Significant upgrades for Quest
Quest recently went through a system upgrade at the end of February. This was the culmination of significant technical and testing efforts by the project team consisting of members from IST, Registrar's Office (RO), Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA), and Finance.
The upgrade included:
- bringing Quest up to the latest application version (PeopleTools)
- upgrades to the underlying database
- upgrades to the underlying server software
- critical security patches
- a re-implementation of the mobile version of Quest with our external vendor
The results of this upgrade allows us to maintain vendor support on the system and positions us to transition the system infrastructure to the cloud.
Learn more about some of the projects/initiatives we're currently working on
Visit IST's Project page to see a full list of projects/initiatives, their descriptions, and details.
Moving to SharePoint Online
A project is underway to migrate our locally hosted SharePoint service to SharePoint Online, part of the Microsoft 365 cloud environment.
Work began in September 2020 and will complete in November 2021.
Members of the project team are working with stakeholders to coordinate and implement on-premises site migration plans and ensure the appropriate training and support resources are available.
Migrating N: drives to OneDrive
Building off the OneDrive promotion project, IST launched a program to migrate and replace local network storage (N: drive) with OneDrive.
IST will pilot this change before it is rolled out to staff in academic support units using IST managed workstations via SCCM software centre.
More information on OneDrive is available in the IST Knowledge Base, or view the recorded PDAG seminar, OneDrive: Storage Wars.
Mass Email Management
In collaboration with University Relations and campus partners, the Mass Email Management project will deliver a service framework supporting mass email communications to students and employees, providing improved information management, reporting, and coordination of email communications through the delivery of a common email management platform and service.
The team is currently in consultation and functionality requirements gathering. A planned request for proposal (RFP) will take place in the spring term with a pilot beginning in December.
IT Sustainability
IST is starting a new project in collaboration with UW Sustainability Office, partnered with Green Economy Canada, to investigate and implement, where feasible, IT sustainability recommendations to help achieve Waterloo's sustainability objectives.
This project is in the very early stages and more information will be shared as available.
Jira Service Management (JSM)
Jira Service Management is an integrated service management portal that will bring a standardized experience and platform to all service providers at the University. IST Request Tracker (RT) queues/forms are being migrated to Jira Service Management, but the tool is also already being used by other groups across campus, including The Centre, Finance, Student Financial Services, and Renison.
IST continues to meet with groups to discuss their ticketing needs and how we can support them in the migration (have met with approximately 35 groups so far). Many are interested in the Confluence knowledge base integration and setting up their customer portals (see IST’s help portal).
IST is also beginning to plan for the migration of Jira Server to Jira Cloud, and Confluence Server to Confluence Cloud.
