Announcement – Page 134

Holiday Help? Information About the Coming Break

snowflakes As the winter holidays approach, everyone is gearing up to take well-deserved rest and time with their friends and family. During the winter break OIT will be closed; therefore tickets and e-mails will not be processed as they normally are during regular business. If you need any emergency assistance during the break, call the Help Desk line at 214-768-4357 to be directed to our emergency line which will page the OIT employee that is on-call.

When you get ready to leave campus for the break, consider saving energy by shutting down your computer completely before you leave. Keep in mind that you will not be able to remote into your machine when it’s turned off. So keep it on if you expect to access your computer while away.

New Embedded Support Model Brings Improved Support to Campus

As part of the OE2C initiative this past year, OIT has been working to increase the quality and efficiency of customer service. One method adopted was to make support staff more accessible to the University community. A new structure has been put in place by the Customer Support division that places field support and AV/Event representatives into assigned zones which include several buildings that each representative will support. These representatives will be the first point of contact for desk-side support and emergency classroom/conference room support in their respective area. They will also be cross-trained in order to assist other zones when needed for larger projects or issues.

The following individuals are currently serving in an embedded zone:

Desktop Support

Jesus Martinez: Umphrey Lee room 122
Glenn Taylor: PAB 300
Jim Tuley: Maguire 170
Paul Tubb: Maguire 170
Walter Hwu: Caruth 472
Deborah Seiter: Underwood 320
Brad Pittler: Underwood S302
Robert Burkett: 6200 N. Central Expressway 2050
John Blank: Prothro 208B
Andy Maupin: Fondren Library
Jawaid Hussein: Fondren Library
Andrea Thach: Guildhall- Plano
Jon Pickle: Plano
Richard Franks: Taos

Classroom/AV Support

Jim Jaeger: Prothro 208A
Mike Gebreselassie: Maguire 170
Chris Gaut: Hughes-Trigg Student Center
Shawn Remek: Annette Caldwell Simmons Hall
Winston Phan: Underwood Law Library
Adam Jones: Hyer Hall

To review the zone map and the areas each individual supports, visit http://www.smu.edu/~/media/Site/OIT/AboutUs/Zone%20Layout.ashx

Box Project Enters Pilot Stage

The Box Project has begun testing with users in our pilot program. Box is our new enterprise online storage solution to replace Locker and will offer unlimited space to SMU students, faculty, and staff for storage of documents and media.

Some of the features include:

Unlimited Storage.
With Box, you have access to unlimited storage! Feel free to upload as many files as you want; just be aware the maximum single file size is 5GB.
Mobile Integration.
Connect to Box using your mobile device. Download and upload files using your smartphone or tablet.
Box Sync.
Store select files locally and edit them offline. Files will sync when your computer is reconnected with the internet. This is a great feature for travel.
Document Sharing.
Share documents with members of your team, or with external users.
Document Creation.
You can create Office documents in Box, or try Box Notes. With Office 365 integration, you can edit your documents online. You can also collaborate with your team members, editing documents simultaneously and reviewing contributions in real time. Versioning is enabled making it easy to roll back to previous versions of a document.

Box will be rolled out to the rest of campus in early 2016. We are currently developing our internal documentation, policies and procedures that should be in place at the time Box moves to production early next year.

Look for more information about this exciting new service after the winter break.

J-Term & Spring Courses Now Available in Canvas

The Academic Technology team is pleased to announce all courses for the upcoming J-Term and Spring terms are available for use in SMU’s new cloud-based learning management system (LMS), Canvas. While courses are still available for J-term and Spring term in Blackboard, Canvas will be replacing Blackboard as SMU’s LMS for all online, hybrid, and enhanced instructor-led courses. Still operational during J-Term and Spring semester, Blackboard will be completely phased out by June 2016.

Questions can be directed to the OIT Help Desk. SMU’s Canvas service also offers additional 24/7 live chat or phone help for the Canvas system simply by clicking on the question-mark icon in the Canvas toolbar. This can be especially useful for quick questions! Canvas Guides are also available to find answers to common questions.

Log into Canvas using your SMU username and password at http://smu.instructure.com/.

More information about Canvas resources, FAQ’s, how to get started, or find information on an attending an SMU Canvas workshop or scheduling 1:1 consultations for course-building assistance will be available soon at the OIT Canvas Service Page.

Cox Infrastructure Project Update

As part of the IT Initiative and overall vision for IT Shared Services, several operational services will be unified within the existing University services. This will allow the local Academic Leads to focus on IT vision, strategy and best practices in partnership with the Dean and their faculty. The following Cox services are designated for unification: networking and security appliances, wireless, VPN, and Active Directory.

Network maintenance has been underway for several weeks upgrading the various network switches and Wireless Access Points throughout the buildings. The team has also reviewed many of the servers hosted in Cox to determine the migration strategy. Several services were decommissioned as they were no longer in use. We have also completed the testing phase of migrating the Cox workstations to the SMU domain.

We are now ready to begin the migration of the Cox computers to the SMU domain. This will allow Cox faculty and staff to login to their workstations using the SMU ID and password thus eliminating the extra set of credentials. Each individual will be notified of the date of their scheduled migration. Cox faculty and staff should NOT attempt to login with their ID prior to the migration date.

Additional instructions will be provided with the migration schedule. For more details on the Cox infrastructure project, visit http://www.smu.edu/OIT/Projects/CoxInfrastructure.