Supported Products

Announcement: Help make decisions on hardware and software that is supported at UNH!
SPAC (Supported Products Advisory Committee) wishes to hear about the computing products and services you currently use. We'd also like to receive suggestions for additional items YOU think should be supported. Results of your feedback that you provide during the month of November 2008 will be taken into consideration during the December 2008 vote by SPAC. Please take 3 minutes of your time to complete this survey.

Announcement: Participate in a CIS feasability analysis of future e-mail and groupware needs!
UNH Computing and Information Services is conducting a feasibility analysis of implementing a single unified e-mail and groupware system for the campus. Such a unified system would allow CIS to provide better integrated services that would serve all campus clients more efficiently. Participating in our online survey is your opportunity to help document what needs you or your constituents expect to have in the forseeable future that can be met through a unified e-mail or groupware system. Future E-Mail and Groupware Needs Survey

Announcement: iPhone information. Apple recently released the new iPhone. UNH Telecom nor the UNH Computer Store are able to sell the iPhone because AT&T and Apple require the client to sign a two year contract directly with AT&T. CIS is presently not purchasing any iPhones and it is not on the supported product list. As a professional courtesy, CIS staff will attempt to determine whether a problem is related to CIS operated services (ex. iPhone cannot access a CIS service because the service itself is down). In addition, we offer a Frequently Asked Questions web page. For problems that do not fall into this category, iPhone owners are asked to call AT&T or Apple for advice.

General Considerations

SPAC provides a forum for faculty, students, staff, and administrators to make decisions regarding which hardware and software products Computing & Information Services supports. Given the wide representation of campus constituents on SPAC, such decisions are influenced by the entire UNH community.

The Supported Products List allows Computing & Information Services to:

Improve the services we provide by promoting migration to selected technologies and concentrating on these limited products in greater depth;
Coordinate consulting, investigation of site and volume licensing, upgrades, training, and documentation to encourage a more consistent environment through use of a standard suite of appropriate technologies;
Plan effectively for introducing new products and phasing out older products;
Develop precise goals and objectives for CIS support staff to optimize staff training and development in order to offer reliable, high quality services.

If a product is on the UNH Supported Products List, faculty, staff, and students can get assistance with problems related to use of those products from CIS free of charge. If a product is not on the list, those who need assistance will receive one hour of free consultation as resources allow. After the initial hour of service, the client may be charged if additional work is required to solve the problem. This policy will begin with the publication of the UNH Supported Products List in December 2000.

Supported Products Advisory Committee Charge

The Supported Products Advisory Committee (SPAC) will meet quarterly to evaluate requests for placing products on or deleting products from the Supported Products List. Members of the committee will represent campus constituents and will act as intermediaries to bring information to and from their constituents. SPAC reports to the President or her designee. The Committee will be comprised of one representative from each of the following campus committees/departments:

Committee/Department	Constituency	Representative	Appoint Date
Faculty Senate	Faculty	Ken Flesher	Fall 2004
Graduate Student Organization	Graduate students	Jennifer Mandel	Fall 2005
Student Senate	Undergraduate students	Vacant
Dean's Council	Deans	Sherry Vellucci	Fall 2008
Committee for Instructional Technology	Academic community	Vacant
Finance and Administration Council	Financial community	Irving Canner	Spring 2004
FIS Steering Committee	Financial central offices	Julien Lafleur	Fall 2004
SIS Steering Committee	Administrative student community	Matthew Magnusson	Fall 2003
HR Steering Committee	Human Resources	Kevin Hinchey	Fall 2004
Research Information Systems Steering Committee	Sponsored Programs administration	Suzanne Huard	Fall 2003
Student & Academic Services	Student affairs	Vacant
USNH Dunlap Center	USNH	Lorna Jacobsen	Fall 2004
Computing & Information Services	CIS senior management	Marshall White	Fall 2003
Computing & Information Services	Chair	Scott Valcourt	Fall 2007

How the representative is chosen will be the purview of the particular committee represented.

SPAC Term

Representatives to SPAC will serve two-year terms that begin in September of each year and can be extended at the discretion of the particular committee they represent.

Scheduled Meetings

SPAC will meet from 12:40-2:00 on the first Tuesday in December and March, the last Tuesday in May, and the second Tuesday in September.

Emergency Measures

In the event that a critical issue warrants immediate attention, that issue shall be brought to the attention of the Assistant Vice President of CIS and the Manager of Client Services. They will bring the issue to the CIS Directors and, via email, inform the members of SPAC. The issue shall be decided by 1) calling an emergency session of SPAC members or 2) putting the issue to a vote by SPAC members via electronic mail.

Quorum

A quorum shall consist of 50% of the voting members.

SPAC Member Responsibilities

To review recommendations for additions and deletions from the Supported Products Lists and to solicit input from the member's constituency on products being considered;
To process requests from their constituencies to put product on or delete products from the Supported Products List;
To bring to the committee/constituency they represent recommendations under review, to provide an overview of the recommendations, and to lead a discussion which will provide the representative with the information he or she needs to represent the committee's viewpoint to the other members of SPAC;
To attend quarterly meetings and emergency sessions or to designate a substitute to attend in his or her place and to inform the SPAC chairperson who the substitute will be;
To come to meetings prepared to articulate their constituency's viewpoint as well as to vote on the recommendations under review;
To engage in the discussion to support or reject the CIS recommendation to add or delete a product;
To vote to support the recommendation, to reject the recommendation, or to direct the CIS Evaluation Team to do additional investigation for future consideration. A simple majority vote will decide all issues. Only SPAC members, or a substitute they have designated, who is present at the meeting where the vote takes place can vote;
To report their committee's action to the SPAC Chairperson and any relevant information surrounding that action.

