By David R Cole
Update: BU Voice Mail Portal support information
Telecom is preparing a follow up announcement about the new Voice Mail Portal to all Charles River Campus staff and faculty. Instructions about the service are already available on Tech Web. Clients will be able to receive notification of new voice mail messages via e-mail, text message, or a call to the phone number of their choice (such as a mobile phone).
Below is the full text of the announcement they are sending out soon. Please look at the information posted on Tech Web. We should escalate tickets to phone@bu.edu as an external mail for any questions we are unable to answer. Some things of note, the client will need to log in to http://nowmsg.bu.edu with their seven digit BU phone number (without any dashes) and the same passcode they use to access voice mail on their phone. The form at that site is a little squirrely – it auto-saves after you type in each item, such as First or Last Name. Additionally, clients will receive a confirmation e-mail or text message depending on which features they enable.
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WBUR March 2011 fundraising campaign
During the month of March, WBUR is running their annual fundraising campaign. Donors are already instructed to call WBUR with any questions that they may have. However, if you do receive any calls in regards to this campaign or the donation forms, please create a ticket and send an external e-mail to Karl Voelker at kvoelker@bu.edu. He is their designated support person for this event.
IE9 and Firefox 4 releases and Blackboard Vista
Apparently IE 9 had a soft release today, meaning that it is available for download, but hasn't been pushed out with any Windows updates.
Firefox 4 Release Candidate came out recently which indicates that an update for it should be available in a few weeks.
Neither IE9 or Firefox 4 are supported by Blackboard for use with Blackboard Vista. If any online students or faculty ask about updating these web browsers tell them to hold off for now.
Any tickets that come in regarding using IE9 or Firefox 4 with Blackboard Vista can be assigned to IS&T: Networked Information Services.
Pending Ticket Status reminder
This is a friendly reminder that if you receive a call from a client regarding an open ticket, and you update the ticket with additional information, regardless of what it is, you must change the ticket to Pending Us. This will help to significantly reduce the wait time for clients who have requested followups or callbacks.
Error logging for Exchange related Outlook issues
There were some "blips" in the Virtual environment on Friday which could have caused some logon prompts to OIT-PFMBX or OIT-PFMBX2.
When a user gets an unusual prompt in Outlook, it is important to note what is in the title bar of the prompt. Most likely it is either of these two systems or their mailbox server (currently either UIS-E7MBX1.AD2.BU.EDU or OIT-EXMBX.AD.BU.EDU).
These prompts could be from just about anything (network, server, client, cluster role over), they could be for a short while, or in some cases they could be constant.
Whenever, or however they do happen, please try to note the contents of the title bar. That tells us what system they are having trouble authenticating to. If it is one of the pfmbx boxes, It's a problem with public folder access, if it is a mailbox server that is not their own, it could be a shared folder.
Handy pre-install checklist before upgrading to Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2
We probably don't get many tickets about this from clients, but here's a handy pre-install checklist for anyone updating to Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
BU Voice Mail Portal
Telecom is preparing to announce a new Voice Mail Portal to all Charles River Campus staff and faculty. Instructions about the service are already available on Tech Web. Clients will be able to receive notification of new voice mail messages via e-mail, text message, or a call to the phone number of their choice (such as a mobile phone).
Below is the full text of the announcement they are sending out soon. Please look at the information posted on Tech Web. We should escalate tickets to phone@bu.edu as an external mail for any questions we are unable to answer. Some things of note, the client will need to log in to http://nowmsg.bu.edu with their seven digit BU phone number (without any dashes) and the same passcode they use to access voice mail on their phone. The form at that site is a little squirrely - it auto-saves after you type in each item, such as First or Last Name. Additionally, clients will receive a confirmation e-mail or text message depending on which features they enable.
UPDATE: Blackboard Vista and Firefox 3.6.14
Firefox has released update 15 for their version 3.6 web browser. This appears to have resolved the issue of the Java error message appearing within Blackboard Vista on a Windows machine. The update doesn't appear to have broken anything with a Mac OS X system accessing Blackboard Vista. If clients report the error listed below, please ask them to upgrade Firefox.
Click MORE for original post and description of the issue.
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Wireless 802.1x IP Address space exhaustion
From Brian McGrath in the Network Systems Group -
As an FYI, we have been monitoring the DCHP pools on the IP Address subnets that are available to wireless clients connecting via the 802.1x SSID.
We have recently seen that the pool of available addresses has come close to being exhausted. The rate at which this is happening is somewhat faster than anticipated.
We are planning on adding additional IP Address space to the pool of available addresses for 802.1x wireless clients.
However, this is additional space is not going to be configured until the maintenance window on Tuesday, 3/8/11.
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BU North campus support
If we receive any tickets about supporting the systems and classrooms at BU North in Chelmsford, please forward the ticket to SMG's helpdesk by sending it as an external e-mail to helpdesk@management.bu.edu. MET, School of Social Work, and Graduate School of Management classes are held there, but SMG provides primary support for that location.