The IT Day 2025 Playbook:
Sessions & Slides
What an incredible day!
IT Day 2025, Facing the Future Together, was a reminder that, while technology continues to reshape how we teach, learn, research, and connect, our greatest strength lies in the people behind it all.
Throughout the day, participants explored how emerging tools are transforming higher education, shared insights on leading through change, and sparked conversations about how we can shape technology to build a better, more connected future. A heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who participated, presented and helped make the day possible. Your ideas and contributions continue to bring all of us closer and move York forward.
Watch the Sessions
The session recordings are available below via Panopto. You’ll need to log in with your Passport York credentials to view them.
⚙️ Please note that a few sessions are unavailable due to recording issues.
Missed a session? Access all the breakthrough insights and presentations now.
From Database to Dashboard in Minutes: Open-Source Collaborative BI Your Team Will Actually Use
@Ali Sadaqain @Dennis Deli
Learn how to turn raw data into insights in minutes with Metabase, a free, open-source business intelligence platform. This session shows how to connect Metabase to any database—no extracts or expensive licenses required—to create interactive dashboards your whole team can use. Discover how simple, collaborative analytics can speed decisions and reduce bottlenecks across your organization.
Program Fee Manager: Efficiency Through Automation
@Yama Kazim @Gleb Yevkin @Nadina Geana
The Program Fee Manager is a newly implemented solution designed to automate the fee processing workflow, delivering measurable improvements in operational efficiency and data accuracy.
By streamlining this process, the application eliminates substantial manual effort. With two processing cycles scheduled annually, it enables a cumulative savings of over 9 weeks of work effort across the Student Systems and Student Financial Services (SFS) teams.
Operational Excellence in Action: Schulich's Journey with Asana
@Vlad Ivankine
York University is navigating a period of accelerated transformation, facing fiscal constraints, technology disruption, and increasing demands for transparency and accountability. At the Schulich School of Business, the Information Services & Technology (IST) team adopted Asana as a collaborative work and project portfolio management platform to enable operational excellence and advance institutional priorities.
This session will share how a collaborative work management tool improved efficiency and transparency through a shared portfolio view, strengthened decision-making with goal alignment and KPI tracking, and reduced manual reporting by automating processes and linking to dashboards. Grounded in Schulich’s IST Operational Excellence Roadmap and guided by best practices from Gartner, the presentation will highlight what worked, what didn’t, and lessons learned along the way.
The session ties directly to this year’s theme, “Facing the Future – Together”, showing how digital transformation is most successful when people, processes, and technology come together around shared goals.
Plan your Work - Work your Plan
@Gautam Janardhanan @Yama Kazim
In today’s rapidly evolving higher education landscape, IT teams must lead with clarity and purpose. This session explores how foundational planning—through Capacity Plans, Portfolio Plans, and Service Management—can serve as a strategic compass for navigating complexity and driving meaningful change. Drawing on real-world improvements and outcomes from the OUR Student Systems team, we’ll demonstrate how organizing and measuring these core elements enables institutions to identify and prioritize opportunities for improvements and optimization. In the spirit of Facing the Future – Together, this presentation highlights how collaborative planning strengthens operational resilience and supports progress through change.
Building the Future: Our Journey to Launching the Institutional Planning & Analytics (IPA) Platform
@Karen Furlonge @Meenakshi Shankar
This presentation will walk the audience through the journey and steps involved in trying to launch the Institutional Planning and Analytics (IPA) technology platform, which is intended to modernize the orchestration of data, apply business rules, and ensure data is easily accessible for faculties and divisions to access when needed.
We’ll explore the vision, key decisions made along the way, obstacles faced, what’s been achieved so far, and what lies ahead. The goal is to share not only progress, but insights and learnings that can guide future technology initiatives.
Attitude Adjustments: changing the behaviour of YU Aura bots
@Nick Valentino @Melanie Pileggi-Connolly
In September 2024, the Division of Students and UIT partnered to migrate SAVY, York’s student virtual assistant, to the YU Aura generative AI platform. Since then, SAVY has answered almost 30,000 student questions; some answers were better than others. As the presenters worked to improve SAVY’s answers and answer rate, they learned much about how to alter the generative AI’s behaviour, especially through manipulation of the System Message and other settings in the YU Aura bot’s “Edit” screen. This presentation will share this learning in hopes that other bot owners will be able to improve their own bots’ performance.
The Future of Work: Adapting, Thinking, and Leading in the Age of AI (Morning Keynote)
@Sarah Lewis @Mike Jackson
Join Deloitte’s economic and workforce development leader, Sarah Lewis, and future of work specialist, Michael Jackson, for an insightful exploration into the evolving landscape of the information technology sector. In this keynote, we will delve into the latest workforce trends, focusing on the impacts of artificial intelligence and automation technologies. Discover how these advancements are transforming the roles and responsibilities of IT professionals and influencing Toronto’s broader economic environment.
This session will highlight the importance of adopting a skills-based approach to stay competitive in a dynamic job market. Actionable strategies will be provided for IT professionals to future-proof their careers, including upskilling in emerging technologies and building adaptable skillsets. Attendees will gain practical guidance on proactively managing their professional growth and remaining resilient. Understanding these trends is essential as the IT sector undergoes profound changes driven by technological innovation and economic shifts. What do these changes mean for your career trajectory and professional development? Don’t miss this opportunity to gain expert insights and prepare for the future of work.
Next-Gen Meetings: Leveraging Zoom’s AI Capabilities
@Jananeh Asari
In this presentation, I will provide an overview of the AI capabilities available in York’s Zoom Meetings. I will cover how each feature can be used, highlight its benefits, explain access levels and user privileges, outline any restrictions, and share best practices for effective and responsible use.
By the end of this presentation, participants will be able to identify and explain the AI capabilities available in York’s Zoom Meetings, understand how to effectively utilize each feature, recognize the associated access levels, privileges, and restrictions, and apply best practices to ensure responsible and efficient use of AI tools within York’s Zoom environment.
Student Panel
@Erin Skopitz
Hear directly from York University students as they share their experiences with campus technology services. In this panel, students discuss using IT tools to support their academic journey.
They discuss what’s working well, where they’ve faced challenges, and how IT’s services impact their academic life.
Panellists: Elochukwu Edmund BOC Ifeobu, Milena Jeremic, Ian Galendez, Zahra Aghakhani, Shingo Abeta, Timi Oloruntimilehin Olajonlu, Prabhjee Singh
