Work Term Report 4: UofG Computing & Communications Services MD

⇘ Left: the old OVC CCS building, Right: new OVC CCS building as of ~2 years ago. OVC CCS used to be ran out of a house!

This term I worked for the University of Guelph, under the Computing & Information Service, the central IT department. I worked directly in the Managed Desktops department, which controlled the networked devices on campus. Some fun facts about both CCS and my work term:

• This term I spent the entire time working within the OVC, working with a very small team. I was one of three within the OVC offices alongside some additional coop help this term, so I was given much more privileges in terms of ticket handling.
• The OVC is one of the largest veterinary schools in the world, and has 2 split IT teams managing all the devices within it, from medical computers to office desktops. To expand on this further, I worked with the MD team, while there is an informatics team for more advanced hospital equipment and machines.
• The domain of CCS MD OVC is essentially half of the university physically, covering all of the veterinary college and the guelph small and large animal hospitals.
• This term was focused on both standardization of devices around the OVC, bringing machines up to date and sending notices to users who had machines which could pose security vulnerabilities. The last half of the term was also focused on training and adjusting new coop students for roles around the OVC, since I have been with the group there for nearly 2 years.

Since I had already had 3 previous terms working with CCS, I had decided to give myself some final goals which I would try to improve on throughout the semester. The main 3 I had planned were:

• Literacy: Technological Literacy
• Professional & Ethical Behaviour: Leadership
• Communicating: Written Communication

My first major goal was to learn different standard processes in machine maintenance and data safety, especially when updating machines to mitigate risk. I personally had my own servers and machines at home, and wanted to know strong techniques to use in my own maintenance. I have had about 10-15 tickets throughout the 4 month term working on machines that needed to be updated that held important research/financial data, and I was able to professionally backup the information for safe updating. I have begun to use the techniques learned in my home office as well, backing up everything from documents for school to movies. I believe overall this skill really developed and sticked with me during the term because I also found a way to apply my learning from work in my own hobbies.

I also wanted to further my skill in leading and teaching others both in technical language and general work. Leadership is a core skill regardless of what path I may take in the future, and having the ability to be both confident and open to communication with others when planning and working is extremely important to me. I have always been much more of an introverted personality type, so It does not come casually and it was a step outside of my comfort zone. I spent most of the semester with newer coops shadowing me, trying to learn the position for the terms after mine. My main responsibilites with them were showing the general conventions of work inside the OVC and was usually the first person to help with tickets or issues. I learned much, both on how to organize others and lead projects from the front, and how to resolve disputes or set and show examples to others on the team. It made be have a better appreciation of those in leadership positions alongside learning what it means to be a leader myself. While I'm not sure if a management or leadership focused roll is for me, I believe I learned alot of valuable skills and perspective by trying to force myself into the position this term.

My last goal was improving my skill in technical and procedural writing, especially documentation. I have always been lazy personally in working on documentation and commenting in my own work, and I know that it can be immensely helpful for maintenance of issues, whether it be a piece of software, some code, or an older computer’s hardware. I found this to be an issue in classes before my coop term, where I or others would have trouble analyzing my old projects, and would often have to go off my (sometimes lacking) memory. I hoped to practice my skills in technical writing through the creation of OVC specific SOP's or documentation, but the ticket load during the term did not allow for much downtime. Unfortunately I did not get to work on this goal as much as I would have wanted to but I am taking the little experience I built into the future, hoping to improve on my own time/projects.

⇘ Much of the older out of service equipment replaced would come from the lab spaces of the OVC Main building.

Working within CCS’s MD OVC team, our job was to handle both general computer support, alongside specialized hospital system support and software. Devices from a professors iMac to signage machines across campus fall under our management. If it was on the network, it most likely would end up with us servicing it. This semester had me working with new hires, showing them around the OVC and teaching them the standards and customs CCS follows within it. Much like last term, I was guiding new recruits but this term was much more hands on. As I was a big contributor to the work in the OVC CCS space, I was responsible with training 2 new hires alongside my coworker for my replacement during the next term. Alongside working with new coop hires, I also was put in charge of going out to clients and resolving issues with outdated machines, including important older machines connected to molecular imaging systems. Overall the term was both very similar to terms past but also had many new interesting challenges.

Overall, I would say that I have further improved and built upon my skills from my fourth summer term. While already deeply familiar with the environment, I was able to organize myself further and balance my workflow easier, which I am always looking to further improve. I also improved my skills of working in a team, something of which was not very prevalent in terms past as the OVC group is pretty small. I felt like a tenured part of the team with skill to help keep the OVC running, especially being let into the process of training the next hires that replaced me after the term. Further developing my skills in teamwork, scheduling, and communication has helped me greatly during this term, and has made me overall much more efficient. I am very grateful for the developments and advancements I had made during this semester.