RAD with Sharepoint

November 11th, 2009

Rapid Application Development with ITaP’s MOSS

This blog post was written in preparation for the November Sharepoint User’s Group meeting.

Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) is a great platform for rapid web application development. Over the past year Science Administration has decommissioned a number of kludgy, legacy LAMP web applications with simpler, lower-maintenance and more functional custom lists in the IT@P hosted Sharepoint environment.

Unlike most enterprises that use MOSS for web application development, we do not have administration access or control to the Sharepoint servers. We’re limited to administering our Site Collection. This severe limitation has dictated our usage and development patterns towards a bias of primarily only using in-browser customizations and configurations. We have not yet had the opportunity to develop custom web parts or work with application pools or even site collections within this hosted environment. Our development methodology is lean and agile and our decision process agnostic. I believe that this is a good thing: we’ve successfully added Sharepoint to our toolbox without being overcome.

We strive to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the various application development environments from which we can choose. Having this understanding with Sharepoint is particularly important. Given the dirt-cheap and praise-worthy hosting model from IT@P, their MOSS environment is excellent at two specific things:

  1. Small, secure, MS Office document repositories for users on Windows desktops
  2. Custom lists linked together and used by multiple users

There are many opensource and cheap best-of-breed discussion applications, wikis and blogs that are vastly superior to Sharepoint’s offerings. Simple, cheap and high-quality document repositories are harder to find.

We’ve had great success by intelligently creating linked custom lists in Sharepoint where in the past we would have seen an VB/Access/FileMaker/FoxPro database with its unique problems and limitations or a full-fledged web application with a sizable time requirement,  maintenance overhead and requisite commitment of stability.

Many of the administrative (non-student facing) applications that we’re asked to develop serve a relatively small number of faculty and staff and implement local business processes. Having Sharepoint in our toolbox gives us the option to rapidly develop and deploy a simple and maintainable system once we’ve decided that the business process can be squeezed into the stock Sharepoint configuration. We can piece together and deliver a custom “application” with ease and speed.

A few of the disadvantages of Sharepoint:

  • It works best in IE/Windows.
  • Sometimes it only works in IE/Windows. (This is a critical problem for a computing environment as diverse as Science’s.)
  • It’s non-trivial to make it look like anything other than Sharepoint.
  • IT@P hosting – you don’t have the access level that other Sharepoint developers have.
  • Often, the only way to fix something is to delete a site or list and start over.

Future or advanced usage of MOSS largely rely upon IT@P enabling features and/or integrating with other Purdue enterprise applications – business intelligence/PerformancePoint, custom web parts, portal, federated portals, the Business Data Catalog, …

Other work is: implementing the Purdue M&M web template as a Sharepoint master page.

Isaac Vetter – isaac@purdue.eduivetter@chat.science.purdue.edu
Brandon Baker – baker37@purdue.edu

Accessing Taleo from Mac or Linux

November 9th, 2009

As many of you have probably discovered, the Taleo site requires Internet Explorer to review resumes and do other hiring manager functions.  For Windows users, this isn’t a problem, but not everyone has a Windows box handy.  If you need to access Taleo from a Mac or Linux machine, you can use the Opera browser.  Here are the instructions to get it set up:

  • In Preferences, click on the “Advanced” tab and select “Content”
  • Click the “Manage Site Preferences…” button
  • Click the “Add…” button
  • Enter “purdue.taleo.net” in the “Site” field
  • Choose “Open all pop-ups” in the “Pop-ups” drop-down menu
  • Click the “Network tab”
  • Select “Mask as Internet Explorer” in the “Browser identification” drop-down menu (note that “Identify as Internet Explorer” will NOT work)
  • Click “OK”
  • Click “Close”
  • Click “OK”

That’s all there is to it!

Announcing GradAY: Programmatic access to graduate student applicant data for authorized consumers

August 11th, 2009

GradAY

Over the past six months, Purdue’s College’s of Agriculture, Engineering, Management, Science, the Graduate School and IT@P have collaborated on a campus-wide project to facilitate better processes for the graduate admission decisions. Specifically, by enabling more automated access to graduate student application data. This data is streamed from the external hosted service, ApplyYourself.com, to an IT@P network share. The Graduate School IT staff authorizes college, department or program AD users to access their applicants’ xml and pdf files by graduate program.

