What's New?

10/30/08, FREE ETHERNET CABLES for students!

Students, did you know you can pick up a free Ethernet network cable at the ITS Help Desk? Well, you can - all you have to do is drop by Humanities 314 and ask for one. All residence halls and rooms have full wired Ethernet access. Plug in that cable and you're good to go!

07/25/08, Fall Semester 2008 Moodle Available Monday 7/28.

ITS is currently updating Moodle, our course management system, and creating new class sites for the upcoming semester. On Monday July 28, Macalester will have fresh Moodle sites for your Fall 2008 classes. Sites from previous semesters are archived and available at moodlearchive.macalester.edu. (Spring 2008 class archives will become available Monday as well.)

If you have any questions about Moodle, or if you would like help creating or restoring a class site, please contact your Academic Information Associate.

06/06/08, Wireless Networking Upgrade Plan.

ITS will begin an upgrade program this summer that will substantially improve our wireless networking infrastructure and capabilities. Our project will deliver several service improvements, including the following:

*Increased network security and data privacy;

*Connection portability (one connection will travel with you all over campus);

*Improved management tools, which will intelligently guide increased coverage to where it is needed most, and

*Network priority for Macalester students, staff and faculty over guests and visitors.

The project will begin with changes in the way wireless access points, "transmitters," are managed. These changes will take place from mid-June through early July. There will be some brief wireless networking downtimes as we convert, of up to 30 minutes in duration. We will announce downtimes in advance. Wired networking will not be affected, only wireless connectivity.

Older PC laptops may need an updated wireless driver. We are working to determine which College-owned computers will need this update, and also to contact their users directly. Updates will be available at the ITS Help Desk, x.6525 and helpdesk@macalester.edu, and via other means if technically possible.

As the project progresses, our current multiple wireless sub-networks - "Humanities," "Janet Wallace," "Carnegie," etc. - will be incrementally merged into a single access entity. Once your building is converted, you will see a difference in how you connect wirelessly. For the first time, you will log into wireless access as you are used to doing with wired access. Be assured that you will continue to use your current username and password - these will not change, nor are additional ones needed. Clear documentation and personalized help will be available to assist you.

More information will be forthcoming in days ahead. We think you'll be pleased with the additional wireless services and improvements this project will deliver to you.

03/11/2008 - Progress Toward Google Apps for Education.

We are deeply grateful to the Macalester community for your patience as we have wrestled with the recent e-mail outage and restoration process. Currently, OCS Webmail is reasonably stable, and we will continue working to keep this service available. These recent difficulties have strengthened our belief that Google Apps for Education offers an exciting array of services more suited to Macalester's needs than any other tool we have evaluated - most especially stable, reliable e-mail available across the Web.

A dedicated workgroup of College staff, aided by volunteer testers, have been working for nearly a year to evaluate other products and recommend a new e-mail tool for Macalester. Senior Staff of the College reviewed this recommendation in February; accordingly, we will proceed with Google Apps for Education. The group's testing and evaluation procedures have built up a significant amount of knowledge, familiarity and expertise that will help us switch from OCS to Google Apps. We had originally planned to implement Google Apps using an incremental approach that would roll it out to selected groups of people over the next few months. Given our recent experience, we are compressing our implementation down from 'the next few months' to 'the next few weeks' to 'as soon as possible.' Further, we will implement Google Apps for the entire campus community at the same time. This move is the top priority for ITS and several collaborators from across campus.

Moving faster poses significant challenges. We are confident that these challenges will be manageable if we approach the change to Google Apps thoughtfully and incrementally. This means we will focus first on building a support infrastructure that will be there for you when you need assistance. Next we will concentrate on providing key services, such as sending and receiving e-mail. We recognize that our community will need help in migrating archived e-mail and addressbooks into Google Apps. Additional services - such as a shared calendar and other tools - will be supported as we move forward. During this switch, many more services and settings will be available to you than we can effectively support. You are encouraged to explore these options, but please recognize that our support mission will expand more deliberately. Bluntly, this means we won't be able to assist you with all aspects of Google Apps immediately.

You may hear that some individuals have already moved from OCS to Google Apps. These people are members of the 'conversion team' who will play critical roles in creating the support infrastructure for you and your colleagues noted above. They are taking risks and making mistakes to find out how best to prevent such problems from happening to you. The opportunity for interested Macalester stakeholders to switch to Google Apps is coming soon, and we will share this with you as quickly as we can.

