Kudos & Congratulations

UIT staff recognized for their excellent work

Congratulations to Scott Wilgar (University Support Services) and Chris Robinson (CTO organization) for winning the last prize drawing!

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I want to recognize Vijay Kammili for being so amazing at helping with my requests and getting done so quickly.

~ Shaylee Wadsworth, University of Utah Health Care Navigation

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One snowy day, late in the afternoon or early in the evening, I had the opportunity to work with Connor Hoffman and Nate Remynse in the Information Security Office. As is often the case for us, there was no warning or planning, just an issue that had popped up. Connor and Nate immediately jumped in, dug into it, and applied their impressive knowledge and skills in analyzing, reaching conclusions, and making solid recommendations.

Sure, that’s what’s SUPPOSED to happen, but what’s impressive to me is the way they did it, even on a crazy day, in a crazy week, probably running on very little sleep. They immediately communicated with me, seemed eager to dive into yet another thing, and then proceeded to do what we’ve kind of come to take for granted, except that I don’t want to do that.

Working with this ISO team is both exciting and humbling, every day. It’s full of people like Connor and Nate, people who are very smart, passionate, and completely dedicated to their profession. Connor and Nate reminded me of that and of what a pleasure and privilege it is to work with this team.

Kudos and thanks to Connor and Nate — you’re great examples of what good looks like!

~ Chris Stucker, Information Security Office

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We had a couple of SSL certs ready to expire within the week and I was asked to scramble and get new certs. I submitted those two requests, and before I even had a chance to email the SOC and ask for attention, River Griffin had already completed the request. I'm so grateful that even over winter break, River got my SSL certificate request turned around in under 10 minutes! Fantastic work!

~ Steven Thorderson, ITS Ancillary Systems

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I’m writing in praise of Brad Zumbrunnen.

During November and most of December,  I was experiencing some bizarre, inexplicable, and sometimes crippling network issues when connected to the VPN. I say inexplicable because, even though things are working again, we’re still not 100% sure why it happened. Our best guess, though, is that it was something with my ISP.  Even though there is good reason to think it was never a problem on the university side, that wasn’t always obvious. And so, throughout the process, Brad doggedly investigated all the potential fixes on the university side and helped me with troubleshooting and workarounds. I bugged him on an almost daily basis, and he never slowed down in his attempts to try and help. He was great to work with, and I am deeply appreciative of his efforts.

~ Chris Stout, Office of General Counsel

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Nathan Eldredge is always quick to respond to network queries both in-person and over Teams. I really appreciate his help.

~ UIT customer

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I would like to give a shout-out to the teams involved in helping me to find, implement, and test an emergency solution for the U Safety Dispatch area to get ahold of support during the holiday break. The folks involved were Syndi Haywood, Mike Ekstrom, and Phil Kimball (ITS) from leadership; both hospital and campus help desk managers, Scott Lloyd and Joe Bernhard (ITS); and Julia Harrison, who deserves a special thanks for her perseverance and timely assistance. She was able to set up an Avaya emergency hidden key, which when used would create a calling tree for support staff. This solution was perfect for the need. Thank you all for your assistance. It was greatly appreciated.

~ Stacey Wood, CTO organization

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Beth Sallay, Matt Munro, and Eric Martinez are always very helpful when I have computer issues. They are extremely helpful. They come up with suggestions that make my job easier. They all resolve issues quickly and efficiently. Thanks for all you do.

~ Brent Ridgeway, CTO organization

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I have been working at the University/HCI for almost two years now. Throughout that period, I have called UIT countless times. This time was very different. McKenzie Spehar helped me, and she was hands down the best tech I've ever had. She is a fantastic problem solver, and went above and beyond to help me. I would love to see more techs like her at UIT. She rocks!

~ Katie Stokes, Huntsman Cancer Institute

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I want to recognize the following USS HR/Auxiliary and UIT staff for their outstanding work in working with the HR department to help keep the university's time tracking and payroll going when UKG (Kronos) was shutdown.

