Today is go-live for the new Microsoft/PCounter based printing system. It hasn't gone off perfectly, but most of the problems so far have been manageable. Also, it's only Monday. The true peak load for printing will be Wednesday between 11:00 and 12:00. Wednesday is when classes start.
So far the big problem is that some of the disk images used for the labs included printers they weren't supposed to, a side effect of how Microsoft does printing. All in all, it's a pretty small thing but it does ruin the clean look. The time between when Summer session stopped and when all the images had to be applied (last Friday) was the same time we get every year, but this year included major changes we haven't seen since we converted from queue-based printing to NDPS printing back around 2002. So yeah, these kinds of QA things can get dropped when under this kind of time pressure, and just plain new environment.
Also, the Library doesn't have their release stations up yet. They'll have them there by the end of the day, but the fact remains that they're on the old system until then. Due to the realities of accounting, each student was given only 50 pages this morning on the old system. Which means that some users are already whacking their heads on the limit. They'll have to go to one of the ATUS labs to print, as they're all on the new system and their quotas are much higher there. If Libraries doesn't have it by tomorrow, something will have to give.
So far the big problem is that some of the disk images used for the labs included printers they weren't supposed to, a side effect of how Microsoft does printing. All in all, it's a pretty small thing but it does ruin the clean look. The time between when Summer session stopped and when all the images had to be applied (last Friday) was the same time we get every year, but this year included major changes we haven't seen since we converted from queue-based printing to NDPS printing back around 2002. So yeah, these kinds of QA things can get dropped when under this kind of time pressure, and just plain new environment.
Also, the Library doesn't have their release stations up yet. They'll have them there by the end of the day, but the fact remains that they're on the old system until then. Due to the realities of accounting, each student was given only 50 pages this morning on the old system. Which means that some users are already whacking their heads on the limit. They'll have to go to one of the ATUS labs to print, as they're all on the new system and their quotas are much higher there. If Libraries doesn't have it by tomorrow, something will have to give.