Campus-Wide Initiatives

Cayuse

The Information Technology Division and Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) have teamed up this year to obtain and implement a top-ranked eRA (electronic research administration) suite called Cayuse. This significant project has involved faculty and staff from across the University, bringing MTSU grant administration and research compliance to the forefront. With MTSU’s new elevation to the R2 Carnegie status, Cayuse is a tool that will provide the foundation for increased participation and grant awards, bringing further resources and national and international recognition to the University. Cayuse will be introduced to the MTSU community in fall 2022.

Ellucian Ethos

As MTSU continues enterprise resource planning modernization efforts, the implementation of Ellucian Ethos integration is laying the foundation. This platform will be the cornerstone of cloud technologies such as ILP (Intelligent Learning Platform), Experience, and integrations with many of our existing third-party applications. Ellucian ILP will provide real-time integration between Banner and Desire2Learn. Ellucian Experience will empower students, faculty, and staff with its centralized, user-friendly dashboard. Users will discover efficiency by being able to customize their own Experience with workflows and less time logging into multiple applications.

Self-Service Banner 9

When you’re using PipelineMT, most of the links you use are taking you into Self-Service Banner (SSB) whether you realize it or not.  Now that we’re using Banner 9 Admin Pages, which replaced INB, we have to work on our conversion to Self-service Banner 9, which is essentially phase 2 of the Banner 9 upgrade project.  SSB will require a lot more work out of ITD EAS staff and certain functional users because of the many MTSU customizations that have been done to SSB over the years.  All of that is being worked on now.  We are hoping that the new baseline SSB functionality will be an improvement and allow us to do away with some customizations but that analysis is still forthcoming.

 

Completed Projects

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

With more MTSU systems using single sign-on (SSO) services, it has never been more important to protect your MTSU account from unauthorized access. SSO services make it easier to access MTSU systems using a common user name and password. As a result, MTSU now offers Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) services to protect your MTSU account.

Banner 9

Banner 9's new user interface, known as Application Navigator (or App Nav), replaces underlying Banner 8 technology being phased out - including Oracle Forms - and eliminates the need to run Java in the browser. Oracle Forms and Java are the technologies that you are using when you log in to the current Banner 8 INB system. On Banner 9, what used to be referred to as INB instead will be referred to as the Admin Pages, which are like web pages of the old INB forms.

Degree Works™

Degree Works™ has replaced the PipelineMT Degree Evaluation menu option.

Degree Works™ provides MTSU with a comprehensive set of web-based academic advising,degree audit, and transfer articulation tools to enhance advising, better inform studentsabout degree planning, and reduce time to degree. This system enables academic advisorsto provide “real time” advice and counsel to students. Degree Works™ also allows advisorsand students to create interactive scenarios for degree completion.

The first phase of the project consisted of the scribing step. Scribing is building the myriad rules that sit in the background of the Degree Works™ system controllingand evaluating what courses are and are not acceptable for the completion of eachMTSU degree program.

Records Office staff; graduation coordinators from each of MTSU’s colleges; staff and graduation analysts from Graduate Studies, and a few select advisors tested thesystem, validated the rules, and conducted training.

An upgrade was completed during the fall 2022 break. As well as taking advantage of new technologies and security improvements, this upgrade features an enhanced responsive dashboard that provides ease of use and additional capabilities to students and advisors. 

Print Management

Print Management is thriving at MTSU. We have just recently added software to student labs and classrooms that will allow us to gather some good statistics on the volume of student printing on campus. For those who are participating in Print Management, copying and printing has become a service. Machines, service, toner, and maintenance are all furnished by the vendor based on a per-click charge. The Print Management system has proven to be both efficient and cost-effective for the departments participating in this program.

Goals

The goal of this solution is to provide better copying and printing services for less overall cost to the University which will flow directly through each department.

PipelineMT Upgrade

PipelineMT underwent a major upgrade and facelift on Sept. 16, 2017.

Noteworthy Changes

  • The RaiderNet identity has gone away. You still have the same menu options that you had on RaiderNet. But you have one less click by not having to go through a RaiderNet tab to get to them.
  • Navigation now mostly occurs from the left side of each page. But there are some navigational links at the bottom of some secondary pages as well.
  • Some grouping and re-sorting of menu options has been done to show the options in a more logical manner.
  • A few options were renamed to better reflect their purpose and use. You’ve already seen most of the reordering and renaming of the Faculty Service and Advisors menus because these were done on the old PipelineMT over several weeks prior to and in prep for the upgrade.
  • The Advisors menu is accessible directly from the left-nav.

