Automation and Service Reliability

Who We Are

What We Do

We are a team with 150+ years of collective experience managing and developing tools and solutions for Stanford University.  We are a modern, lean, self-governing engineering team and frequently switch hats between designing features, coding, testing for quality and performance. We value transparency and trust. We continue to create purpose in our work, seek individual mastery and encourage autonomy.

Our team is responsible for the ongoing support of numerous tools and integrations used across campus. These tools support various business functions. In order to successfully support many of these tools, we are required to intimately understand the underlying business processes and terminology behind the tools themselves e.g. security best practices for door hardware, network infrastructure and routing, collaboration and voice systems as well as phone number management.

Our team frequently gets pulled into projects requiring custom development. This development typically involves 3^rd party APIs and developing automation critical to the implementation or maintenance of an application or service, automating tasks in support of reliability, or developing tools where no software solution exists on the commercial market.

Integrated Access Control

Lenel

Lenel OnGuard is software that enables access control, alarm monitoring, digital video, intrusion detection, asset tracking, information security integration, credential production, and employee and visitor management functionality.

• Additional Information
• Job Aids
• For more help with Lenel OnGuard, please submit a ServiceNow request.

CSGold

CSGold is software that enables access to a variety of facilities and services across the Stanford campus via the Stanford ID Card. Those services and facilities include the ability to purchase at Residence Halls and participating campus cafes, vending machines, as well as copying and printing machines in the libraries.

• Additional Information
• For more help with the CSGold, please submit a ServiceNow request.

Video Management

Our video management system which leverages Exacq is running in many location on campus including the following locations: Windover, Anderson Art Center, Forsythe Hall, NDCCH, and the Stanford Research Computing Center to name a few. The intent of video surveillance on campus is to monitor locations such as data centers and facilities containing high value assets.

• Additional Information
• For more help with the Video Management Solutions, please submit a ServiceNow request.

Card services custom applications

Batch Access Level Assignment Tool  is used to support onboarding of buildings or batch changes to building assignments. It empowers building managers with the ability to batch assign or de-assign access in the Lenel OnGuard system.

• For more help with the the Batch Upload Tool, please submit a ServiceNow request.

Online Photo Submission Tool is a tool that allows students (and staff) to upload a photo to be used on their Campus ID card. The tool was designed with a cropping function much like what people are accustomed to when setting their profile picture on Facebook. This solution leverages the following technologies and systems: Apache, PHP, Oracle, MySQL, jQuery, jQuery UI, and Jcrop. Almost 80% of the project is written in JavaScript, which is where we see today's web efforts.

• ID Card Photo Submission tool
• For more help with the Photo Submission Tool, please submit a ServiceNow request.

Communications, Networking and Voice Support

SNSR

Stanford Network Self-Registration (SNSR) is a tool which allows for user registration of devices onto the Stanford Network. Registration takes place via a web application SNSR followed by a client Stanford Network Registration Tool (SNRT). The product is available on both the wired and wireless networks. This product is a collaborative effort across University IT, including Networking, Desktop Systems, ISO, and Integration and Client Solutions. We are responsible for development, integration, deployment, and support of the tool into Stanford's environment.

• Additional Information
• For more help with SNSR, please submit a ServiceNow request.

SIPdb

SIPdb is a tool used as a central point for phone number and phone related data management, automated provisioning, and call reporting.  It acts as an integration point between order processing and VOIP systems, and it also acts as a reporting source for a variety of telephony related information. This tool is developed in Python and integrates with OrderIT for the purpose of provisioning phone numbers on campus. This tool also integrates with the Voicemail Password Reset tool.

• For more help with SIPdb, please submit a ServiceNow request.

NetDB

NetDB is a Stanford University database application that stores network and node configuration information. It's generally used by local network administrators and University IT staff. Most commonly, NetDB is used to assign a new IP address to a computer or printer. The information in NetDB is loaded into two important network services at Stanford: DNS and DHCP.

• Read more about NetDB here.

Voicemail Reset Portal

Leveraging the Movius API, we have released an administrative tool to assist in self service voicemail password resets. The tool is not currently available for all users due to the data in the disparate phone systems and the construct on how phone numbers are owned. The tool greatly improves logging and allows a large population of users the ability reset their passwords.

• For more help with Voicemail Password Reset, please submit a ServiceNow request.

The Data Collector

The Data Collector (TDC) provides metrics and trending information for voice services. In addition to providing historical counts of inbound and outbound call and pages per platform, we also correlate data from disparate systems on campus to help assess the business and understand adoption, growth, and compliance with security and other regulations. The Data Collector is a big data dataset consisting of 602 million call detail/messaging records growing by approximately 8 million records per month.

• For more help with The Data Collector, please submit a ServiceNow request.

Post Call Survey Service

A Post Call Survey takes place after normal call treatment. It is typically used to determine whether customers are satisfied with their call center experiences. This service allows us to configure a call flow that, after the agent disconnects from the caller, optionally sends the call to a Dialed Number configured for a Post Call Survey.

Call Center Dashboard

We support a custom solution that displays call volume metrics in our Service Desk and Operator Services Center.

