Author Archives: Bob Lim

Women’s History Month 2023

Colleagues,

March is Women’s History Month, highlighting the contributions of women to contemporary society. The commemoration is a California legacy, began in 1978 as “Women’s History day” in Sonoma County, California, and was championed by Gerda Lerner and the National Women’s History Alliance to be recognized as a national week (1980) and then month (1987) in the United States, spreading internationally after that.

Learn more at: https://womenshistorymonth.gov/

What’s more, International Women’s Day, a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women, occurs annually on March 8th. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide as groups come together to celebrate women’s achievements or rally for women’s equality. You might take this opportunity to:

  • celebrate women’s achievements

  • raise awareness about women’s equality

  • lobby for accelerated gender parity

  • fundraise for female-focused charities

Learn more at https://www.internationalwomensday.com/

Thank you to all of the women working at SJSU IT. Your voices are valued and we’re glad you’ve chosen our campus as a place to build your success.

Best Regards,
The SJSU IT Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee

Norma Brown

Ryan Campbell

Tino Cruz

Kara Li

Bob Lim

Matthew Loo

Maggie Panahi

Willie Simon

 

SJSU IT Tips – Cyber Security for Work and Home

Campus Community,

Here’s a quick tip to protect your home devices and personal accounts against cyber attack: SJSU IT offers no-cost access to enterprise-grade security solutions. Check them out. 

  • Sophos Home Premium has real-time antivirus protection, ransomware protection, advanced web protection, and more. You can install this on up to five devices with one @sjsu.edu account. Download it now at no cost. 
  • LastPass Premium Password Manager stores all your passwords and automatically suggests super strong passwords, among other advanced features. LastPass even syncs across your PC, phone, and other devices. You can sign up today.

You can find more security and safety information at the SJSU IT Safe Computing website. 

Thank you Cole Gunter, our Information Security Coordinator, and Noel McCormick, our Information Security Analyst & Program Coordinator, for maintaining these security software options for our university and providing these tips. As always, the SJSU IT Service Desk is here to help by phone at (408) 924-1530 or online.

Thanks,
Bob Lim
Vice President for Information Technology
and CIO at San Jose State University

SJSU IT Tips – Google Workspace

Campus community,

Take a couple minutes and check out these helpful tips for using Google Workspace (Drive, Chat, Calendar, Sheets, and more). Here’s a quick breakdown of some new features you can try out:

  • Invite users without Google Accounts to create files in your Shared Drives. This builds on your ability to share and edit with outside partners or folks from other universities. Learn more.
  • “Interactive Timeline View” visualizes data in Google Sheets, a great fit for task management and project management data. Learn more.
  • Expiring access controls in Google Drive allow you to set expiration dates on your shares, only giving access for a defined period of time. Learn more.
  • “Time Insights” analyzes your calendar activity and shows you how you’ve spent your scheduled time. This feature highlights things like how many 1:1 meetings you schedule, how many regular (3+ guests) meetings you schedule, your total meeting time per week, and even what your remaining non-meeting time looks like. Learn more.
  • “Manage Approvals” is great for departments that need to produce collaborative documents and communications, helping you review and approve documents before they’re released. Learn more.
  • “Conversation Summaries” collapses big Google Chats to be more organized. Learn more.

Thanks Andy Trembley, our Cloud Systems Analyst and Google Administrator, for providing these tips. And as always, the SJSU IT Service Desk is here to help by phone at (408) 924-1530 or online.

Thanks,
Bob Lim
Vice President for Information Technology
and CIO at San Jose State University

Tyre Nichols

Colleagues,

We are all saddened and angered by the latest act of police brutality against an African American, resulting in the murder of Tyre Nichols. Last Friday’s message from Chief Michael Carroll stresses the importance of community and trust, and shares helpful resources right here on campus, including the Black Leadership Opportunity Center and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. We’re including his email (see below) to ensure everyone knows about these options for expressing their concerns and frustrations.

These kinds of horrific events affect all of us. Please take the moments you need to reflect inward or to offer kindness to a coworker. Our humanity and sense of community can help us through troubling times.

Sincerely,
The SJSU IT Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee

Norma Brown

Ryan Campbell

Tino Cruz

Kara Li
Bob Lim

Matthew Loo

Maggie Panahi

 Willie Simon

Congratulations, 2022 Sparta Award Winners

One of my favorite messages to send all year is this one, announcing the winners of the SJSU IT Sparta Awards. These awards are given to SJSU IT staff, who embody our collaborative spirit, commitment to innovation, and everyday leadership. Nominees are submitted through an open process, and I get feedback on each candidate from the SJSU IT Peer Consultation Group. This award is given by your coworkers and teammates. For 2022, we had more nominees than in the award‘s history, which truly shows our culture of mutual respect and pride. It’s truly my pleasure to share this year’s winners with you.

Sparta Award Individual Winner 2022 Mona Hall with SJSU CIO Bob Lim and SJSU President Cynthia Teniente-Matson

The 2022 SJSU IT Individual Sparta Award goes to Mona Hall. Last year, Mona spearheaded projects in OnBase, collaborating with other departments to streamline processes across the university. A prime example is her work on the “Forms Portal,” where she added a feature that auto-filled student data into Admissions and Records OnBase forms. Previously, students self-reported things like names, ID, and other academic information. This meant there were lots of errors and inaccuracies that needed to be identified and cleared up manually. Now forms are more detailed than ever, routed to the correct destination quicker, and with little or no corrections necessary. What’s more, this is an automation that can be built upon further in the future.

2022 Sparta Award Team Winners with SJSU CIO Bob Lim and SJSU President Cynthia Teniente-Matson

The 2022 SJSU IT Team Sparta Award goes to the PeopleSoft Upgrade Team: Ryan Campbell; Harish Chander; Steve Chang; Donovan D’Anna; Cuong Doan; Joseph Hotchkiss; Mitesh Kini; Rashmi Kumar; Janice Lew; Eric Matthews; An H Nguyen; Atul Pala; Peter Pham; Marco Scardina; Brenden Sparks; Ivelina Stoyanova; Jeffrey Tan; Jocelyn Tom; Andrew Trembley; Lam Vu; Jane Wang; and Andrew Weiglein.

Implementing an upgrade to PeopleSoft impacts almost every user on campus. So, when early planning began for a necessary update to MySJSU (including PeopleTools and Appsian), this team collaborated with dozens of campus units to ensure everything went smoothly on the Go Live weekend of September 23rd to 26th. The IT teams performed setup, troubleshooting, and coordinated testing for hundreds of pages, over 50 integrations, and a new interface and menu structure for MySJSU. These simultaneous projects (in addition to regular support and the AWS infrastructure changes) represent a significant accomplishment for the university and campus community.

Thank you to all the winners for your incredible effort. And of course, thank you to everyone who took the time to submit nominations and lend support to your colleagues. And thank you to the SJSU IT Peer Consultation Group for their insight on the candidates and continued support of the awards as a whole.

Please join me in congratulating this year’s winners!

Best regards,
Bob-