And, as has always been the case, the following Faculty Services options do allow a faculty member to still email their class.

  • Class List Summary
  • Class List with Photo
  • Class List with Permits/Overrides
  • Class List with Student Detail

Passwords

Please remember that your PipelineMT password changed on Sept. 16. After the upgrade you must use your MTSU email password to login to PipelineMT. If you don't know your MTSU email password, please visit mtsu.edu/changepw.

STUDENTS: Continue to use your MTSU User ID as your Username. This is the portion of your MTMail account name to the left of “@mtmail.mtsu.edu” and should be the same Username you were already using for PipelineMT. Your password for PipelineMT has become the same as your MTMail account password.

FACULTY/STAFF: Continue to use your MTSU User ID, sometimes referred to as your FSA user account name, as your Username. This should be the same Username you were already using for PipelineMT. Your password for PipelineMT has become the same as your FSA password, also referred to as your Exchange or Outlook password.

My Courses

With the major overhaul of PipelineMT, the My Courses component of PipelineMT is no longer available.

My Courses offered faculty a limited framework for posting syllabi and other course documents and saw very little use. The vast majority of faculty use D2L for posting syllabi and other course materials along with D2L's many other helpful features.

If you would like advice or assistance with using D2L, please call the Center for Technologies and Training (CTAT) at 615-904-8189.

Additional Help

If you have questions or encounter any problems related to changes to PipelineMT contact the ITD Help Desk.

It is located in KUC 320 and can be reached at 615-898-5345 or by email at help@mtsu.edu.

ITD Banner Hardware Upgrade

ITD has completed an upgrade to the underlying infrastructure for MTSU’s Ellucian Banner system, which is the University's primary information system for student records, admissions, financial aid, finance, human resources, and course scheduling. The new infrastructure will improve data-loading times and scalability, while providing better resiliency and redundancy in the event of a catastrophic disruption. This project required a data migration and conversion from the existing system into the new infrastructure, which was installed and tested in a parallel environment. The cut-over to the new system took place Feb. 10-11, 2017. Known as a hyper-convergence, this infrastructure system uses software-centric architecture that tightly integrates computing, storage, networking, and virtualization resources. A hyper-converged system enables the integrated technologies to be managed as a single system through a common administrative toolset.

This upgrade replaced outdated, proprietary computer equipment with state-of-the-art, commodity-based hardware running software-defined workloads. The project involved replacing Banner Sun M5000 host servers running Sun Solaris as physical machines with Dell servers powered by Nutanix running Red Hat Enterprise Linux as VMware virtual machines. Upgrading the data center network was also part of this project. ITD converted the University’s data center network to Cisco’s ACI software-defined networking platform with 10Gbps switching for server connectivity and 80Gbps connectivity between data centers.

On top of the data center network, ITD upgraded to new Palo Alto firewalls with 10Gbps connectivity between the campus and the data centers. This upgrade will also lay the foundation for additional improvements in the future, such as improved Banner access from mobile devices as ITD upgrades the Ellucian Banner software itself.

Argos

ITD is currently rolling out an enterprise reporting solution called Argos. Argos can be used to connect to the Banner database or the BlueInfo data warehouse views now known as the M: drive.

Argos allows for timely and informed data-driven decision-making and meets MTSU's various reporting needs. While Argos provides static reports, it also offers advanced features such as graphics, OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) cubes, dynamic controls, interactive charts and graphs with "drill down" capabilities that can be used in dashboards, and more. While Argos reports can be run at any time, they can also be scheduled to operate on specific days and times and distributed to whomever should receive the reports.

Argos users are categorized as Report Viewers, Report Writers, and DataBlock Designers. Report Viewers can execute reports that have already been created. Most individuals will have this role. Report Writers will be able to execute reports as well as modify existing reports and create new ones. DataBlock Designers can execute, create, and modify reports as well as build the DataBlocks that Report Writers and Viewers use to get their data. DataBlocks are the foundation for any report written in Argos and contain the user input forms and queries used to retrieve data and information from one or more data sources.

