Published:
November 12, 2025
New Enterprise Technology Support Center Portal Launching November 18
Engagement and Experience
Enterprise Technology enhancements to the customer support experience for the UT community will simplifying how campus asks for help and are the 1st step in our reimaging of ServiceNow. These changes will provide campus customers with an improved, cohesive, and streamlined experience when seeking technology support. The new portal serves as a unified front door for Enterprise Technology, simplifying intake, improving routing accuracy, and enhancing collaboration across support teams. By streamlining these processes, it reinforces our identity as a single, cohesive unit—establishing a stronger, more connected experience for campus. On November 18, Engagement and Experience will launch a unified helpdesk called Enterprise Technology Support Center. It replaces the askUS Support and the UT Service Desk portals and introduces a modern interface, smart intake form, and unified support structure. Existing knowledge articles and support contacts remain unchanged.
Empowering Students: Digital Accessibility Center Pilots Student-Led Accessibility Testing for Digital Platforms
Enterprise Learning Technology
The Digital Accessibility Center has launched an initiative to build a student accessibility testing system aimed at improving the usability and compliance of websites, applications, and home-grown platforms across campus. As part of this effort, the Digital Accessibility Center (DAC) completed a review of the university’s new agentic AI platform, UT Spark, which is available to all students, faculty, and staff. The DAC’s testing ensures this high-impact AI tool meets accessibility standards, setting any member of our UT community up to succeed in our ever-evolving digital landscape. This initiative reflects UT Austin’s commitment to innovation and student-centered design. By involving students directly in accessibility testing, the university is building a scalable model for continuous feedback and improvement to support the newly adopted Digital Accessibility Policy, HOP 3-3014, which aligns UT’s standard with WCAG 2.1 Level AA within ADA Title II regulations. The new testing system will expand in 2026 to review additional platforms, applications, and websites, creating a sustainable framework for accessibility evaluation across the Longhorn community.
The Enterprise Technology Infrastructure team has been working with the Information Security Office and CSU IT staff to develop and deploy a secure network segment for network attached printers on campus
Infrastructure
A printer security profile is now available across campus. To date over 400 printers have been registered and more then 350 moved to the printer network segment. The printer profile provides a base level of protection from many common security exposures. This solution provides a common mechanism to safely operate printers on the campus network. This was a collaborative effort between College, School and Unit (CSU) IT staff, the Information Security Office and Enterprise Technology to address security vulnerabilities with networked printers. Enterprise Technology is working to implement a number of secure network profiles that can be assigned to devices or users as they traverse the campus network as part of our Next Generation Network initiative. This printer profile was deployed using this identity-based network architecture. Campus stakeholders can work with their local IT staff to move most networked printers to this solution.
EVPP Reserves & Commitments Dashboard Automates Budget Reserves and Commitments Tracking
D2I
D2I released the EVPP-RC dashboard to automate EVPP’s budget reserves and commitments data, replacing manual Excel workflows and enabling daily data refreshes. The dashboard delivers historical and projected data across 11 fiscal years, improving financial insight timeliness for strategic fund allocation decisions across University programs. This marks the first Power BI dashboard from the D2I data visualization team and the first analytical engineering team dashboard release using DMG’s Financial Data Model. Data flows through UT Data Hub and includes override capabilities via CSV upload.
Retention, Attrition, and Graduation Modernization Deliverables Now Updated to Data Hub Sources
D2I
We’ve successfully transitioned key student success metric dashboards from legacy data sources to Data Hub-based sources, delivering cleaner architecture, modular design, and four redesigned dashboards built with stakeholder input. The new dashboards improve usability and accessibility, while metadata and user documentation in Alation support transparency and adoption across advising, enrollment, and academic planning teams. This modernization effort aligns with D2I’s commitment to scalable, user-centered data infrastructure. It includes the first Alation-authored user documentation for these dashboards and robust metadata for retention, attrition, and graduation components.
Digital Engagement Growth Across Web, Social, and Email Channels
Operations
Website traffic surged past 11,900 unique users, with strong engagement on the home page and Tech for Students. Social media and email campaigns also showed steady growth and interaction across platforms. The Tech for Students page saw increased visits following the Canva launch. LinkedIn gained 24 new followers and 3,300 impressions. Emma email campaigns averaged a 50% open rate for askUS/ET Informational and 49% for CIO/ET Official. Between October 10–31, ET sent 21 targeted emails across three categories. Instagram launched in September and gained 26 followers. Website sessions exceeded 5,900, with top-performing content aligned to student technology support.
