Thunderbird – IR says no to 3.0 upgrade

15 09 2010

This has been posted in Thunderbird for a while, but we didn’t ever post it here to the TAG site.  IR put up a clarification about Thunderbird’s upgrade prompt:

Upgrade to Thunderbird 3.x? Never!

IT Services began deploying 3rd party patches on August 10, 2010. Initial updates included Adobe Reader, Flash, Shockwave and Java. The current prompt received by many to upgrade from Thunderbird 2.x to Thunderbird 3.x is not being pushed by ITS and is not a required update.

ITS is currently supporting Thunderbird 2.x and is recommending that individuals NOT install Thunderbird 3.x. If you receive the prompt to upgrade, click Never.


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Categories : Email, Upgrades

Royal Drive/Tiger outage 9/18

14 09 2010

An outage announcement from IR:

Due to relocation of computers to our new Data Center, the following services will be unavailable from 6:00 am until noon on Saturday, September 18: RoyalDrive and the Academic Web server (Tiger).

Thanks to Jim for bringing this one to our attention!


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Categories : Outages, Royal Drive

Emergency Notification

14 09 2010

The University uses a product called Connect from Blackboard to provide an emergency notification service to all University community members.  If you haven’t already, don’t forget that you can sign up to receive notifications via email or text – just go to my.scranton and look at the top left corner of the Home tab for a link called “Local Contact/Emergency Notification System Registration.”

The system is tested once a semester, and this semester’s test is scheduled for tomorrow (Wednesday, September 15) – so if you sign up today you’ll get a test text or email tomorrow afternoon.


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Categories : Mobile

Catalog woes?

13 09 2010

The agenda for this Friday’s Faculty Senate meeting includes a discussion of the new online catalog – it seems that some faculty members and students have had difficulty using it.  If you have had or have heard about issues with the catalog, please drop us a comment or an email and let us know so we can get a sense of what’s going on and whether or not TAG should get involved. Thanks!

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Update 9/14-16: Here’s some of the reported feedback we’ve started to gather, related to the catalog itself as well as how it’s integrated into the University website.

  • When you search the University’s website for information (such as faculty contact information), you keep getting directed to the catalog rather than a page (like the department’s home page) that actually has the information you need
  • It’s hard to find a click path to get to a departmental website.  Most of the links that you’d think would take you to a departmental page actually take you to the program page in the catalog.  Or there just aren’t links to department pages where you’d expect them to be (e.g., there’s no easily findable way to click through to a CAS department’s page from the CAS home page).
  • One of the faculty members involved in summer advising noted that the left hand menu in the catalog (its Table of Contents) is focused on PR needs as opposed to student needs (e.g., the first link is for Pride, Passion, Promise).  He further observed that the catalog information is very complete, but it’s not always intuitive to find – he had to call over to the PR office to figure out where to find the information he and his students needed.
  • Not exactly a problem, but an odd design decision – the University directory at the end of the catalog is essentially useless.  This may just be a holdover from the print edition, but what’s the point of a directory that doesn’t give you any contact information? It would make sense for names of Faculty of Instruction to be linked to email addresses, while their department names should be linked to their department’s web site.

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Update 9/23: We got hold of the Undergraduate Catalog in PDF format.


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Categories : Announcements

CMS – Faculty Friend or Foe?

9 09 2010

A recent faculty discussion brought up several questions and concerns about the University’s new content management system (which was purchased from Hannon Hill):

  • Do faculty use personal websites for teaching, research, and service?
  • Does/will the CMS hinder faculty from accomplishing their teaching, research, and service?  Some faculty members described the CMS as too restrictive and too user-unfriendly for their needs.
  • Several faculty members were concerned about the increase in workload that would be required to maintain departmental websites.  Some expressed resentment that IR imposed a new system on them and now expects them to spend the time to learn how to use the CMS and maintain their own departmental websites.
  • There was also concern about being forced to conform to PR-restricted designs and formats (feeling “branded”).

Where can TAG take this issue from here? Should we hold an open forum to elicit more feedback?


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Categories : CMS and University Website

Peer to Peer File Sharing

8 09 2010

Jerry DeSanto just e-mailed the entire university community about regulation and rules regarding peer-to-peer file sharing.

