Technology Services is committed to providing a user friendly, secure, stable, and ubiquitous computing environment for faculty and students. Care is taken to make sure that all software deployed is ready to use with minimum configuration. The sheer volume of software titles loaded on each computer requires a significant amount of time to validate, test, and configure to make sure failures do not occur when working individually or in class. For this reason it is necessary to maintain guidelines regarding software deployment and changes to the instructional computing infrastructure. Your assistance in working within these guidelines is essential to ensuring the success of your class and those of your peers in Technology Services and partner facilities.

Software Submission Request Deadlines

In order to meet the academic semester deadlines Technology Services and partners units have joined Campus Computing Sites (SITES) in using the following schedule to accommodate faculty software requests:

Software submission requests must be made online prior to the above dates using the software request submission form.

Persons requesting software are expected to provide Technology Services acccess to the title for evaluation and testing. This can be as simple as providing a URL to download the software from a vendor web site or notifying us the software is already licensed by the college (for information on college licensed software please visit the Installed Software page). Otherwise, media will need to be delivered to us for evaluation. Details on material drop off are provided after completing an online submission.

We will not deploy requested software without proof of appropriate licensing and will require a copy of the license to be submitted with the software request.

It is difficult to deploy a title to a single computer or set of computers. Ideally, requested software will need a license agreement with enough seats to cover all our workstations or the agreement must allow for “keying,” a process that permits only a specific number of instances of the program to be run at any one time. In certain instances a title may be deployable to an individual target location(s). This scenario can be explored but may not be an option for all installations.

Software Submission Policies

Technology Services will do its best to accommodate all valid software requests. It is possible that some cases may result in insurmountable technical, licensing, or deployment issues; therefore, Technology Services reserves the right to decline any software request as it sees fit. Should that scenario arise, it will be brought to the submitter's attention as soon as possible; at this point, our staff will work with instructional staff to determine if there are potential alternative solutions.

Software requests submitted after the semester deadline will be handled on a case by case basis. Turnaround time will vary depending on our staff availability and the complexity of the deployment issues the software presents. To ensure maximum stability and uptime no additional software will be deployed during the last 3 weeks of each term.

Additional Policies:

• Requested software must function in the currently deployed Macintosh and Windows environments.

• Software titles do not remain in the load set in perpetuity. An expiration date will be agreed upon prior to deployment.
  

• Unless otherwise agreed upon end user support and training on requested software is the responsibility of the submitter. 

• Requesting parties are encouraged to test software packages in the classroom computing environment before purchasing a site license, in order to identify potential conflicts. Technology Services staff is available to work with the requesting party to facilitate testing.

• These policies and procedures also apply to a request to update existing software.

Compliance Assistance

Technology Services will help faculty answer any questions arising about these policies and provide appropriate information to assist faculty in meeting the requirements where applicable.