This month I want to highlight two summer projects we have going on.

Inside Augsburg’s revision

The time has come to modernize Inside Augsburg. The technical underpinnings of the site date back to around 2000. Maintenance is difficult and time consuming because it’s homegrown. It’s served us well but we’ve outgrown it. We have far more services that are integrated with our AugNet logins (called single sign-on in ITspeak) than we can put in the menu system on Inside Augsburg. It’s a fairly static and unchanging site beyond the social feed and the calendar feed. Plus we need to improve the mobile-ness of the site.

So we are exploring modern platforms that serve as an online hub for schools. We’ve begun connecting with departments who have a vested interest in Inside Augsburg and are starting demonstrations of possible solutions.

The future state we want to get to includes

• A reliable, secure, vendor-supported platform.
• A mobile app as an option beyond the website.
• A platform that connects to other systems to bring dynamic and personal information to you — things you need to know about like moodle deadlines, Navigate appointments, and eventually Workday notices.
• A means to have the process of logging in (entering your username and passphrase) be separate from and connected to Inside Augsburg but not the purpose of Inside Augsburg.

I expect we’ll see tangible results come winter from the first phase of this project. Since these platforms have much potential, it’ll take us a few years to grow into it.

Mortensen WiFi Upgrade

We are replacing the WiFi hardware in Mortensen Hall this summer. That includes the WiFi access points you see in the ceilings as well as the cabling that runs to those access points. Our last upgrade of the Mortensen WiFi was in 2016 so it is really time to do it. Due to how expensive such a project is, we gradually upgrade WiFi across the campus year by year, building by building.

This upgrade will increase the bandwidth and signal strength in Mort which means faster and more reliable WiFi for residents come fall move in.