By David R Cole
Wimba Live Classroom service outage
There will be an update to the Wimba Live Classroom service, used in Blackboard Vista courses, which will result in a service outage while they perform the upgrade.
The outage is scheduled for August 6th at 10:00 pm until August 7th at 7:00 am.
New OWA/xmail sign in screen starting tomorrow
Starting August 2nd, there will be a new sign in screen for clients using Outlook Web App (OWA) to access their Exchange email via xmail.bu.edu. See below.
After login, they will then be redirected to their old familiar-looking OWA mailbox, but they may notice that the URL will be something like “ex-legacy.bu.edu” rather than the xmail.bu.edu that they may be used to seeing. This is expected behavior and they should not be concerned with the change. The “ex-legacy” URL is just a temporary re-direct until their mailbox gets officially moved over. They shouldn’t actually type that into their browser. When their mailbox gets moved to Exchange 2010, they’ll see the new login screen AND the new OWA for Exchange 2010. It will be orange just like the new OWA login screen.
Department of Alumni Relations DARWIN Project Go Live 8/1
Department of Alumni Relations (DAR) is implementing a new system today, Monday, August 1st, that will impact Boson University alumni. The project is called DARWIN.
DARWIN (Development & Alumni Relations Web-based Information Network) is a multiyear, multiphase effort to replace the current UIS alumni database and enhance the operating efficiencies of Development & Alumni Relations and its BU community partners. The DARWIN Project Team began planning for the Blackbaud eCRM (Enterprise Constituent Relationship Management) system implementation in June of 2010, and the project will launch in on Monday, August 1st. For more information on this project, you can visit http://www.bu.edu/budarwin/.
One common issue we have seen is that the AD password is not yet sync’d. An easy way to check this is to see if ADPW is set to ‘generate’ or ‘ksync’. If it is set to 'generate', then have the client visit http://www.bu.edu/kpw to sync their password with AD.
Otherwise, please refer all calls from Alumni experiencing issues to DAR’s Help Desk with a warm transfer to 3-9513 or by sending the ticket as an external email to aluis@bu.edu.
Answers to FAQs about Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
Do we sell OS X Lion at the IT Help Center?
- No, it is only available from the Mac App Store as a download. Apple is not making disc-based software for this release.
How do BU faculty, staff, or students purchase OS X Lion at an educational discount?
- Since the price for an upgrade license is only $29, Apple is not providing a personal purchase price for educational customers. Clients who request licenses for departmental sales should contact their Apple rep.
I upgraded to OS X Lion and my Firefox 5 or 3.6 browser is crashing!
- Firefox has new updates, 5.0.1 and 3.6.19, that should resolve this issue.
New look coming to BU Google Apps
Just so everyone is aware, Google Apps (Mail, Calendar, etc) are getting an updated look. For a preview, in case clients contact us about the changes, please refer to:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/evolving-google-design-and-experience.html
BUworks issue with multiple network connections
Today, we encountered an odd situation where the client was able to access all Weblogin pages other than the BUworks portal. Every time the client would log into the BUworks portal via http://www.bu.edu/buworkscentral the browser would refresh back to the Weblogin page. Typically, we see this behavior when clients are on a network that have implemented a rotating IP scheme. This is very common when the client is connected to a hotel or corporate network. However, in this case the client was on the BU network.
We determined that this behavior was caused by the client’s machine being connected to the wired and wireless network at the same time. The machine was assigned two separate IP addresses and Weblogin was interpreting this occurence as if it was a rotating IP scheme.
The solution was to have the client disconnect from the wired network.
Erroneous Med School Email
Several hundred people who applied to BU Medical School four years ago were erroneously sent an email this morning notifying them that their payment had been processed. We have not processed their payment, and if they have any additional questions or comments, they should contact BU Medical School Admissions at 617-638-4630.
FAQs regarding Microsoft Enterprise Licensing Agreement
The following covers what IT Help Center staff need to know to assist with questions that clients may have regarding this new agreement.
ServiceNow assignment group tips
Recently I’ve noticed some confusion when it comes to assigning tickets to the correct group, so I wanted to remind everyone of a nifty feature in ServiceNow that can help. If you know that a particular staff member is the right person to contact for a request but you aren’t sure what group s/he is in, you can look it up by doing the following:
School of Social Work website support information
Effective today, any major changes or edit requests to the School of Social Work website should be directed towards SSW IT Manager Darryl Rambo at sswit@bu.edu.
For small-scale changes, many department staff have been trained in WordPress, and have the access and ability to make smaller content changes.