University-wide Transition to Equifax I-9 Platform Improves Compliance and Onboarding Efficiency
Enterprise Platforms
On October 13, UT Austin completed its campus-wide rollout of Equifax’s I-9 Management system, following a successful pilot in Engineering and COLA. Compliance rates rose from 60–65% to 85–90% in pilot groups, reducing regulatory risk across 15,000 annual I-9s. The University transitioned I-9 processing from Workday to Equifax to address persistent compliance gaps and streamline onboarding. The new platform offers automated workflows, real-time tracking, and scalable support for decentralized HR operations. Additionally, we have implemented a robust change management plan, training sessions, and stakeholder communications to ensure a smooth transition and sustained success.
Expanded Web Approval for *DEFINE Documents Improves Access and User Experience
Enterprise Platforms
Six new document types were added to the eDocs site, bringing the total to ten available for web-based approval. Navigation, visibility, and integration features were also enhanced to streamline the approval process and reduce reliance on the legacy *DEFINE interface. More approvers can now complete tasks online, with improved visibility into routing paths, notes, and linked systems. A numeric indicator in the Financials Navbar helps users track pending actions, supporting faster turnaround and broader adoption of the web interface. The eDocs site allows users to approve *DEFINE documents online. Recent updates added support for VE5, VP5, VT5, VT7, VP7, VP9, VP1, VP2, VPE, and VP6. Feedback-driven improvements include single-page layouts, Excel export, and links to GB2 and the Image Retrieval System. Additional field-editing capabilities are planned for release later this fall.
SS1 Enhancements Streamline Scholarship Creation and Approval in FRMS
Enterprise Platforms
Phase I of the SS1 Enhancement Roadmap Initiative launched multiple-recipient SS1s in FRMS, enabling scholarship creators to process awards for multiple recipients within a single document. Since the July 21 launch, 2,900+ multiple-recipient awards have been approved, distributing over $12.6M. 20% of creators have adopted the new functionality, improving efficiency ahead of Fall 2025 Tuition Billing. This multi-phase initiative improves the FRMS user experience for scholarships, fellowships, and cash prizes. Phase 1 also introduced Excel uploads, updated documentation, and site security upgrades. Phase 1.5 is in production with search, reporting, and UIN merge enhancements.
Longhorn Developers Partner with UT Parking and Transportation to Enhance the Sure Walk App
Enterprise Learning Technology
The Longhorn Developers have been selected to design and develop the Sure Walk mobile application, improving both the user experience and the technical infrastructure. By upgrading the Sure Walk system, the partnership aims to deliver a more reliable, scalable, and efficient service for students, faculty, and staff on campus. This partnership will enhance accessibility for both users and operators of the campus safety program while ensuring long term operational excellence. Sure Walk is a program operated by UT Austin’s Parking and Transportation Services that provides free walking companions to students, faculty, and staff traveling on or near campus at night. The service promotes safety and community support across campus. As usage has grown, the system required modernization to enhance performance and ease of use. Longhorn Developers will build a new mobile application and MyUT integration to ensure Sure Walk continues to operate as a reliable and efficient safety resource for the UT Austin community.
MyUT – Begins Free Leftover Food Program
Campus Solutions
Thanks to a newly released feature within MyUT, students, staff and faculty can now access leftover free food from on-campus events. The program allows verified campus event hosts to notify students, faculty and staff if they have leftover food from an event. When an event wraps up and there’s food leftover, approved event hosts can send a quick notice to let students, faculty, and staff know. Once a message goes out, those interested will have about 30 minutes to grab what’s there — first come, first served.
Combating Food Insecurity
For students, the channel allows another layer of protection from food insecurity. According to a 2020 survey from Texas Environmental Science Institute, 42% percent of UT students reported experiencing food insecurity. The program seeks to reduce that hunger.
Feedback From Students
“That would have been life changing for me as an Honors student who lived in my car in the housing parking lot for months. No one noticed. I was extremely hungry to say the least.”
“This would have been amazing to have at #TexasA&M to have when I was there. There were days I had nothing to eat as a student bc I was surviving off of grants and waitress tips”
“Love this. There is usually so much leftover from an event from people who RSVP and don’t attend. What a great way to share this.”
“This is great! What a great example of looking for ways that we can do better as a society!”
“Every single college campus should have this!”
“This is awesome!!! UT, tell other universities and colleges about this. So many more students would have food! Thank you for doing this.”
When this feature request was made to MyUT, staff thought this was a great way to share leftovers and not waste food. What was learned along the way was a study of UT students where almost 50% surveyed said they experienced food insecurity. It is humbling to think about seeing students on campus and realizing almost 50% of them experience food insecurity. It is a great feeling to know that by providing this simple feature in MyUT that we are literally providing food to UT students.
On the technical side, a new approach for implementing API integrations was developed. It uses XModules (on the Modo side) and AWS services. This new approach was well documented and will be used as a blueprint for similar requests going forward.