Libraries: UG | UW | WLU
Campus: UG | UW | WLU
|
|
Staff Web |
StaffWeb: UG |
UW |
WLU
Libraries: UG | UW | WLU Campus: UG | UW | WLU |
 Home
Documents
|
|
Present: Bill Halahan, Ron MacKinnon, Joanne Oud, Gail Sperling, Linda Teather
The minutes of January 12, 2005 were approved with minor changes. They will be added to the TUG Statistics and Reports (TSR) area on the TUG staff web.
A near-final version was distributed and discussed. The one outstanding item is the production server cost. Linda thinks the invoice made it through before fiscal year end but needs to confirm. If not, it will be added to next year’s expenditures.
A revised version was distributed and discussed. Linda removed the production server costs, which were originally scheduled for the 05/06 budget, but left some software costs associated with the server replacement.
Linda gave a report to the Steering Committee January 19. The meeting went well and our proposed budget was approved. Comments from the Steering Committee were generally positive, and they encouraged our group to look at non-TRELLIS sources of data to add to Cognos reporting in the upcoming year. The written part of the report is up on the web.
Guelph and Waterloo still need to meet to discuss approaches to handling ARL E-Metrics reporting. They will schedule a time in June.
Guelph and Laurier would like to meet at Waterloo to look at Waterloo’s infrastructure for collecting non-TRELLIS statistics and feeding them into Cognos. Agreement to combine with the ARL E-Metrics meeting as most of the same people will be involved.
To do: Ron will arrange a meeting for ARL E-Metrics and UW statistics infrastructure in June at Waterloo.
Gail has done most of the cube reviews with functional groups; the last one is scheduled for June 1. This is an evolving process, and will happen again after people use the cubes more and are more familiar with their contents.
Use data from Guelph and Waterloo is now in the ERM data cube. Laurier still needs to move over data so it is written to the Waterloo server and can be added to the cube.
Bill will be attending the Cognos Tech Forum (Orlando, June 26-29) this year and has registered. Money for attendance was approved by the Steering Committee as part of the budget.
Waterloo has scheduled 4 sessions in May and has had good registration so far. Waterloo also recently did a series of refresher sessions that also went well. Training documentation is up on the Cognos web site. We are unsure of plans for Guelph and Laurier; staff from those libraries can attend Waterloo sessions in May if there is room.
To do: Ron and Joanne will follow up on training plans for Guelph and Laurier.
We are ready to implement but still need to do a demo for the training team first.
To do:
- Gail will schedule meeting with Training Team for June.
- Then, Linda, Ron, and Joanne will demo/introduce the form and database at their own institutions.
As a result of hacker attacks general security awareness has been heightened at Waterloo, and Gail became aware of potential security issues on our production server. She has implemented improved measures and the server is now secure, but she was not happy with the lack of support received from Cognos. As a result of the new tightened security, the server is now accessible only to people with university IP addresses and not to guests. With the new server there is the possibility of a firewall, which may allow limited outside/guest access again at some point in the future.
Gail and Bill have developed a staged plan to replace the production server. They hope to have it up and running in test mode for May, so the training team can look at it and decide whether or not to use it for their training sessions scheduled for May. Assuming all goes well, the new server would go live June 1. After this, there are several tasks they will be addressing, such as changing the link to the server in documentation pages, upgrading client workstations, upgrading catalogues and reports, installing Cognos 7.3 and Oracle 9i. In future, they will be able to investigate a firewall, installing software to assist in reporting problems to Cognos support, and moving Cuberunner functions to the server from Gail’s PC.
Gail has created a new cube and reports with data on use of the Cognos server and reports, including which reports are used, who runs them, how long they take to run, etc. The cube and reports are in the training area so there is limited access, since it does contain peoples’ names. The reports are intended to be used by trainers to plan training as well as to see peak usage times, which reports/cubes are/aren’t used.
To do: Linda, Joanne and Ron will look at the reports/cube, see what they could be used for, and if there are security concerns.
Cuberunner has asked if we can be featured in a testimonial featuring our use in relation to the Cognos software. Agreement that this is acceptable, but that we should ask for a discount on our annual maintenance in return. Suggestions for some edits making TUG collaboration more prominent.
To do: Linda and Gail will show to Waterloo administration for approval and will explore the possibility of a discount from CubeRunner.
A librarian at Colorado State University who is writing an article on data mining for Library Journal has contacted and spoken with Linda and Gail about our setup and how we are using the data in decision making. They have asked to see anything about TUG mentioned in the article before it is published.
The committee thanks Ron MacKinnon for his service. Ron will be taking early retirement from the University of Guelph this summer and this meeting is likely his last with this group.
The next meeting will be scheduled later this summer.
To do: Linda will send out possible meeting times.