01/11/2008 - Jacob Dorer Receives District Council Outstanding Volunteer Award.

On January 11, Jacob Dorer, Information Technology Services, was recognized for his community service at the 2007 Neighborhood Honor Roll Volunteer Awards Night. Following a welcome by Mayor Chris Coleman, the annual awards were presented by the St. Paul District Councils and the City Council. Excerpted from the award citation: "A Dayton's Bluff Community Council board member since 2002, Jacob has served as both President and Vice President, as well as on task forces and the Downtown St. Paul Airport Advisory Board. He is chair of the District Plan committee. He also spearheads the Mounds Park Neighborhood Residential Buckthorn Removal Project and maintains the Mounds Park Neighborhood e-mail group."

1/10/2008 - Spring 2008 Moodle being set up.

ITS is currently updating Moodle and creating new class sites for the upcoming semester.  This afternoon Macalester will have fresh sites for your spring classes. 

If you have any questions about Moodle, or would like help creating or restoring a class site, please contact your AIA:

Languages & Fine Arts --  Alison Sommer - asommer@macalester.edu
Social Sciences -- Brad Belbas - jbelbas@macalester.edu
Humanities -- Michael Nelson - nelsonm@macalester.edu
Sciences -- Barron Koralesky - koralesky@macalester.edu
Adam Nave - nave@macalester.edu

11/16/07, New link added to add E-mail Vacation Message

In the sidebar on the ITS homepage, we have added a new link:

Add an E-Mail Auto Reply Message

We have added the link so you can conveniently add a vacation message when you plan to be away from the office. This feature was widely requested, especially with the holiday season approaching.

The link will take you to a page with instructions on how to set up your message and another link which will take you to the OCS Webmail login page. You do have to log in first to authenticate to your specific E-mail account.

08/15/07, New Usernames and Password Self-Service Debut

Banner has replaced Jenzabar/CARS as the College's central data system. This is an exciting opportunity, one that affects everyone at the College - extensively described on the Effectively Linking Macalester (ELM) pages. As part of the conversion, many business practices and workflows are being improved. One such improvement involves usernames and computer accounts, which are automatically generated within Banner when Human Resources creates a new employee record, and when the Registrar creates a new student record. Because new usernames are generated from it, Banner's rules apply to all accounts created after June 30, 2007. Existing Macalester usernames have not changed.

New Usernames. Banner usernames may be up to eight (8) characters long. This new convention applies equally to students, faculty and staff. The default username is the first initial, followed by the first seven letters of the last name. If the last name is longer than seven letters, the remainder are dropped - as are hyphens, apostrophes and other non-alphabetic characters. For duplicates (multiple individuals with the same last name and first initial) the last character is replaced with a number in ascending order. The username is the first part of the Macalester e-mail address. Examples:

Before this change, it was usually possible to guess correctly what someone's Macalester username and e-mail address would be. Don't guess! It's no longer an effective strategy. If you guess wrong, you could send a message to someone other than your intended recipient - or send out a message that does not reach anyone at all. Instead of guessing, please check the online Directory. The Directory is linked from the College's main Web page and also through the 1600grand portal. You can access it quickly at www.macalester.edu/directory.html.

Password self-service. For years, people have been asking for a way to reset their own Macalester account passwords, quickly and without having to call ITS for help. Good news! Our 'Self-Service' password page is now active, whether you've forgotten your old password or just want to create a new one. Go to the main ITS Web page and look in the left-hand column for the 'Self-Service' link, or go directly to http://idmprod.macalester.edu/.

To augment security while giving you the control to change your own password, we have implemented a series of 'challenge questions.' Answers to these questions are unique to each individual, and yet easy to remember. Our questions are based on similar questions used by other secure Internet sites, such as banks. The self service interface displays the status of your password, as well as giving you access to change it. If you wish, you may still get help with resetting passwords by calling the ITS Help Desk at x.6525.

As with usernames, the standard password convention has also been changed. New accounts are assigned 12-digit numbers as default passwords. Account holders are strongly encouraged to change their passwords immediately, to unique passwords that meet some simple requirements (passwords must contain between 6 and 15 characters and must have at least one number; some special characters may also be used). Please note that existing account-holders' passwords have not been changed. However, the next time you reset or change your password, the new convention will apply.

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