Fewer students registered complaints about the CSUN Web portal this summer than ever before, apparently due to recent changes made by Information Technology Resources.

“We do not want a repeat of what happened last semester,” said Rick Shaw, director of student affairs.

This summer, there was a storage upgrade giving the portal more space to work with since it was close to full. The boxes have been updated and the management of traffic and requests will be smoother.

“The students are the main focus this year for ITR,” said Steven Fitzgerald, chief technology officer.

“There is a more robust architecture for handling requests,” Shaw said.

The walk-in help center, which opened last semester, is located in the garden level of the Oviatt Library in room 29. The center has new hours for the fall semester due to the fact that more students needed help after 7 p.m. The walk-in center will be open Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. and Friday from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

The walk-in center was very successful last semester. In the first week more than 300 students came in to seek help.

“There was a good response from the students last semester,” said Stephen Blakkolb, help desk consultant. “A lot of people have come in to use our services.”

Approximately 3,500 fliers went out to incoming freshman while they went through their orientation. The walk-in center will help students with any problems that they may be having on campus with their laptops or personal computers. There are two work stations set aside, two full-time staff members and one student assistant at all times in an effort to better help students.

The walk-in center has comment cards for students to leave their suggestions or input and employees at ITR process the responses from students on how things are going.

“I used the Web portal to register this summer and I didn’t have any trouble,” said Jessica Burnett, junior women’s studies major. “I’ve had problems in the past when the portal was down and I really needed to use it, but it seems to have changed so I hope it will work better this year.”

There has been an increase in staffing with the help desk and machines have been rebuilt over the summer campus-wide.

“Students call in and we are as frustrated as they are when things don’t work,” said Chris Olsen, help desk manager.

There is a task force that will be monitoring the system hourly. They will be keeping an eye on things to address problems as rapidly as possible.

“We are working on having a more proactive response from last year,” Fitzgerald said.

On Sept. 7, ITR will be on the Matador Walk for the first time between the hours of 11:30 a.m. – 1p.m. and 5:30 – 7 p.m. to answer questions from students.

ITR staff will be equipped to show students how to register their wireless devices with the campus network.

The Virtual Private Network will make it easier for the campus to access CSUN computing resources from off-campus.

Students will also be able to save data to their u-drives, which they can access at home once they have downloaded the VPN software.

CSUN also offers a license of the Norton Anti-Virus Software for students to access free of charge.

ITR will answer any questions while on the Matador Walk and students can bring their laptops if they need assistance.