2015 Michigan IT Symposium Presentations

CIO Remarks

Keynote: President Schlissel

Breakout Session 1

  • Exploring Data Integration
    The ITS Data Warehouse is a complex ecosystem that is comprised of numerous data marts. It is built using a variety of tools and can be queried using any number of applications.
  • Managing Service Requests Panel
    A wide variety of ticketing solutions are in use by the Michigan IT community, with dominant players including BMC FootPrints, ServiceNow, Remedy, Jira, and Zendesk. Although these systems usually go into place to assist a single organization with its IT incide This panel (Lisa Campbell and Karen Reiman-Sendi of the University Library System, Erik Zempel from MSIS, and Kate Weber (ITS)) will discuss the tools in use in our shared environment, and the challenges and opportunities that arise around collaboration, customer service, and teamwork.nt management, implementations grow in very different directions, depending on the nearby audience. Some become full-blown IT Service Management systems, some extend to support development teams and workflow, and others get creative use by non-IT business teams for contact and issue tracking.
  • MGoView/GIS Presentations
    • MGoView: Exposing the Richness of the Residential Experience through Engaged Learning
      The MGoView project seeks to highlight the value of a residential education through the use of mobile technology and interactive maps. We intend to create a map of campus, delivered via a mobile app, that is filled with meaningful content, in the form of text, audio, video, and images, which details events and stories that occurred over the course of U-M history. The pedagogical applications of this platform may present new learning opportunities for students across disciplines. MGoView, then, is an attempt to immerse students in the learning experience as well as the rich, vibrant campus life found at U-M.
    • GIS: The Power of ArcGIS to Enable Teaching, Research, and Administration
      The ArcGIS platform provides the University community with a broad range of well-integrated solutions to assist with such needs, ranging from the server to desktop to native mobile apps to web-based solutions.
  • Pandora/BusinessObjects Presentations
    • Pandora for Prospecting: A Recommendation System for Fundraising
      Early momentum toward a large fundraising goal is achieved primarily via a network of donors who not only contribute, but also provide fundraisers with personal referrals for new leads. As this network becomes fully tapped, campaign progress is stalled as fundraisers struggle to identify new prospects and are reluctant to trust data-driven leads, seen as less reliable than a referral. "Pandora for Prospecting" (P4P) is an innovative web-based recommendation system, using machine learning techniques to model a fundraiser’s past behavior and create a stream of new leads uniquely personalized to their preferences. The application displays these prospects to the fundraiser, one at a time, with key metrics and visualizations to support their ability to act upon the lead immediately. Outside of fundraising, the project may also be of interest for its use of data mining methods, new web technologies, and gamification to motivate tedious or unrewarding work.
    • Deliver information and value to your customers: BusinessObjects Publications
      LSA Shared Services provides financial activity information and transparency to our customers, faculty. There exists college and university-wide portals (MReports), but all require active pursuit and a learning curve by the user. In addition to periodically reviewing activity, there is a need for Principal Investigators (PI) to understand account balances and shortcodes for their projects. The goal is to provide this university-wide, on a schedule and with little ongoing maintenance. The best aspects of MReports, the Combined Activity and Summary of Projects views, along with a college chart field converter tool were used and redesigned into a BusinessObjects document that became a full reporting package for PIs.

