proposal to campus.
John asked about the impact of researchers et al desiring only 'their' students be able to access a machine. The group seemed to think that this would not be too difficult to work on case by case.
The group indicated that the general case for faculty/staff was to have a single primary workstation, not always a desktop machine (laptops).
The group indicated that their prinicple concern for a first pass would be faculty on campus, or that visited campus regularly, and that they had no particular support plans for 'remote' faculty/researchers.
In the remote access area, it was important that "no support" be an option for many groups. Without resources to support faculty off campus, it would be improper to drag local admins into supported remote access should they choose not to implement it. It was also discussed that access to printers off campus (in a staff members home over cable modem for example) was not universally desirable, and posed some serious security concerns.
Specifics of what reports would be desirable were discussed. Basically anything we can generate would be conceivably useful. A desire for a "task bar" quota watcher, that could warn faculty/staff/students of IMAP, Profile, Disk and Print quota was identifed.
ITD is having meetings to determine the cost(s) for faculty/staff software licensing. No further information is available at this time.
John's been pulled to other tasks in the last few weeks, and so it's unlikely we'll have a proposal together until middle to late October.
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