As part of the recent initiative to convert all staff to Duo (umbc.edu/go/duo), the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) will be automatically requiring Duo for new employees, starting Wednesday, June 5, 2019. This does not affect any current staff, who should already be enrolled, albeit manually by DoIT this past year. However, it does assure all future employees will be using an effective IT security practice.

Generally, this year’s rollout of Duo to all current staff went very smoothly, and our Technology Support Center (TSC) fielded fewer calls or tickets than expected. Similarly, while UMBC was the first to purchase Duo in the USM, both UMB and UMCP now require all faculty and staff to use Duo and experienced minimal issues. Accordingly, DoIT’s goal is for all current and future UMBC employees to be enrolled in Duo, which we’re close to having now.

Finally, DoIT wants to remind all faculty with PeopleSoft access (virtually all faculty) that they will be required to use Duo by Monday, September 30, 2019. Note: The original 9/1/19 deadline was revised to get past the hectic start of term and 10th day add/drop date.

Again, more information about Duo is available at umbc.edu/go/duo. If you have further questions, please contact the Technology Support Center by either submitting a support request atmy.umbc.edu/help or calling (410) 455-3838.

DoIT is pleased to announce that Andrea Mocko has been named manager of its Technology Support Center (TSC). Previously, she’d served as acting coordinator, specialist and even a student consultant during all four of her undergraduate years at UMBC. She is responsible for recruiting, hiring, training and supervising the 12-15 student consultants who make up the largely student-run staff serving at the TSC each semester. The TSC also serves as an informal on-site “storefront” to demo products as part of the Mac & Dell online stores, and also provides Scantron test scoring support.

In addition to daily responsibilities managing the TSC, Andrea has played a key role in revamping DoIT’s knowledge management approach to IT support. Specifically, she serves as the primary architect and curator of UMBC’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) knowledge base (umbc.edu/faq) that has dramatically reduced phone, email and Request Tracker (RT) tickets by helping users help themselves. Typically, UMBC’s FAQs generate about half a million page views each year (though not all from UMBC) after generating only 3k in 2011.

Among other benefits, this kind of self-support has allowed the TSC to keep staffing costs low. Despite the high turnover you'd expect to see in a primarily student run help desk (with 2 FT staff), the FAQs help TSC student consultants get up to speed quickly and work efficiently and effectively, In fact, our student labor & assistance budget has shrunk from about $100k (in 2011) to $83k each year since, while campus users have consistently rated DoIT’s overall IT support as 90 percent “good or excellent” ever since we started using RT 10 years ago, including up through UMBC’s 1 millionth ticket last semester.

Andrea’s expertise in user support has also been recognized by Educause, the professional development organization for higher ed IT. She was a member of the Educause IT Service Management Working group and also co-authored a white paper, “Demonstrating Value Through IT Service Management in Higher Education” (2016).

Due to a recently published set of security vulnerabilities, UMBC’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) website at umbc.edu/faq  is no longer accessible outside of UMBC. DoIT is going to keep this restriction in place for the remainder of the week while we work to upgrade the software so that it is no longer vulnerable to these attacks.

The campus community can continue to access the FAQs while on campus, or off-campus through the Virtual Private Network (VPN) or Virtual Desktop Environment (VDE). There will be some downtimes needed later in the week to upgrade the services, and we will post those when we have more details available.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns, and we appreciate your patience as we work to keep our systems safe and secure.

Damian Doyle

Assistant Vice President

DoIT

The DoIT Technology Support Center is looking to hire additional consultants to work during the Summer session and beyond. Please see our job description below and visit our job posting on UMBCWorks to apply. (Search for TSC Student Consultant.)

TSC Student Consultant Job Description

Technology Support Center (TSC) student consultants are the first points of technical contact for the UMBC community and those who do well often go on to work in other areas of the Division of Information Technology (DoIT). Minimally, consultants are expected to provide initial triage and support for a wide range of information technologies including accounts, hardware, instructional technologies, networking, software, telecommunications, and basic web development.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following:

• Provide technical assistance to users by phone, online and in person;
• Answer TSC phones in a professional and courteous manner;
• Create, update and resolve tickets in the Request Tracker (RT) ticketing system;
• Create, update, suggest and recommend relevant FAQ articles to users (www.umbc.edu/faq);
• Provide direct assistance to users on technical issues they cannot easily resolve on their own;
• Complete in-person or online training about quality support as defined in umbc.edu/go/ticketrubric;
• Respond to all work-related communications in a timely manner;
• Escalate urgent problems to the Full-Time staff, as appropriate.

Required Skills and Experience

• Demonstrated ability to effectively communicate by phone or in person.
• Demonstrated writing ability.
• Demonstrated ability to achieve successful outcomes in handling difficult situations and customers.
• Demonstrated analytical and troubleshooting skills.
• Ability & willingness to learn coupled with a clear understanding of one’s technical abilities, so as to triage and escalate an issue that leads to an effective solution for the user.