OIT’s Past Innovations

What Innovations has OIT Implemented in the Past?

In May 2019 we asked OIT teams what has been done in the past that deserves recognition for being innovative at the time. Many fantastic responses were identified and we are now sharing them more broadly.

Below are just some of the amazing innovations that have come out of OIT in the past. What will you do in the future?

OIT Division	Innovative Implementations
Student & Academic Services	Built EEE before any commercial LMS existed, developed teaching and learning tools such as course evaluation, eater evals, ScoreShare, scout ahead of their times
OIT-wide	Implemented multi factor authentication for several systems such as Filenet, KSAMS, WebAuth, Office 365 and all servers with protected information.
Student & Academic Services	Built the first Alexa Skills suite for a university athletics program
Client Services	Changed classrooms across campus with technology, adding more capabilities/options for instructors on how to give their lectures/classes.
Student & Academic Services	Designed and implemented the Anteater Learning Pavillion Software Archive for Mac: centralized commonly used/installed mac software on campus. Spirit Server: 1998 ASUCI / Dean of Students / Student Affairs project. email, mail list, and websites for campus organizations Developed Anteater Community calendar that allowed students, using UCInetID, to post club/department events
Student & Academic Services	UC Recruit worked with EUS to move the first large-scale enterprise application to AWS. C&P IT partnered with UCSB to bring their Academic Senate Data Management platform to UCI (SaaS style). Moved from Jenkins to CircleCi allowing test suns to occur in 12 minutes rather than 2 hours. Moving to CircleCI allows Guard Duty to automatically upgrade libraries for free.
Client Services	ILS implemented a new Virtual Computing Lab software that uses HTML5 and works out of any browser.
Enterprise Applications	VPMS is one of the first LPR (License Plate Recognition) implementations replacing physical permits EPICSWeb – early adoption of web based applications TDS Interactive Map – using earlier google APIs, designed a dynamic campus map
Enterprise Applications	Registrar’s office developed a webapp for “in and out board”; includes feature to add a brief comment (e.g. “meeting at building XYZ”)
Client Services	Added sites.uci.edu, faculty.sites.uci.edu using WordPress as a commodity service, and Lynda.com for broader technical training
Student & Academic Services	Cap and Gown UC Recruit EEE Housing self-service room card key machine
Student & Academic Services	Moved away from scrum to adopt our own project management process. We worked to figure out which parts of scrum were useful, which parts were hindering our productivity, and experimented to figure out what we needed to change.
Enterprise Applications	Moved Kuali Research and other OR software development into a monthly sprint process for faster, incremental delivery of maintenance items and new features.
Enterprise Applications	Developed the Facilities Management Renovation Report Cognos Archival Project – to connect complex, auto generated Cognos reports with long term storage in FileNet
Enterprise Applications	Developed black box processes.  We were able to create processes that converted the old GL and Payment files in a seamless way
Enterprise Infrastructure	Windows Admin account segmentation that isolated admin accounts into specific islands to help improve security by minimizing cross contamination.  Enhanced security of AD accounts by adding a layer of security using Protected Users by preventing credential caching and disabling old protocols. Set up AppLocker to increase security in workstation and terminal servers. Worked with Mac team to develop a solution to manage Mac OS devices in OIT. Developed a hands-off solution for automatically updating legacy VB applications on client desktop computers for OR & GD using scheduled tasks and a custom PowerShell script Created an Excel workbook used to track weekly status updates and allows for easy sorting, viewing, and reuse.