SPAC Chairperson's Responsibilities

To maintain a set of requests from the campus community to add or delete products from the Supported Products List. Requests would be made via a web site that the chairperson would ensure was maintained;
To assign CIS staff who have experience and expertise in the particular area to be investigated to ad hoc evaluation teams (in consultation with staff supervisors) to investigate products that are under consideration to be added or deleted from the Supported Products List, to designate a staff member to serve as chairperson and to assign a deadline for completion of the evaluation;
To bring the evaluation team's summary and recommendation to the CIS Directors for review;
Upon completion of CIS Directors' review, to send the reviewed summary and recommendation to SPAC members;
To prepare an agenda for the quarterly SPAC meeting;
To decide whether or not to have representatives of the evaluation teams attend the SPAC meeting;
To serve as moderator at the quarterly SPAC meeting;
To maintain the disposition of SPAC review of products;
To receive SPAC members reports concerning action of SPAC recommendations for their constituency committees and to report these to SPAC members and CIS Directors;
To publish and maintain the annual Supported Products List via a web site.

CIS Staff Evaluation Team Responsibilities

The designated chairperson of the ad hoc team will be responsible for-
- ensuring the team meets the assigned deadline in completing its report
- assigning team members to create the team's report
- recording the team's vote
- sending the report to the SPAC Chairperson
- being available to represent the evaluation team's viewpoint to CIS Directors and/or to SPAC;
To investigate and articulate the impact of adding or deleting a product from the Supported Products List using an evaluation form which outlines the technical issues and includes impact statements regarding the effects of the decision on the CIS organization and the campus community;
To discuss the results of the investigation and to vote (Yes or No) on whether to add or delete a product;
To create a one to two-page summary of the findings of the evaluation team including the outcome of the vote;
To send the summary to the SPAC Chairperson;

CIS Responsibilities in Providing Support for Supported Products:

Maintain expertise for supported products
Provide or facilitate support
Coordinate support, training, and documentation for the supported product.
When appropriate and cost effective, seek site or volume licensing for supported products.

CIS Responsibilities in Providing Assistance with Unsupported Products:

No support is available.
One hour of courtesy consulting may be provided to help caller assess options to migrate to supported alternative.
Referrals to vendors or other sources may be provided, when available.
Neither CIS training nor documentation will be available.

Customer Responsibilities for Support:

Be familiar with basic desktop skills, attend available training, and read available documentation, as appropriate.
Have valid licenses for supported product(s); (CIS cannot provide support in cases of invalid licenses).
Be able to provide the following information when requesting support: name, campus location, telephone number, email address, type of computer in use, software and version in use, the desired outcome, and a description of the problem encountered.
Work with CIS staff in troubleshooting problems.
Run diagnostics provided by CIS or manufacturer.
Maintain regular backup procedures for their desktop system.

Criteria Used to Evaluate Products for Supported Status:

Industry-wide acceptance and/or standard
Number of customers who require the software
Number of departments represented by customers requiring software
Available CIS expertise or potential expertise in the application
Volume and site licensing availability and update costs
Capability for UNH to provide hardware service on campus or through mail-in warranty service
Demonstrated success in selling to higher education market
Products are considered high quality, latest technology, and a good price for the relevant product niche
Price protection and other customer friendly terms and conditions
Manufacturer provides direct dedicated sales and customer service representatives
Platform availability at CIS/UNH
Integration with other supported products
Availability, quality, and cost of vendor supplied product support
Conformance with CIS, University and USNH strategic directions

Supported Products List

The Supported Products List will be published on the UNH Intranet on the second Tuesday of December of each year and updated quarterly one-week following the quarterly SPAC meetings. This will allow departments to plan fiscal year budgets based on the published standards.

The Supported Products List will serve to set standards for the campus community for desktop hardware and software as well as server hardware and network operating systems. Members of the campus community will then follow the published standards or understand that they will not receive support from CIS to solve problems they encounter using non-standard hardware and/or software.

The Supported Products List will include a complement of software compatible with the systems purchased under the Faculty Desktop Replacement program for at least four years from the date a system is purchased.

The software products supported by CIS fall within two categories. Category 1 covers products that are voted upon by SPAC. Applications that are commercially available are included in Category 1. Category 2 covers products that are freeware or are paid for by CIS, and SPAC does not vote on these. Freeware is tested by CIS staff for six to eight weeks as new versions are released. If no problems are found, the new version will be added to the Software Supported Products List. If the recommendation by CIS staff is to not support the new version, an explanation will be included on the Supported Product List. Products purchased by CIS are packaged and distributed in compliance with contracts negotiated with vendors. CIS seeks input from SPAC regarding these products; however, version upgrades, as well as support for earlier versions are not subject to vote by SPAC members. Changes in support of these products are announced well in advance through the Campus Journal, Signals, The New Hampshire, and the web.

Defined Levels of Support

CIS categorizes products as supported and unsupported. All products that are not identified as "supported" are by definition "unsupported". The following Support Levels have been established for the Supported Products List:

Basic: Support associated with the basic installation and troubleshooting of the hardware, software and drivers, and diagnosis of system errors. This level of support does not include "how to" support. Example: Installation and troubleshooting of Windows XP NOT How do I create a mailmerge with Microsoft Word.
Training: Development and coordination of UNH Instructor Led, Computer Based Training, Video Tape and contracted training. Example: MS Office applications.
Advanced: Support associated with selected functionality of software, such as migration of electronic mail program content between two different e-mail programs.

This page is maintained by Computing & Information Services
Send comments to CIS Webmaster.
Last modified October 6, 2008.