NEWS

SSCC's Spring Training Schedule

SSCC's Spring training schedule is now available on SSCC's training web pages. SPSS, Nvivo, and R training dates have not yet been set, but we hope to have them posted next week. So far, you can register for SAS, Stata, WordPress and three new offerings: Writing Math with Word, Using the Computer Classroom for Instructors, and Stata Workshop: Margins and Contrasts. Note that several classes are scheduled for the week before Spring semester classes begin.

UW students can also register for the Matlab class that DoIT is offering in our PC classroom. We are in discussions with DoIT to jointly sponsor NVivo classes so that faculty and staff can attend as well as students—watch for a future announcement.

Remember that all SSCC training sessions require preregistration.

Campus Initiatives affecting SSCC Services

There are some major campus-wide initiatives under the umbrella of Administrative Excellence (AE) that will eventually impact SSCC services and facilities. A common thread in these initiatives is to save money through centralization.

One initiative is using Microsoft's Office 365 as a single email and calendaring solution for all faculty, staff, and students of the university. It is expected that 80% of the campus will be using Office 365 by August 2013 with the rest transitioned by August 2014. SSCC will be required to discontinue its email service and migrate to Microsoft Office 365, most likely in late 2013 or 2014. SSCC staff are committed to supporting Office 365 for our members as much as possible. Our help desk will still be the point of contact for email and calendaring issues. For the things that we cannot resolve locally, we will follow up with DoIT on behalf of our members.

A second initiative is creating standardized desktop and laptop computers provided by a single vendor (most likely Dell) for use campus-wide. Apple will be a secondary vendor, but those who wish to purchase Apple computers will be required to demonstrate a business need and get approval to do so. Both vendors will provide a set of two standard desktops and two standard laptops. Currently, there are no restrictions on configuring office computers and SSCC staff make recommendations for these purchases based entirely on member needs. Once this plan is implemented, we will have far fewer choices but should pay less for desktops and laptops.

A third initiative is aggregating data centers. SSCC's server room in 4411 Sewell Social Sciences Building was identified as a high-quality data center that could host servers from other units on campus. If this occurs, campus resources will pay for at least part of the cost of maintenance and upgrades, saving the SSCC money.

Visit the Administrative Excellence web site to read more details about these and other AE initiatives.

RefWorks Going Away June 2013

UW-Madison Libraries announced that they are dropping their subscription to RefWorks effective June 30, 2013. Visit the library's web site for more information including instructions on how to migrate to Endnote (available on Winstat).

Condor Renamed HTCondor

The Condor project has been renamed HTCondor ("High Throughput Condor") to distinguish it from an unrelated set of tools produced by a private company. The program itself is unchanged, and we do not plan to rename the commands you use to interface with the SSCC's HTCondor servers (condor_matlab, condor_stata, etc.)

Tip: Tell NVivo to Update Projects on Network Drives

NVivo now has a setting that tells it to update projects saved on network drives whenever you click save, rather than when you exit the program. This will prevent you from losing your work if the program crashes—an all to common event! Unfortunately there is no way for SSCC staff to change this setting for everyone. If you use NVivo, please take a moment to change it right now. Our new Knowledge Base article, Using NVivo on Winstat, has details and is a must read for NVivo users.