September 2010
Members of the University Community:
Greetings from the Planning and Information Resources Division — We have been hard at work during the summer months making improvements to the classrooms and computer labs, data center, enterprise applications and related services used to conduct the work of our campus community. Our technology infrastructure allows us to share resources and collaborate with each other and colleagues around the world in numerous, productive ways. I want to remind you that, while using the University’s technology resources, we have all agreed to abide by the Code of Responsible Computing and Student Computing Policy.
On July 1, 2010, final regulations from the federal government specific to the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing applications within colleges and universities took effect. Peer-to-peer file sharing is widely used to exchange files, most commonly music and video; however, the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material may subject the individuals involved to civil and criminal penalties. In general, anyone found liable for civil copyright infringement may be ordered to pay either actual damages or “statutory” damages affixed at not less than $750 and not more than $30,000 per work infringed. For “willful” infringement, a court may award up to $150,000 per work infringed. Willful copyright infringement can also result in criminal penalties, including imprisonment of up to five years and fines of up to $250,000 per offense. Colleges and universities can be required to identify offenders within their network(s); The University of Scranton will comply with any court orders it may receive.
The University limits the amount of bandwidth allotted to peer-to-peer applications in order to ensure the availability and integrity of our network and services. In addition, we prohibit the use of those aggressive peer-to-peer applications that utilize excessive network resources or are known to carry mostly illegal content. As stated in the University’s Copyright Compliance and Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Policy , individuals who are in violation of policy will be subject to disciplinary action, which may range from written warnings, fines, counseling, and/or suspension of network access. If you have any questions about this please contact the Technology Support Center at 941-HELP (x4357).
Best wishes for a very rewarding academic year.

Sincerely,
Jerome P. DeSanto
Vice President for Planning and CIO

—
Jerome P. DeSanto
Vice President for Planning and Chief Information Officer
Ph: 570-941-6185
Fx: 570-941-7899
The University of Scranton
Jerome.DeSanto@scranton.edu
www.scranton.edu


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Categories : Announcements, Network and Infrastructure

TAG Meeting 9/22

7 09 2010

We’ve just scheduled our next TAG meeting for Wednesday, September 22 from 1pm-2pm in WML305.  We’ll primarily be discussing the results of our survey, but let us know if you have other agenda items to suggest.


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Categories : TAG Administrative

Brief Outage on Sunday

3 09 2010

There will be a brief outage on Sunday due to some work being done in the new Data Center — notice from IR (emphasis ours):

Due to relocation of servers to the new Data Center, the following services will be unavailable for short periods during the hours of 7:30 – noon on Sunday, Sept 5.

WebEvent, Library Systems, Content Management System (CMS), RoyalPo (outgoing email)

So make sure you’re not planning to send any emails or access Angel on Sunday morning.  We’ll let you know if we hear any changes to the outage schedule.


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Categories : Angel and Desire2Learn, Outages

Phishing Scam

3 09 2010

Heads up, y’all. If you get a weird looking email from “The University of ScrantonScranton,” don’t click on the link – just delete it. This is a phishing scam.  IR posted a notice about it on my.scranton last night:

There has been a fake phishing email sent to an unknown number of Scranton.edu email addresses. It is from webmasterr@scranton.edu and says the following: “Dear Web mail User, Due to congestion in all The University of Scranton!webmail users accounts,The University of Scranton!would be shutting down some webmail account.In order to avoid the deactivation of your webmail account,you will have to confirm that is a present use account by clicking the secure Link Below.The personal information requested is for the safety of your account. Please leave all information requested.. Please leave all information requested.” Please, if you receive this email, do not click on the link and enter your personal information. This email is not from the University and we would never request your personal information via an email.

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Update 9/7: This phishing episode sparked a bit of discussion about the timeliness of communication about significant technology issues.  Here’s what we’ve worked out as a timeline for the incident (thanks to Jim and Jeremy for hashing out the details):

  • Thursday evening: First phishing emails were received, and the TSC received numerous reports. The TSC notified the security manager, who blocked access to the phishing web site from the U’s network (though this wouldn’t prevent faculty/staff from getting there from their home ISP).  The TSC put a notice in the my.scranton portal around 6:30pm.
  • Friday morning: The TSC posted a note to Bboard.  TAG posted the notice to our site here (thanks to Jim for the heads up about it).
  • Friday noon: The Provost emailed all faculty about the phishing attempt.
  • Throughout the day on Friday, the TSC responded to several calls about the email.  Sometime on Friday, the security manager contacted the host site and had the malicious site taken off line.

So it seems that from the IR side, everything went as planned — the information security manager was involved right away, notices were posted right away, etc.  However, anecdotally, it doesn’t seem like faculty or staff picked up on the alerts (especially the my.scranton notices) right away.  Most people didn’t seem to know about the scam until they got an email about it.


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Categories : Security

IE 8 Deployment

2 09 2010

It’s a big day for IR announcements. This just came out over Bboard:

All staff and faculty using Windows XP are encouraged to visit the IT Services Installation channel in the Employee tab of the my.scranton portal to install Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). The IE8 installation package will update existing installations of Internet Explorer 6 and 7 to Internet Explorer 8 and will install the KACE KBOX agent. In an effort to better secure University desktops from malware infections, it is critical to install and maintain the KACE KBOX agent on all University owned computers. IT Services will continue to deploy third party patches to all office systems using the KACE KBOX systems management appliance.

Please be advised that because the KACE KBOX agent is included in the IE8 installation package, this package is intended for installation on University owned PCs only.

Before you begin the installation, please save your work and close all other programs.

Questions and concerns about the Internet Explorer 8 installation should be directed to the Technology Support Center at x4357.

Note: To complete the installation of IE8, you’ll have to restart your computer. Make sure you have everything saved!


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Categories : Security, Upgrades

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