Contact:

To inquire towards getting access to your graduate applicant’s data, please contact Purdue’s Graduate School IT staff at: gradweb@purdue.edu

Technical Documentation: sp.itap.purdue.edu/science/admin/IT/GradAY/

Background

We believe that enabling greater faculty participation in the review and evaluation of applicants directly results in higher quality admit decisions and students. Purdue Graduate program offices spent significant time and energy in the day-to-day work of distribution of applicant data to reviewers as well as the collection and aggregation of reviewers’ feedback and recommendations. This work is directly proportional to the number of reviewers. Additionally, the customization of applicant review processes and metrics is frequently desired at the college, department or even program level.

Multiple technology strategies or frameworks can be used to streamline the applicant review and feedback process. The central requirement is providing secure, accessible and automated access to applicant data. The recently completed GradAY project makes available xml and pdf applicant data, per program, over a campus network share.

College, departments and graduate programs can manually or automatically pull, parse and present this data to reviewers. This architecture encourages the level of customization desired from one program to the next. Technological methods of enabling access to applicant data and collecting feedback should depend upon the level of technical literacy and technical support available.

Participants

  • Agriculture
    • Eric Adams
    • Ben Fox
    • Charles Smith
  • Engineering
    • Brian Brinegar
  • Management
    • John Fassnacht
  • Science
    • Cheryl Crabill
    • Isaac Vetter
  • The Graduate School
    • JoAnne Sandifur

Isaac Vetter

Purdue VDI Bake-Off!

July 28th, 2009

Upon attending a VDI presentation, please take a minute to complete the appropriate survey VMware, Quest/Microsoft, Citrix.

We’re excited to announce that the IT community at Purdue University is hosting a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) “Bake-Off” and you are invited to attend the event.  There are three vendors that will be presenting  their virtual desktop solutions and those vendors are VMWare, Quest/Microsoft and Citrix.  This will give those attending these presentations and labs the opportunity to compare and contrast the different VDI technologies.  This event will be held at College of Management’s Rawls Hall. Each of the the three vendors will present three times to ensure space and availability.

AGENDA for the Purdue University VDI Bake Off

  • Day 1 ­ Thursday, July 30th
    • 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM – VDI Presentations + Q&A
      • VMWare Presentation (Rawls Hall Room 3058)
      • Citrix/Microsoft Presentation (Rawls Hall Room 3082)
      • Quest (Rawls Hall Room 2082)
    • 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM – LABS
      • VMWare Presentation (Rawls Hall Room 3058)
      • Citrix/Microsoft Presentation (Rawls Hall Room 3082)
      • Quest (Rawls Hall Room 2082)
    • 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM – VDI Presentations + Q&A
      • VMWare Presentation (Rawls Hall Room 3058)
      • Citrix/Microsoft Presentation (Rawls Hall Room 3082)
      • Quest (Rawls Hall Room 2082)
    • 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM – LABS
      • VMWare Presentation (Rawls Hall Room 3058)
      • Citrix/Microsoft Presentation (Rawls Hall Room 3082)
      • Quest (Rawls Hall Room 2082)
    • Day 2 ­ Friday, July 31st
      • 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM – VDI Presentations + Q&A
        • VMWare Presentation (Rawls Hall Room 3058)
        • Citrix/Microsoft Presentation (Rawls Hall Room 3082)
        • Quest (Rawls Hall Room 2082)
      • 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM – LABS
        • VMWare Presentation (Rawls Hall Room 3058)
        • Citrix/Microsoft Presentation (Rawls Hall Room 3082)
        • Quest (Rawls Hall Room 2082)

If you have any questions you should really contact Cameron Smith, our VDI Technical Lead, or Luis Arias, the Project Manager.

