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Application administrators – we generally don’t think much about what they do – but they are critical to keeping many of our university applications running smoothly. The Office of Information (OIT) Constituent Services unit is key to helping ensure that all faculty, staff and students have the application support we need to be successful. In other words, making sure all of us have the proper tools in our toolbox and an understanding of how to use those tools.

The CU Denver and Anschutz Medical Campus Constituent Services team is led by program director Dan Haggar. Haggar heads up a dedicated team of ten providing end-user support for services such as Zoom, Qualtrics, Formstack, Tableau, Cherwell (the system used to log OIT tickets) and support for the content management system (CMS) transition. The busy group also:

• Ensures faculty, staff and students are properly licensed for various applications through the university
• Manages software architecture and design
• Supports Sitefinity code deployment and site creation for the CMS transition project including implementing Searchblox (a new enterprise search tool)
• Administers configuration changes to enhance application capabilities and security
• Supports Tableau data analytics and visualization service
• Creates user how-to guides for application services such as email, listservs, Outlook calendar assistant, and tips and tricks for using the Outlook Web App (important for accessing our new service Microsoft Teams!)

The Constituent Services team brings together tools and services as part of a suite of services. “We consult with individuals and departments about application configurations and data integration, answer requests and questions that come in to the OIT service desk, and proactively search for applications that will be useful for our university users,” explains Haggar. He has seen his share of technology changes at the university, having been at CU for 16 years and in his current role for more than three of those years.

One of the recent success stories he is excited to share is the launch of the Microsoft Teams app that OIT began piloting earlier this year. Joy Waughtal, professional research assistant with the mHealth Impact Lab at the Colorado School of Public Health, explains: “We joined the Teams pilot early on because we needed collaboration software as we have multiple projects in different stages and team members that are rarely in the same office at the same time. The Constituent Services team was quick to introduce Teams to us. The app has provided us with streamlined collaboration, the ability to edit documents together on one platform, and a chat feature to communicate quickly. We have transitioned into using Teams for our weekly meetings and upload an agenda that everyone can edit in real time together as we touch base and update all projects.”

CU Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus has a number of security approved site-wide licenses for software and applications allowing free access, or a discounted rate, to faculty, staff and students. Learn more about services such as Office 365 and Teams on the OIT software page.

The Office of Information Technology has been instrumental in helping move exciting initiatives forward and impacting success for the university. For an overview of services offered by OIT, check out the CU Productions overview video on our YouTube channel: CU Denver|Anschutz OIT or visit our website: oit.ucdenver.edu.

This is the second article in the series OIT services in the spotlight.