Monitoring and Service Reliability

Our team develops and supports network monitoring and engineering tools which are continually adapted to meet the needs of the services and engineers who rely on them. These tools monitor over 4,000 devices (routers, switches, etc.) to produce trending data for over 250,000 interfaces. We leverage a suite of tools to gather and collect information from the devices on campus.

HP Network Automation

HP Network Automation - aka “Opsware” is software that automates the complete operational lifecycle of network devices from provisioning to policy-based change management, compliance, and security administration. We use this tool to provide configuration backup, mac address-table scraping, and make bulk changes. We also generate many reports from here.

Infosim

Infosim is a unified management solution for enterprise IT to discover/inventarize, monitor, track, ensure, and document service quality, including LAN/WAN, VPNs, storage, database, VoIP, and E2E service quality. We use Infosim to send major alarms to ITOC for Incident Management.

Sentinel Alert

Sentinel is a tool that is used by our IT Operations Center.  This tool, written in Node.js aggregates and displays alert information received from about 20 monitoring subsystems which in turn monitor about 1000 servers, 5000 doors as well as some networking devices and UPS's. This tool is critical for after hours support and links our IT Operations Center technicians to procedures that empower them to support hundreds of services.

• For more help with Sentinel, please submit a ServiceNow request.

Statseeker

Statseeker network monitoring software is designed to monitor network performance by harvesting statistics from data that help engineers manage the network to make decisions and take action or identify critical issues. It provides network traffic stats for 250,000+ interfaces with ability to find top traffic ports quickly.

In addition to the above Commercial Off The Shelf products, we have developed several tools that contribute to service reliability in Communication Services.

• Zzmon is used to tag events from many sources and allow one view of noteworthy events by time, service, device
• Alert subscription allows for individualized subscription to alerts from many sources
• Swatch is used to filter events in syslog/snmptrap stream and send to Zzmon and/or individual emails.
• Lookup Tool displays procedures/network status for network devices, servers, phones, etc.
• Autohowis provides up/down monitoring of network hosts, POS terminals, etc.
• Host/Switch Search  - find host in the network or hosts on a switch

Integration Development and Support

AlertSU

Campus Emergency Notification (AlertSU): We provide integration support for the AlertSU/campus mass notification and the processing of contacts from outside Stanford's network.

Campus Maps API (LBRE)

Completed: We are developed a Campus Map API for LBRE to allow applications on campus to easily leverage their campus maps information database.

Cloudpath/SNSR Integration

We developed and support the integration between SNSR and Cloudpath to deliver certificates to endpoints. 

CSGold/uniFLOW Integration

We currently support (in partnership with VPTL) the integration between CSGold and uniFLOW which allows students to print using their Stanford card plan and Academic Computing's proposed centralized print solution.

CSGold/Revel Integration

We  currently support (in partnership with R&DE) the integration between CSGold and Revel Point of Sale Systems to allow transactions from our dining and point of sale systems to debit stored value on the Campus ID card.

Lenel/25 Live Integration

We partnered with the Registrar's office to develop an integration between the campus's 25 Live application and the Lenel application to streamline the student experience in accessing classrooms.

Lenel/Housing Integration

We currently support (in partnership with R&DE) a real time integration that grants door access to student residences based on the Residential & Dining Enterprises housing contracts.

Tessitura Authentication Integration

We provide ongoing authentication support for Stanford Ticket Office Tessitura system.

Other Tools

Metrics Dashboards

Metrics and Monitoring Dashboard are available on the IT Metrics dashboard. The Status and Metrics "traffic lights" on the University IT home page indicate the availability of key systems. In this program, gadgets are real-time graphical representations of metrics. They can be grouped into a dashboard,which is simply a container, and displayed on your browser screen. Integration and Client Solutions provides development and maintenance support for many of the monitoring gadgets made available on the campus dashboard.

• dashboard.stanford.edu
• For more help with Metrics and Monitoring, please submit a ServiceNow request.

Salesforce

Salesforce is the CRM platform that allows UIT business partners a solution to track client needs.

• For more help with Salesforce, please submit a ServiceNow request.

Timesheet

Unanet is the web-based time tracking tool that IT Services uses internally to track staff work time. The organization uses the data collected for two purposes: Accurately set rates for services and accurately report on staff resources supporting projects.

• timesheet.stanford.edu
• For more help with Unanet, please submit a ServiceNow request.

Training, Mentoring, Professional Development and Evangelism

Our team is passionate about growing and developing our own skills as well as the skills and expertise of the Stanford community. As a result, you may find members of our team teaching technology classes or leading open labs for UIT's Tech Training division, participating in Communities of Practice, mentoring or being mentored in either the UIT Mentoring Program or the Stanford Manager Academy, attending the collaborative Unconference, and even teaching Stanford Continuing Studies courses. 

Ongoing courses and open labs include:
Setting up a Stanford Service Provider using Stanford's Federated IdP (SAML2) (Lecture) 
Designing a REST API for Use on Stanford's Campus (Lab)
SAML2 Open Lab classes are offered from time to time

Certifications and Credentials

Some of the services we support require certifications. These certifications are maintained and current.

Access Control: Lenel Certified Professional (LCP)

Digital Video: Lenel Certified Expert (LCE)

Certified Scrum Master

Certified Product Owner

Project Management Professional

More Information

For additional details about Integration and Client Solutions, contact Anne Pinkowski.