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Powering Collaboration

Across Campus

November 19, 2015

9:30-11:30AM

Dwinelle 370

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Agenda

Welcome

Purpose

bConnected

Roadmap
Service updates

Educational Technology Services

Academic Innovation Studio
bCourses updates

Research IT

Data Management
Research Computing
Digital Humanities
Other collaboration services

Q&A
Open House (10:30-11:30)

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bConnected

Service Diagram

CalShare

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bConnected Service Roadmap

Spring 2015

Summer 2015

Fall 2015

Spring 2016

Service Management

Communication & Outreach

Service Team Established

Enable Consumer Apps

Box Unlimited Storage

Evaluate Box Service

Consultation & Workshops

New bConnected Website

Transparency Report

Improve Processes:

Maintenance

Problems

Outages/Events

Propose Improvements:

Mailing Lists

Google Groups

On-Premise Email

Change Management

Evaluate Services:

Mailing Lists

Google Groups

On-Premise Email

Spring 2015

The bConnected Service team was established with a service manager, solutions architect, change manager, and communications specialist.

Summer 2015

Service Management

The Service Team evaluated and analyzed existing services and technologies, talking to users who use the services and making recommendations. During this time, we:

Enabled certain Google Consumer Apps
Assisted with the retirements of Research Hub and bSpace
Enabled unlimited Box Storage

Communication & Outreach

Relaunched the bConnected website including information on all bConnected services and an updated Transparency Report
Redirected Calmail web pages to bConnected
Began offering Departmental Consultations & Workshops to assist departments in developing their collaboration strategies or supporting their faculty & staff in the adoption of collaboration technologies. We have had 12 departmental engaged thus far this year.

Fall 2015

Service Management

Service & Operations Teams are evaluating Box, Google & related email services and responding to changes to the way email is delivered:

SPAM Handling - Google to adopt stricter DMARC policies in 2016
Evaluating replacement options for Calmail Mailing Lists (Mailman)
Converting all remaining Calmail users to Google

Last remaining departments have been migrated
Users will no longer be able to use Calmail SMTP in 2016

Working in coordination with the CalGroups (centralized groups management) team to plan for the rollout of Google Groups

Communication & Outreach

Improve our Communication & Change Management Process for:

On-going changes to services and new features introduced by Google & Box
Identification & communication about problems with our services

i.e. issues with SPAM handling

Communication during Outages & major service events

i.e. fire in the data center & recent Google Calendar outages

Spring 2016

bConnected Service & Operations Teams will be proposing a series of changes to our mail services:

Proposal for replacing Calmail Mailing Lists
Proposal for rolling out Google Groups
Proposal for changes to on-premise email routing and sending

alternatives for Mass Mailing (beyond what Google supports)
alternatives to how we currently redirect/forward mail for alumni, retirees and others

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Google Updates

Major Enhancements to Google Docs

Voice Typing
Themes & Templates
Revamped Google Forms

Find and retrieve deleted calendar events
Find ‘missing’ emails more easily in Gmail
Disable downloading, printing, copying of any Google Drive file
Apps Launcher in Google now includes links to Box, bCourses & CalShare

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Box Updates

Unlimited storage launched in August
Box Capture app released
Guided tour now available for users
Coming soon: 3D previewing and HD video previewing

“Help shape the future of Box” -- sign up for Box User Research

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CalShare Updates

Recent Service Updates

Project Server 2013 integration now available

In Development

People Picker - CalNet ID lookup

Support for 2013 workflows

On RoadMap

SQL Reporting

Ability to federate with other entities

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bCourses Project Sites

Geared towards instructors, support staff, and students already familiar with bCourses
Best used for instructional planning and research projects
Offers collaborative tools such as wikis and discussion forums, and the ability to add external tools to enhance productivity and online interaction
Instructors and staff can create a bCourses Project site, and anyone with a CalNet ID can be invited to join

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Educational Technology Services

Academic Innovation Studio: Collaborative Work Space!

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Vision

Connect instructors to each other

Create a safe space for exploration and risk-taking

Offer proactive, integrated guidance

Positively impact student learning experiences

Meet instructors where they are

Advocate for and empathize with instructors

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Space Map

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Timeline

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bCourses

bSpace is retired (ets.berkeley.edu)
UCB’s Learning Management System (LMS)
Instructure Canvas
Key Benefits

Engage students with online discussions and collaboration
Provide access to online course materials
Send messages and course announcements
Keep students on track with an online gradebook

Currently 3,553 courses, 3,226 instructors, and 36,867 students use bCourses!