• Matt Edgren
• Mitch West
• Seenu (Srinivas) Peddola
• Clint Bowles
• Jordan Ainslie
• Jeremy Gillen
• Doug Kenner
• Jason Moeller
• Reza Sarijlou
• Shay Frank
• John Fresco
• Nelson LeDuc
• Geoff Anderson
• Thomas Radman
• Brian Sexton

A lot of people jumped in and went above and beyond, working many crazy hours during the holiday season to help make sure this issue was taken care of.

Great job!

~ Dan Thornley, University Support Services

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I would like to express my appreciation for both help desks and all the desktop support groups.

Over the past year, while we have been migrating from local Exchange servers to Exchange Online, the support needs of our users have skyrocketed. Whether they had a simple question, needed to restart Outlook, had to rebuild their email profiles, requested to migrate their shared resources, or reported complicated issues, it all resulted in a call to the help desks.

I cannot list everyone by name (especially since many are students and not allowed to be published here), but I would like to mention a few:

Phillip Kimball (ITS), Scott Lloyd, and Joe Bernhard (ITS) were instrumental in getting the "Mega Desk" set up and coordinating staffing issues to ensure that we were able to meet the increased demand for support.

Ben Johnson (ITS), Cody Exon, Tom Whitaker, Dzevad Fitozovic (ITS), Josie Jesse (ITS), Richard Brown (ITS), and I am sure I am missing a few others (my apologies). As the calls increased and the number of agents taking calls increased, the number of questions that were brought to these senior help desk agents, leads, and Tier 2 techs, also increased. However, they could not increase the number of senior staff like they could increase the number of agents on the phones, so senior staff had to step up to the plate and absorb that additional impact.

We ask a lot from our help desks, and they do a stellar job of handling that load.

We also placed a large burden on the desktop support teams (far too many people to mention by name) by asking them to work with their users to put together a list of all the shared resources that they use. This is much easier said than done. Some of the departments had 400 to 500 shared mailboxes that had to be matched with their 400 to 500 security groups, plus another couple hundred distribution lists. Gathering all this data and organizing it was a huge project that greatly aided in the success of this migration project.

~ Steve Maloy, CTO organization

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Our CTI and phones were having issues, and Tony Jess was so quick to help us, and we all really appreciate him. Thank you so much for helping us out! 🙂

~ Hiva Khorrami, Hospital Telecommunication Dispatch

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Huge thanks to Curtis Larsen, Dave Thomaz, Brandon Callahan, Christian Johnson, Chadd Barney, and Nathan Dougal for coming up with a great Wi-Fi solution for the Jon M. Huntsman Center for Athletics events!

I know it was more than a bit of a headache, but I know my colleagues and I really appreciate all the work you guys put in to construct the event configuration to satisfy all the various stakeholders involved. NOC has overall been extremely helpful with all of our various network/Wi-Fi needs.

~ Keith McClung, CTO organization

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Kathryn Erdmann has been a fantastic project manager throughout this entire PACE Plan software project. She has been exceptionally professional, kind, and attentive to our needs. She has and continues to provide great support as we work through new software bugs, needed updates, and general management of this very important life safety software project. I am very grateful for her insight, organization, and assistance all the way through. I would not hesitate to recommend her for any project. She has been a pleasure for my team to work with. She is a great partner and does great work!

~ Phil Chaffee, Emergency Management

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When my team is faced with a difficult UIT issue, I'm always blown away by Vijay Kammili's ability to troubleshoot and solve the issue. His skills are nothing short of miraculous, and I don't use those words lightly. Thank you, Vijay, for making a difference, time and again!

~ Swen Sullivan, Pharmacy Services Call Center

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Chris Robinson in the NOC has been helping me identify slowness for computers at Student Health Center at Madsen, Building 685, for months. It was something on our end, of course. But he went out there multiple times, moved the entire department to a new VLAN, offered suggestions as to what the problem could be — the entire time — never giving up even when it was very clear it was not a network issue.

I really appreciate all of the hard work the NOC does, but Chris really went above and beyond when he didn't have to. I've been getting some amazing help from UIT and he's another example.

~ Beth Sallay, CTO organization

 

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