lyndaCampus Now Available

The Office of Information Technology is pleased to announce lyndaCampus is now available for faculty, staff, and students. The lyndaCampus provides a vast online library of instructional videos covering the latest software, creative, and business skills. Taught by accomplished teachers and recognized industry experts, lynda.com is a high-quality resource for students, faculty, and staff looking to develop skills in Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, project management, social media, and a wide range of other topics. You can even view courses on your iPhone, iPad, Android phone or tablet, or other mobile device.

To begin, just go to smu.edu/lynda and login with your SMU ID and password. With more than 2,500 courses taught by industry experts, lynda.com is designed for all levels of learners and is available whenever you’re ready to learn.

If you have never used lynda.com before, we recommend you watch the How to use lynda.com video.

Shared Services Update

It’s been eight weeks since the announcement was made regarding IT Shared Services. Since that announcement, IT has been working diligently to transition and establish the road map to meet the critical objectives of this new service model. OIT has identified the following critical milestones for IT:

Integrate the infrastructure for Cox, Lyle and Law
Unify the ticketing system for tracking and managing customer requests across all IT groups
Establish the two governance councils
Design and implement a distributed desktop support and classroom support framework
Implement an e-forms tool to help further expedite processes across campus
Establish an ERP Steering Committee and begin streamlining the ERP processes
Complete the transition of individuals into the new Academic Technology roles

The timeline for each of these items can be viewed on our website.

On September 28, we completed the unification of the ticketing system. Requests are now entered into the same application and can easily be transferred to the appropriate support personnel. We will work on several changes to the customer request portal (help.smu.edu) to provide a more robust support experience including live chat with the Help Desk staff, and access to the knowledge base to help resolve issues quickly. Stay tuned for more information on these upcoming changes!

During the month of October, the IT Leadership team will meet with the various Deans, VPs, and leaders throughout campus to share the vision for Academic and embedded support. In addition, several Open House meetings will be announced where faculty and staff can visit with the IT Leadership team and learn about the vision and plans. Please join us if you are able!

Issues with Outlook for Mac and El Capitan

Looks like another major application is having problems with Apple’s latest OS release, El Capitan. This time, the popular email client Microsoft Outlook for Mac is having difficulty with the OS. The problem identifies itself when the application tries to connect to the server to sync email and the application locks up. If you use Microsoft Outlook, you are highly encouraged not to update to the last Mac OS at this time.

In an emailed statement to Computerworld, a Microsoft spokeswoman said the company is looking into the problem.

“We know that some users may be experiencing issues with Office 2016 for Mac running on El Capitan,” the statement read. “We are actively investigating the matter with Apple. Until there is a fix, we recommend people install the latest updates to Office 2016 for Mac using Microsoft AutoUpdate.”

The Project Manager for Outlook, Faisal Jeelani, recently commented on a post on the company’s support forum.

We are aware of the issue with Outlook 2011 on El Capitan and of Office 2016 on El Capitan.

We are working on a fix for 2011 and for 2016 we are working closely with Apple to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Unfortunately we do not have any timelines for either fix, please stay tuned and thank you for your understanding.

While Microsoft is acknowledging that users of its Office for Mac 2016 application suite are encountering frequent crashes and that their team is working on a fix, there is no timeline for an update. Until then, Microsoft suggests that users can work around this issue by running Outlook for Mac 2011 on Mac OS X Yosemite (version 10.10) or an earlier version.

Password Managers: What are they and should I use one?

For those who are challenged with managing multiple different passwords for different accounts they might consider using a password manager, also known as a password vault.

A password manager is a piece of software that helps someone to organize their own passwords or pin codes. It typically is a local database that encrypts passwords and the database itself uses a master password to open it. Some types of password managers also acts as a Form Filler, where once a particular website is launched, and it prompts for a username and password, the password manager recognizes the request and will automatically fill the user name and password into the form. This type of password manager can be used as a defense against “phishing” as it is setup to handle automated logins to a particular site, and will not work with an imitation or a look alike website.

Some password managers include a password generator. In this case, when you define an entry in the database for a password, the password manager can generate a password that can be stored and used as needed. There are also password managers that are available online. This type of tool is a web based version similar to a desktop password manager, but allows for more portability.

Password managers have pros and cons. Some of the pros are listed above, while one of the main cons is that if your computer (or phone if you have a password manager on your smartphone) is lost, so are your passwords. Even though they may be protected and encrypted inside of the password manager, you no longer have access to that information.

(A few password manager tools are Keepass, Lastpass, Roboform, Kaspersky Password Manager and 1password)

Early Issues with ExamSoft and El Capitan

Update: ExamSoft announces a new version of SofTest compatible with El Capitan is available now.

Update: ExamSoft announces a new version of SofTest supporting El Capitan will be available by the second week of November.

El Capitan (OSX 10.11) was recently released to the public by Apple. While it is exciting to be the first one to use a new OS, if you use ExamSoft, we would urge you to wait.

At this time, ExamSoft’s SofTest is not compatible with El Capitan due to a vulnerability identified during the initial testing. If you are running El Capitan as your OS, ExamSoft will prevent you from downloading or registering SofTest on your device. We urge you to please refrain from updating to El Capitan until an official support announcement has been made by ExamSoft.

Questions about Mac OS upgrade should be directed to the Help Desk.

If you need to access your ExamSoft account, please visit www.examsoft.com/smu. Log into the account under the ‘Administrator/Faculty’ area. If you forgot your password, use the ‘Lost Password’ link to have it resent to you.

Post Updated 10/02 to include information about Mac OS upgrading and ExamSoft account login.