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Research IT: Research Data Management

Defining Research Data Management (RDM)
Services offered beginning this fall

Consulting (researchdata@berkeley.edu)
RDM Guide (researchdata.berkeley.edu)

Next steps

Communication and engagement
Investigating and defining needs:

Active research data storage
Securing research data

Introduce Research IT:

Within the Office of the Chief Information Officer and IS&T, a relatively new team focused on the research computing needs of the very diverse set of scholarly disciplines across campus.

Collaboration is a big part of what we do and what we support, and the partnership represented by this Collaboration Town Hall is one of our most important and successful efforts.

Our goal is to help researchers collaborate on campus -- ensuring they have access to the tools, spaces, and expertise that they need. We see consultation and learning to be a big part of this effort.

We are going to tell you about some of the services and efforts that Research IT is involved in, focusing on how they support research collaboration. We invite you to come by our table during the second half of the town hall.

Research Data Management is one of these areas. Because we define research data very broadly to include a diverse array of digital scholarly subjects and products, research data management (RDM) is an important part of all research on campus, from the humanities to the sciences, and everything in between. Funding agencies and many other groups are now requiring that researchers manage their data in better ways in order to ensure that data can be used in the future to validate the original project results and to be used by future researchers for new investigation.

This diagram visualizes how we think of research data management (as a lifecycle of activities) as well as the support services that can and should be provided by our campus. Importantly, research is a collaborative effort, usually spanning multiple researchers using multiple tools and platforms at a variety of institutions, often globally distributed. Similarly, our RDM services rely on collaboration. Our campus’s programmatic effort is led by a collaboration between Research IT and the Library, in partnership with many other interested groups.

The services launched this fall include a consulting service and an online guide that pulls together the resources available now and presents them in a research-friendly way, along with use cases, best practices, and links to more help.

Our next steps are focused on getting the word out to our community and identifying the largest gaps or needs, and to begin filling them.

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Research IT: Berkeley Research Computing

Savio cluster: HPC, multiple computation models
Faculty Computing Allowance:

200,000 core-hours free, annually renewable
For UCB PIs; can share among students, staff
Expected to extend beyond ‘traditional HPC’ in 2016

Cloud Computing Support

Commercial (e.g., AWS) & national/public (e.g., XSEDE)
Cloud Computing Working Group

Analytics Environments On Demand (ÆOD)

A.k.a. “Virtual Workstations”
Needs-assessment and experiments -- in progress

Tying it all together:

Consulting: researcher needs --> available services
“Mobility of compute”: appropriate scale / cost of infrastructure needed as research lifecycle proceeds

Collaboration: BRC Services enable and promote research collaborations that accelerate research in many disciplines across campus. BRC Consulting connects researchers with both technical services and potential research partners, both at UCB and and beyond (XSEDE).

Savio cluster: provides institutional research computing to support for UCB faculty

FCA: provides an easy way in to HPC at zero cos$t

CCS: provides help to understand and navigate all the myriad cloud options now available

Æod: provides the first step for researchers who have been using their own “bare metal” workstations into a secure analytics environment

Tying it all together: understanding the arc of research and providing the right services at the right time, consulting and collaboration are a key component of what we do.

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Research IT: Digital Humanities

Image Investigation Tool, Jan Brueghel catalogue raisonne

Elizabeth Honig (Art History)

Berkeley Prosopography Services,

Laurie Pearce (Near Eastern)

Digital Humanities at Berkeley Summer Institute

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Research IT: Other Collaboration Services

Campus-wide consulting network & community
Museum and collection informatics

CollectionSpace for campus museums and collections
Piction for digital asset management (via two campus museums)

I want to mention that we in Research IT have recognized how important it is to support and grow a coordinated network of experts across campus. With our colleagues, we have put time and energy into developing this network plus the best practices and processes that can help put the campus community in touch with the expertise that they need.

Finally, Research IT collaborates with campus museums on the systems that they need to manage and share information about the research collections that they steward. The most important component here is CollectionSpace, an open source collection management system that Berkeley helped develop and which is now used by five major collections on campus. In addition, two of these museums have recently implemented Piction, a full featured digital asset management system so that they can properly manage the growing number of digital images and other files in a more powerful way.

Come by our table if you’d like to learn more about these systems or any of the other Research IT services and projects we’ve described briefly today.

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Resources:

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Contact Information

bConnected Service Manager: Jon Hays
CalShare Lead: Michael Leefers
ETS Deputy Director: Meggan Levitt
Research IT Manager of Informatics Services: Chris Hoffman

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Q&A and Open House

Tables:

bConnected: Google Apps, Box, CalShare
Educational Technology Services: Academic Innovation Studio, bCourses
Research IT: Research Data Management, Berkeley Research Computing, Digital Humanities