What started as simple maintenance on Trinity’s Google Workspace on Feb. 3 led to an unforeseen challenge as Google Drive accounts were rendered virtually unusable for three days. Trinity’s Information Technology Services (ITS) coordinated the maintenance of the Workspace with Google and an external vendor. However, multiple issues occurred between Google and the vendor, leaving ITS in a difficult position.
The maintenance, prompted by the university’s upgrading the previous Google license to a higher tier of service and security, bled into the week despite only being scheduled for the weekend. As a result, students and faculty alike could not edit or create any files on Google apps, such as Docs, Slides and Sheets.
The confusion lasted until Feb. 5, leading many people to reach out for answers. Ben Lim, interim chief information officer of ITS, continued to call on a 30-minute basis to resolve the problem on Feb. 5 as soon as possible. Still, almost a hundred calls came in from the Trinity community, and the department had to offer them other alternatives.
“There were some people that were trying to get their homework done, unfortunately,” Lim said. “I don’t foresee us having any kind of issue like that again. We just upgraded to the highest level of security we could. Given the choice to do something, we just did this at one time and called it good. But for all intents and purposes, there [were] workarounds.”
During this period of slight disarray, many students had to find new outlets to complete their work, specifically with writing projects, due to the loss of editing on Google Docs. Dohoon Park, senior computer science major, had various peers seek out different ways to complete their assignments in this period.
“A lot of people couldn’t access Google Docs or some of their files,” Park said. “But other than that, people found ways to work around with it. Even though it wasn’t convenient they would use Microsoft Word or the Notes page inside the Mac.”
As it impacted all Trinity emails, entire classes had to adapt. Timothy Appignani, visiting assistant professor of communication, planned for his class to view videos through Google Drive. When the down period occurred, students had difficulties accessing the videos, leading to Appignani ultimately using his personal email to share the media with his students.
Throughout the difficulties, ITS had issued warnings through email as the situation developed and extended past what was expected. Sent out to the entire university, these communications helped people understand the situation as briefly as possible.
“It seems like it was probably not something that they planned or that they could necessarily help,” Appignani said. “I think just communicating with people is fine. From my point of view, they did a good job [with the communications].”
Going forward, Trinity plans to continue utilizing both Microsoft and Google-based services on the digital front. With the maintenance completed, the current Google Drive capacities of Trinity emails can benefit from the recent upkeep which cost tens of thousands of dollars to complete, and resulted in the best security measures that Google offers and 200 terabytes of storage.
