What UW-IT is focused on for the next year and beyond
From rolling out a new live chat function to building more capacity for big data processing, UW-IT continues to make major improvements across the information technology landscape.
Student self-service capability for adjusting loan amounts
Students will be able to adjust certain eligible loan amounts in their financial aid packages through a new self-service process to be included in a redesigned and more user-friendly Student Personal Services (SPS) website.
UW-IT will continue to support students with disabilities
The Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology Center (DO-IT) celebrated 30 years of operations in 2022, and it will continue to support hundreds of students with disabilities as they pursue challenging academic programs and careers. The center also will provide resources and training to K-12 educators, professionals in higher ed, mentors and families. DO-IT runs many programs, including AccessComputing, Neuroscience for Neurodiverse Learners and AccessADVANCE.
Transforming UW-IT to better serve the UW and support Workday
To better meet the University’s IT needs for the coming decade, UW-IT began an organizational transformation to be more aligned and more customer service-oriented. Among the organizational changes is the return of the Integrated Service Center from UW Finance to UW-IT, which will pave the way for an integrated customer support model for Workday and its operating model.
Improving the customer experience with getting help with Workday
The new UW Connect Finance Service will include Workday self-help and case management for quality, consistent service across units. To simplify customer support, UW Connect will provide a new, unchanging Reference (REF) number to each help request while behind the scenes, support agents process and assign requests to the appropriate unit. REF numbers won’t change regardless of unit support or the kind of issue.
Data integration, business intelligence support for UWFT
UW-IT is supporting UWFT’s Foundation Data Model, and this support includes changes to Enterprise Data Platform services by freezing, remediating or creating new databases in the Enterprise Data Warehouse; adding new UW Workday terms in the Knowledge Navigator; and integrating Workday finance reports into BI Portal’s dashboards, cubes and reports.
Greater computing capacity for researchers
To better support the computing needs of UW researchers, computing capacity will be doubled in the UW Research Data Center by reconfiguring the power distribution to eliminate electrical power redundancy. New electrical systems and cabling will soon distribute up to 1,200 kW of power to handle up to twice as many high-performance computing and GPU-intensive machine learning jobs.
Creating a more robust UW Groups service
For more reliable and scalable access management, UW-IT will redesign the underlying technical architecture for UW Groups and use a cloud-based and highly efficient container technology.
Chat for help desk support
To provide a convenient, familiar option for the UW community to get help, the UW-IT Service Center will offer live-agent chat, which is in addition to ongoing support via phone and email.
Business continuity plans to mitigate enterprise risk
As part of the Enterprise Risk Management initiatives, UW-IT is leading a project to update and strengthen business continuity plans across the University. The project will identify and prioritize critical functions, systems and applications, and devise strategies to maintain critical operations during an extended IT outage.