Breakout Session 2

  • Mapping the Michigan IT Landscape and Planning Its Future using MESA
    The Michigan IT landscape is made up of a diverse mix of services, systems, applications, and technologies that have been built, installed, and managed over many years. To understand the complexity of the Michigan IT landscape, everyone in a leadership role in the organization should be thinking and planning strategically. Obtaining a reasonably accurate view of what’s out there in the landscape can be accomplished by collectively mapping each of the services. The process of creating this map provides an opportunity for thinking strategically about the desired future state of Michigan IT services. MESAs provide a way of mapping the landscape in a consistent format that can be read by many audiences and compared across service areas. MESA is also being used to map capabilities, products, and technologies.
  • Qualtrics/Instagram Presentations
    • Adventures in Qualtrics Audio, Display, and Complex Branching
      One key to a successful Qualtrics system for a complex survey is to have an experienced interviewer and technician work together. Qualtrics has excellent audio and visual accessibility features. Fonts can be enlarged via the look-and-feel menu, via html, and via the rich text editor. Audio can be added to survey questions by using html audio tags or by a tool in the rich text editor. Using matrices of questions, instead of individual questions, can shorten the time for the interview. Follow-up questions can display text from previous questions by using the piped text feature in Qualtrics. Sequences of questions can be set to display by using display logic. When using display logic with matrices of questions, each question in the matrix, in addition to the introductory question text must be configured with display logic.
    • Instagram App for Data Collection: Can Images, Hashtags and Location Tagging be the New Data Formats?
      This study is to assess whether the Instagram (IG) app is a viable data collection tool to learn how individuals in need of food assistance find feeding programs within the Feeding America network. This proof-­of-concept will evaluate whether the IG app and data collectors can effectively collect the data points, including photos of clients’ food items, service location, hashtags, and clients’ general or specific comments, using the IG features (mainly Images, hashtags, location) at one selected feeding program.
  • What Is Application Jukebox?
    Application Jukebox is an application virtualization service that allows CAEN to deploy software applications, on-demand, to both managed and private computers around campus. This new software delivery process will allow CAEN to offer its engineering software library outside of the traditional CAEN and Duderstadt Center computer labs while maintaining license restrictions and compliance. Application Jukebox’s virtualization and streaming technology delivers small fragments of software instructions from "cloudified" applications to end user machines. Applications do not download or stream to machines in full, but rather in fragments heuristically pushed by Numecent's predictive engine. This reduces bandwidth load and improves perceived network performance. With this new on-demand software delivery solution, CAEN is looking at Application Jukebox as a possible bring your own device (BYOD) solution.
  • Canvas Presentation
    • The View From Here: Bringing Library Tool to Canvas
      Our path to collaboration within the Library, with our partners at U-M ITS, and with our third-party vendor in order to integrate Library tools—initially available in CTools—into Canvas. The major challenges have included navigating a rapidly developing learning environment, coordinating and collaborating across complex U-M units, and maintaining momentum for our (relatively small) sub-project within a massive, mission-critical software launch. Our takeaways will include lessons learned about project management, about campus culture and technology, and about ourselves.
    • Canvas Success Stories
      Success stories of how instructors, IT support staff, and instructional designers partnered to use the Canvas learning management system in innovative ways to engage students in learning. Examples include: how the MedSchool used the Canvas APIs to build a student learning plan dashboard; how the School of dentistry used learning outcomes to support competency-based learning; and how statistic used Canvas to streamline instruction workflows of a class of 2200 students.
  • COMPrehensive Analytics Services and Support
    The UMHS developed an Enterprise Analytics Roadmap, which focused on foundational and use case projects which will benefit analytic initiatives across care delivery, research and education programs, as well as administrative needs. The finalized roadmap consists of a list of foundational and use case driven projects, high level descriptions, and a recommended timeline. To act on the Enterprise Analytics Roadmap, UMHS has initiated COMPASS—the COMPrehensive Analytics Services and Support Program. The Program is focusing on several small incremental projects to demonstrate success in the following areas: Instantiation of Data Governance at the Health System level Improving Enterprise Analytics Services offered Adding Metadata Management capabilities for data surfaced Improving Enterprise Service Bus capabilities.

Breakout Session 3

  • ITS Services in Motion
    To pursue opportunities and meet the challenges we face as an institution, an approach to technology that attempts to provide optimal redundancy was born. Partnering with ITS shared Infrastructure Services Operations, many campus units have successfully reduced nonproductive redundancy through implementation of ITS shared infrastructure service offerings. These partnerships have reduced overall technology expenses while allowing campus units to preserve their unique culture and creativity and to focus on core business.
  • Web Migration Panel
    The discussion of the planning, designing, implementation, and hosting of the next generation of websites at the University of Michigan. Topics ranged from choosing a platform, designing a brand conscious and user friendly experience, to the details of how to work through the process of a migration.
  • Service Improvement: Strategic Prioritization and Resourcing Panel
    Enabling the right work, at the right time, with the right people: Have you ever felt like every request that comes your way is of the highest priority? You are not alone. We'd like to share the story of three university departments that are evolving the "always yes, always now" culture into a more proactive and strategic process. One that melds with the annual goal setting process, by aligning project ideas/requests to organizational priorities with clearly defined expected outcomes and success measures. We'll discuss how project ideas are submitted, scored, and prioritized, as well as how these approaches have helped each department set a common, cross-organization expectation regarding the project work to be completed.
  • NPS and Agile Beyond Software Delivery
    MSIS uses Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure the overall satisfaction of our customers with our services. We have integrated this into a system of generating of problems we use to systematically improve the organization in unique ways. The principles of Agile can applied just about anywhere. Systems administration, networking, desktop support, and data management must all work in concert to support your application.

