It was all hands-on-deck in Texas State University’s Technology Resources unit as staff worked to equip students, faculty, and staff to work, learn, and teach remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even during normal times, the university could not run without the technology services and support provided by Technology Resources (TR), a unit in the Division of Information Technology. TR staff oversee everything from the campus wi-fi to tools such as TXST Canvas, Microsoft 365, SAP, and the student information system.
When the university moved to remote, the gears started turning for Mark Hughes, associate vice president of Technology Resources, and the TR staff.
“We usually deal with digital traffic going from on-campus to off-campus,” Hughes said. “Now you’re talking about a tremendous amount of traffic coming in from the outside.”
TR optimized the network routing to support remote work from home and distance learning traffic, enhanced Microsoft Teams to prepare for high volume, and implemented expanded remote network and system monitoring notifications, to only name a few tasks.
Network infrastructure was only part of the work. TR has purview over the technical aspect of many important university systems and had to work with staff across the university to implement a variety of changes.
“It was pretty dramatic, to be honest, because everything we did had a level of impact on the university as a whole,” Hughes said. “Especially considering we already had an expansive array of high priority projects on the docket.”
A flood of requests came in with rapid turn-around deadlines to change systems to make them more helpful for those working, studying, and teaching remotely.
TR assisted University Marketing with best ways to launch the university’s Coronavirus information webpage, developed new functionality for the TXST homepage’s emergency banner to allow multiple departments to access it and support collaborative work. The team also developed a new component in the TXST Mobile app to connect students, faculty, and staff to Coronavirus information.
The team developed a broad range of functions in SAP to support the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), such as attendance types, wage types, quotas, and adding COVID-19 leave balances to Fiori apps. They also developed a vast array of changes needed for student reporting, grading, and Web applications, used by faculty, staff, and students that integrate with the student information system.
Over 5,000 new Microsoft Teams phone numbers were rolled out within a one-week timeframe, allowing faculty and staff to replace the on-campus phones they could not access, with new phone ability in Teams.
Many courses relied on specific software that could only be accessed on campus — difficult to do when remote. TR successfully expanded the enhanced electronic remote access to a variety of software applications, so people no longer needed to be on campus to use them.
It was an immense challenge, but TR staff came together rising to the occasion in support of the university, and they did so without complaining, Hughes said.
Due to the nature of department services, many TR staff could not work from home and were physically required to be on campus to complete their duties.
“They stepped up and when much of campus were working from home, they’re here working and keeping the network and core systems up day and night,” Hughes said. “We’ve met every target. We’ve delivered everything on time. I cannot be more proud of this organization.”
Steffanie Agnew is digital marketing strategist in the IT Marketing and Communications office.