Argos will become a common location for various divisions to house their reports. Rather than waiting for ad hoc data requests to be fulfilled, individuals will be able to run previously created Argos reports whenever they need them. While this will provide campus the ability to do much of their own reporting, there will always be specific requests that will require new DataBlocks and reports to be created via ad hoc data requests.

This is a great step forward for the University when it comes to a common location for reporting and the advanced reporting styles available in Argos.

Timeline

Some divisions are already using Argos to create new reports and recreate existing reports. Over time, Argos will be released campus-wide as the General Campus Access reporting database is recreated in Argos.

Desktop Virtualization

The MTSU community will soon have the convenience of accessing software programs that are currently used on campus for instructional learning or at work - anytime, anyplace, anywhere. Thanks to the implementation of innovative virtualization technology, MTSU students, faculty, and staff will be given the unique opportunity to use a multitude of applications both on and off campus. Dubbed, "C@M" or "Cloud at Middle," this new application delivery system will enable users to access programs online by using their campus network login information.

The implementation of C@M will influence the way you conduct business from a desktop computing perspective, and the benefits will not only allow students and employees to access applications from home and do the work they can currently only do on campus, they will also provide a faster system response time than standard desktops and eliminate system performance issues caused by virus infections.

While on campus, you will have your required software loaded on your campus-provided system through your C@M login. To use the system off campus, you will need to perform a one-time installation of C@M client software. When you aren't located on campus, your C@M system can be used on a PC or MAC machine.

This system has been implemented and positively received by other large universities and institutions of higher education such as the University of Alabama, Scottsdale Community College, and DeVry University.

The rollout of C@M will commence with Instructional Learning and staff computers and will conclude with faculty PCs. After all on-campus computers receive the upgrade, remote access to C@M will be activated. This implementation is expected to take approximately 14 months starting September 2011.

Goals

  • To provide MTSU students and employees with 24/7 access to all applications they normally use on campus, from anywhere they have an Internet connection.
  • To provide MTSU employees 24/7 access to work-related data.
  • To provide MTSU employees with greater PC uptime and system performance.
  • To provide for more timely installation of applications while allowing PC users to continue using their PCs.
  • To help the University manage software licensing.
  • To promote a consistent and common look and feel for all MTSU desktops.
  • To reduce the frequency of PC hardware replacement, saving the University money.
  • To ensure MTSU-related data is never lost through the utilization of a central backup system.
  • To provide MTSU users with greater access to different operating systems (Windows 7, Windows XP, Linux, 32-bit OS, 64-bit OS, etc.) without the need to upgrade hardware.
  • Significantly greater and centralized storage space.
  • To enable ITD to provide better support to MTSU PC users by standardizing on a common desktop image.
  • Superior integration with current and future Microsoft products that MTSU already owns.
  • To position the University to implement archive and e-discovery systems.

Timeline

February 15-29, 2012 - The Core Platform will be installed.

April 9-30, 2012 - The First 250 Instructional Learning(classrooms/labs) PCs will be activated.

  • AMG 214
  • SAEC (Student Athlete Enhancement Center)
  • KUC 326-S
  • COE 104
  • COE 110
  • HON 118
  • Library (~20 PCs)

March 5-30, 2012 - The first 100 MTSU employee PCs will be activated.

  • 50 Desktops in the Business & Finance Dept.
  • 50 Desktops in ITD

April 16, 2012 - Begin the rollout for University employees and Instructional Learning PCs.

August 25, 2012 - The remote access schedule to be activated.

 

Skype for Business

Migration of the MTSU campus to Skype for Business was completed by the end of the 2017. Skype for Business is an enterprise-ready unified communications platform that allows users to enhance their productivity by providing a consistent, single client experience for presence, instant messaging, enterprise voice, and conferencing.

 

 

ITD Service Desk

Operating Hours

Mon-Thurs: 8am-9pm
Fri: 8am-4:30pm
Sat: 10am-4:30pm
Sun: 12pm-6pm

Please note, the KUC elevator is currently unavailable. For students and staff who are unable to access the main Service Desk located in KUC 320, please call or email to schedule a meeting at our satellite office located in the ROTC Annex 


(615) 898-5345
help@mtsu.edu
Submit Work Order

 

Request Equipment (Faculty / Staff ONLY)