Daily IT Leadership Meeting Supports Online Transformation

Finding ways for teams to stay connected while working remotely had challenges, but the University of Arizona’s IT Community continued their mutual support for colleges and departments across campus through a daily Zoom continuity meeting.

Campus IT Partnerships previously held monthly campus IT directors’ meetings where information was distributed and discussed across colleges and divisions. With the shift of campus staff working remotely, the once monthly face-to- face meetings moved online to Zoom and transformed into daily campus continuity coordination for topics related to technology and more.

What makes this series of meetings work in a time when everyone has little time to sit in meetings? “It’s about information sharing,” explains Executive Director of Campus IT Partnerships, Tom Bourgeois, “We created a space where anyone can surface a problem, collaborate with those who understand what options may exist to solve it and get a solution.”

Relationships among the university’s IT community turned this Zoom continuity meeting into a highly successful organic problem-solving channel.

The fact is, you don’t know who’s got a piece of the puzzle that you turn out to need...but the meeting puts relationships to work in a way that they wouldn’t otherwise be called upon to work.

Collaboration for a SAFER Solution

The University of Arizona’s Student Aid for Field Epidemiology Response (SAFER) has historically had a group of five staff, focused on call center response for Arizona’s poison control hotline. But with the emerging COVID-19 pandemic, SAFER staff were enlisted to help county health officials support contact tracing of cases to identify anyone who might have come in close contact with an infected person. The original five staff members quickly rose to over 35 student volunteers on the front line.

UITS IT Service Management reached out to the SAFER Coordinator with a solution. UITS provided strategic support to transfer SAFER to a Cherwell ticketing system and AWS call center. As experienced call center staff, UITS was able to offer guidance in training the new volunteers.

The version of Cherwell UITS was using was not HIPAA compliant, however. Becoming HIPAA compliant was only the first of many hours of collaboration and development needed to create a ticketing system that would meet the needs of the SAFER team. The University’s HIPAA Compliance Officer and application vendor joined the UITS working group to make it happen in record time.

“UITS development of the COVID-19 dashboard and roll-out of other technology has been no small feat. Their team has been indispensable in moving our call center online and providing solutions to the challenges we faced.”

Campus Web Services Supporting a Pandemic

This past year, Campus Web Services focused on expanding the UArizona brand across individual websites and when the COVID pandemic surfaced, they built out new websites at amazing speed. Perhaps never in the history of the University’s communications have website technologies been more critical than this past year. Faculty, students, staff and our local community, state and the nation looked to University of Arizona’s website for critical information.

Most of the COVID-19 specific information was made available on a new Arizona.edu/COVID-19 website. This and many pages were quickly developed with end-user support extended by the Campus Web Services team. A web resource for faculty, remote-teaching.arizona.edu, was created over a short weekend, providing many resources in one location for using Zoom and shifting learning and proctoring to online. Another critical website, remote- learning.arizona.edu, was created to focus on informing and supporting remote learning for students.

Throughout the spring and summer, the Campus Web Services team provided critical communications channels for multiple colleges and departments.

Worth noting, are new sites for Arizona Global, Tech Launch Arizona, Faculty Governance, Wellcheck Arizona, and College of Science. The Campus Web Services team also provided training for 30 website editors across campus, resulting in a reduction of 32% in support requests for UA Sites.