Category: General News
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.
RESOLVED – ACS SMTP Relays Blacklisted by Hotmail
UPDATE: This has been resolved.
All four ACS-SMTP relays are currently blacklisted by Microsoft's Hotmail service. Systems Engineering is currently working on a workaround that they hope to implement early tomorrow (07/29/2011) morning. In the meantime, clients sending mail from ACS will be unable to send to hotmail addresses.
E-Commerce site for MS Office purchases temporarily down
The e-commerce site for personal software purchases, http://ithc.collegestoreonline.com/, is currently down. This site is managed by an outside company, Sequoia Retail Systems, who are addressing the issue. They will provide me with notification when the issue is resolved. In the meantime, please advise clients to retry their purchase later today. We are unable at this time to provide an ETA for resolution.
smtp.bu.edu should now be the recommended SMTP setting
Beginning with a change that went through on Tuesday, our TechWeb instructions provide people using BU Google Apps (or Exchange with IMAP) with smtp.bu.edu as BU's SMTP setting, instead of acs-smtp.bu.edu. The acs-smtp.bu.edu setting still works - people do not need to change their existing settings. However, for those setting up new accounts or new mail clients, smtp.bu.edu should be the recommended setting. As was the case for acs-smtp.bu.edu, smtp.bu.edu should be used with SSL (port 465) which requires use of the BU login name and Kerberos password.
OSX 10.7 (Lion) and Myprint
It has been brought to our attention that Lion cannot connect to MyPrint printers. IS&T is looking into this issue and trying to figure out how we can work around this, but we don't have an estimate on when it will be fixed.
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.
Instructions for IGSW certificate printing on TechWeb
We now have step-by-step instructions for printing IGSW certificates in TechWeb within the "How To..." section of the Blackboard Vista documentation.
The Boston University School of Social Work's IGSW program uses the Blackboard Vista learning management system to host their online courses. Printing the certificates when a student passes a test isn't a very intuitive process. The steps outlined should make explaining the printing process to any IGSW students easier.
New URL for Simple Help
The Help Desk remote desktop tool, Simple Help, previously accessed at ist-simplehelp.bu.edu can now be reached by going to www.bu.edu/remotehelp. This new URL will be easier to communicate to clients over the phone.
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.