Breakout Session 4

  • Patient Management (MiChart)/EHR Presentations
    • Where's My Patient? Using Lean Techniques to Better Understand Patient Management Issues in MiChart
      Our perioperative areas use "status boards" to keep track of patients as they move from PreOp, to the operating room, and into the anesthesia recovery area. Often (10-15 times a day), patients would disappear off the status board seemingly randomly, causing operational issues and frustration for our users. The users would often find workarounds to resolve the issue, instead of reporting the issue to MCIT. On occasion (two or three times a week), the users would report the issue as a high priority to MiChart to resolve right away. Users were simply too busy to call MCIT to report the issue. Without these reports however, it was very difficult for the MiChart team to analyze what the problems actually were. The MiChart team used some lean approaches to get a better sense of what the problems were.
    • Beyond the EHR: A Dynamic Clinical Data System
      Clinical data capture remains an important activity beyond conventional documentation of patient visits. Although Electronic Health Record (EHR) system developers strive to provide comprehensive solutions to capture data that fulfill research, billing, administration, and educational needs, clinicians frequently have to record key data in a separate system as their special needs cannot be accommodated. Text reports in EHR systems, for example, usually have to be post-processed in a discrete format for filtering and statistical analysis. As a result, additional software packages have been used aside from EHR systems for data entry, leading to cumbersome workflow and dual effort. To address this issue, the database team of the Michigan Congenital Heart Center has developed a dynamic and flexible web application capable of supporting long term clinical data capture needs.
  • Space Scheduling Panel
    Making better use of space through technology: Everyone has on-campus spaces they feel are not being utilized in the best way. Find out about two examples of how technology can be used to help customers find the best space for their needs.
  • Alumni Services/Admissions Interview Process Presentations
    • Alumni Services: Using IT to Deliver Content and Connections
      In 2005, Ross Alumni Relations chose an outside vendor to provide self-service web site hosting and eCommerce services for its approximately fifty domestic and international alumni clubs. The vendor’s product was difficult to implement and costly to maintain, resulting in only fourteen clubs adopting the vendor’s platform. Updates to alumni contact data were only occasionally transferred back to Ross, and most clubs chose to create their own sites and manage event registrations with tools such as EventBrite. After analyzing peer school alumni club sites, Ross Computing Services created a unified alumni clubs portal. The redesigned site recently won the 2015 Most Improved Alumni Relations Initiative Award from the Association of Business School Alumni Professionals.
    • Leveraging multiple technologies to enhance the admissions interview process
      Each year the School of Dentistry Office of Admissions supports the large task of interviewing DDS candidates for both a traditional and international program. In addition to overcoming major challenges additional benefits were realized by incorporating technology to automate parts of the interview process and reduce duplication of effort. Benefits the users noticed were improved user experience, and enhanced communication to candidates, faculty, staff and students. Benefits found by the Office of Admissions were accurate historical data, increase data analysis capabilities, and reduction of data entry, errors, and paper usage.
  • Accessibility & Mobile Devices
    Today, mobile technology plays a more significant part in our lives than ever before. It is possible to browse the internet, send and receive phone calls, perform office tasks, and do endless other tasks on a device that can fit in the palm of your hand. All these advances have resulted in rapid changes to these technologies including software, form factor of devices, and new methods of interfacing with these computers.
  • Enhancing the Digital Ecosystem with IMS Caliper
    The new IMS Caliper specification defines a standard for enabling the collection of rich contextual data about learning interactions. Caliper provides an extensible information model based on learning activity profiles and an API for describing, collecting and transporting learner data for later consumption by researchers, teachers, platforms, apps and services.

Breakout Session 5

  • Secure Data Processing Panel
    An overview and discussion of developing computing resources within the research community to analyze sensitive, regulated data; taking a developer code and moving it into production with confidence; on-demand software delivery solutions, and leveraging an internal need for a new CRM system.
  • Enterprise CRM: Full Lifecycle Collaboration in Action
    More than one year into the University’s enterprise strategic approach to CRM, we’re beginning to see dividends pay off for our efforts. We’ve been making major progress at least two major fronts: The Admissions CRM Pilot (largely focused on graduate admissions) has expanded to seven schools: Ross, School of Education, Ford School of Public Policy, School of Information, Engineering, Taubman, and the School of Music, Theater & Dance. The pilot has successfully implemented a shared approach to CRM on a common system. Schools are seeing new data for the first time across silos between schools and recruitment teams. Admissions and Event attendance data can be analyzed in real-time for better data-driven decision making. The team is increasing their capabilities, while at the same time reducing the total number of administrative systems needed. The Alumni Association, seeing the potential for increased collaboration and data sharing across units, leveraged their internal need for a new CRM system to make it extensible across the University. They’re deploying an enterprise version of their toolset and making it available to other units—even subsidizing a portion of the cost for the first year. These efforts are streamlining the adoption of an enterprise solution for a number of other units and overcoming some of the traditional barriers that Michigan has faced when trying to move past local implementations and "go enterprise".