ITS Highlights

State of Medical Center Address Captured – On September 8^th the 2009 State of the Medical Center address was streamed to hundreds of faculty and staff across campus. The live streaming, as watched from several locations around campus and off campus. Video and sound quality performed perfectly.  

Vanderbilt Student Government (VSG)  – Less than thirty-six hours before the First-year House Presidents and Upper Class Representative elections were to begin, the on-line student voting system developed significant problems related to security certificate and authentication. ITS technicians worked closely with the Vanderbilt Computer Society representatives to resolve these issues … all by end of that business day. On-line elections proceeded successfully.  

ITS Alert Systems Enhanced – ITS updated its homepage with a new “Alert” link that takes viewers to a new page at http://dashboard.its.vanderbilt.edu/, which shows the status of the major infrastructure services provided by ITS. The dashboard was created in response to the community wanting to have greater visibility into the current status of ITS services. 

VUMC Exchange Front End Server Collapse to Vmail (Exchange 2007) – The front end servers for the legacy VUMC Exchange 2003 environment were collapsed into the new Vmail enterprise Exchange 2007 environment to prepare for the transition of thousands of VUMC email boxes to the new system. This was a very complex operation and because of careful planning and communication the VUMC Help Desk received very few problem reports. 

Federation with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Sprint – The Vanderbilt implementation of Microsoft Office Communicator and Unified Messaging is now federated with ORNL. This success enables significantly enhanced collaboration between researchers at Vanderbilt and ORNL.  In addition, Vanderbilt is now federated with Sprint. This too enables enhance collaboration opportunities with our business partners.  

Email Consolidation Project Podcast Continue – Podcasts featuring ITS staffers continue to be released offering updates on the email consolidation project at Vanderbilt. Check it out on the ITS YouTube Channel.  Podcast Studio – ITS worked with representatives of the Vanderbilt Human Resource (HR) team to create podcast presentations using Articulate Presenter to be used in addition to HR training and orientation settings. This is a new outreach method for HR and is an exciting new way they can reach the community at large.

Server Upgrade Increases Security – In an effort to remove remaining Windows 2000 servers, which have severe security vulnerabilities, off the Vanderbilt network, ITS assisted HR with a much needed server upgrade. An old Windows 2000 server was decommissioned and replaced by a new virtual machine (VM) hosted in the ITS data center.

Assisting Public Affairs – ITS staff swiftly responded to server issues in Creative Services to assure continuous availability of that server to the community it serves. What could have been a big problem resulted in minimal downtime.

Operator Services Stats –   During September 2009, Operator Services received 158,846 calls in the call center with a 98.8% answer rate. The team completed 15,579 pager modifications supporting patient care. A total of 417 conference calls were requested and processed through the call center.

Connecting People with People – Vanderbilt publishes a single telephone number, 343-0473, for outbound caller ID that previously offered only a prerecorded message. To better serve the community, that number now has a caller’s menu with the ability to press 1 and reach a Vanderbilt operator. Callers now have access to a person who can assist them and the system now provides reporting on the amount of calls received at that number. This change was implemented on September 21 and in just nine days more than 5000 calls were answered from this number.

Family Initiated Rapid Response Team  - Quick turnaround from ITS proved to be an important win for the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt. Following a tight timeline directive from The Joint Commission, ITS helped to establish Family Initiated Rapid Response in very short order. We created a new phone number ( 1-1111) as the new number to call for a rapid response or STAT calls. Other specialty programming was also necessary to prevent errors in communication between the old phone number and this new one. This work ensured a safe transition for patients, families and staff and greatly enhanced Vanderbilt’s rapid response to urgent patient care issues. 

Infrastructure Success

• Successful move of Anesthesiology Office to new build out space 4^th floor of TVC 28 MAC’s on 9/24
• Move of Perioperative Service’s 4^th floor TVC 11 MAC’s on 9/25
• Completed order for installation of a point to point T1 circuit for VU Student Media Broadcast Studio.  The studio has broadcasted from a tower transmitter between Vanderbilt and WSMV on Knob Hill.  Over the past few years the signal was blocked due to construction of new high rise buildings. Important success that ITS was able to order this circuit under our newly negotiated NetTn contract with AT&T saving the department more than $100.00 a month.
• Phone installs for new H1N1 Clinic in MCE North Tower total MAC’s 16 on 9/8/09.
• Adult and Children’s Blood Bank moved into one facility on 4^th Floor of TVC. The facilities were originally in three locations and the moved had to be coordinated simultaneously, with no down time.  
• Successful installation of IP Telephony (IPT) service for the new Vanderbilt Sterile Processing facility on Brick Church Pike. Sixteen IP telephones, along with five analog lines for cordless telephone functionality and connection to their over-head paging was seamlessly installed.