Isaac Vetter
ivetter@chat.science.purdue.edu
VDI Technical Team
Purdue University

We should all be using Google Apps for the Enterprise: the point of academic IT

July 28th, 2009

Academic IT, by which I mean IT staff and organizations at the center, department and college level, often exists in strength merely because of the obstinacy of faculty and the protectionist and closely guarded sovereignty of academic units.

For these IT staff (of which I am one) this is not a productive raison d’etre. Duplicating services offered by central, administrative, larger and wealthier IT organization is foolish. Oftentimes,  these central organizations even display the same protectionist, negative attitude.

By definition, academic IT exists in a uniquely envious position. By relinquishing control of the mundane and commoditized to central IT whenever possible, academic IT has the opportunity to create and help create real value by working closely with researchers and instructors. Almost certainly, you know multiple (inter)nationally recognized researchers and award-winning instructors that are looking, or at least amenable to, ground-changing use of technology. You know them because they’re the ones that always complain about the printer … or the website … or …

Interestingly, academic application development, the area with potentially the largest payoff, is the area that’s often least supported. Instead, we end up with system administrators spending their time and energy maintaining basic services (mail, directory/account creation and deletion, wiki, dhcp, server hypervisors, client OS and application deployment, etc) and managing/being the helpdesk.

Of course, the worth and apparent expertise of a helpdesk shrinks proportionally to the square of its distance from the user. Good user services are a requisite for gaining the trust (and assumption of competence) necessary to meaningfully engage researchers and instructors; but ultimately, helpdesk is also a basic service. The real value and payoff* for IT lie in aligning its goals with academia’s (research, instruction, outreach) through the creation of new applications.

* payoff is defined as grant dollars and application licensing.

Isaac Vetter
ivetter@chat.science.purdue.edu

The above is just my opinion from a mere half-decade working in IT within higher-education. Some of my best friends are academic sysadmins! Please add a comment below.

Access to PWL’s Cognos

July 8th, 2009

If you have access to Purdue’s Cognos software, upon logging in here: https://reporting.itap.purdue.edu/cognos8/ you should be able to access the folders in “Cognos Connection”.

Upon logging in, click the “Cognos Connection” link in the welcome screen. You’ll be presented with a hierarchy of folders.

Isaac Vetter

Hobson’s connectU presentation

July 8th, 2009

Improving Applicant Review by treating the WebCenter as a Remote Data Application Programming Interface
Isaac Vetter, Data Architect, College of Science, Purdue University
Hobson’s Uconnect

We assume that greater faculty participation in the evaluation of applicants directly results in higher-quality admit decisions. Offices spend significant time and energy in the day-to-day work of distribution of applicant data to reviewers as well as the collection and aggregation of reviewers’ feedback and recommendations. This work is directly proportional to the number of reviewers. Additionally, the customization of applicant review processes and metrics is frequently desired at the college, department or even program level.

Multiple technology tools can be used to streamline the applicant review process. The core requirement is providing secure, accessible and automated access to applicant data. In this session, learn how Purdue University accomplishes this by utilizing ApplyYourself’s paid FTP export service in combination with a scripted HTTP client. College departments and graduate programs can manually or automatically pull and present this data to reviewers. This architecture allows the use of existing reviewer computer accounts, as well as encourages the level of customization desired from one program to the next.

Download Presentation: .pptx .pdf

Questions? Collaboration opportunities? Please contact me: isaac@purdue.edu

COS-IT SSL Cert

May 29th, 2009

We’ve switched the SSL certificate for the COS-IT portal to use a free-for-EDU ips|CA certificate. As such you might get a certificate warning or error when logging in, depending on your browser and/or operating system.

Was any of the other IT groups involved in making a video?

April 16th, 2009

Were any of you involved in making a video for the COS that was presented to the President on the 15th?

VPN and Wireless IP Ranges

January 30th, 2009

Some of you may find this information useful when setting up firewalls and other network security applications. This information is direct from ITaP, and is accurate as of January 30, 2009.

VPN
L2TP (Cisco Client) VPN: 172.21.224.0/19
PPTP (vpn.purdue.edu) VPN: 128.210.192.0/23

Wireless
PAL 1.0: 128.210.202.0/25
PAL 2.0: 128.211.160.0/20, 128.211.176.0/21