Testing and packaging of software for Start of Year

July 16th, 2014 | Posted by Simon Alexander in IT preparations for teaching

by John Helm, IT Support

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Teams in IS&T are making good progress with the packaging and testing of software.

41% of software for PCs has already been packaged and is being tested by IS&T.  Academic colleagues are being contacted so they can test their software works in the way they expect.

Everything will be ready to install by the end of August and should be fully tested and in place by 12 September at the latest.  This will give staff who are testing the new software in the teaching environment time to feedback to IS&T about it before start of Semester 1.

Staff PCs are normally updated after September so that we can prioritise having everything ready in teaching rooms but, if you need particular applications installing or upgrading on your PC before this (to match what you will be using for teaching), please contact IT Help.

 See how things are progressing

If you want to see how the work is going,  you can see this spreadsheet which shows details of progress for each piece of software and the academic responsible for testing it.

This sheet shows (in green) when we’re planning to start the reimaging process in each room.  (Reimaging is how we create a clean install on PCs and make them ready for deployment of the new software.) We work closely with Timetabling to find the best time to install the software so that we don’t interrupt teaching or exams.  This requires careful planning because, in many rooms, teaching takes place throughout the Summer.

 What is packaging?

Packaging is where we install the software manually (the traditional method), run it and set the defaults and interactions with other related software (including registering and licensing).  We then capture all of this work using special software which creates a “package”.  This package can then be pushed out to the relevant computers over the network so the software will install automatically and remotely, instead of staff visiting each computer individually.  This usually happens in the background so users can carry on using their computer as normal.  Not all software can be captured using this method but the large majority can.

Why do we re-image every year?

If you have any questions about the software installation and testing process, please see the FAQs

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