ITS Projects Page
A new page has been added to the IT website listing the department’s major projects.  A project is included on this page if it fits one of the three following criteria: 1) Broad impact on campus constituents; 2) Significant financial investment; or 3) Significant labor expended to implement the project.  Eventually each project will be linked to a blog allowing for periodic status updates.  The addition of the blogs will also allow for feedback from viewers.  This page will be a work in progress (as are many of the projects!)  as we work to better inform the campus community of the work being done by IT.  Please let us know if you find this information useful and what changes and/or additions would make it more useful.  To access the projects page click here: ITS Projects Page.

ITS Customer Satisfaction Survey
We deeply appreciate the participation of all those who took the time to respond to the first ITS customer satisfaction survey.  Over 300 faculty, staff and administrators and over 900 students responded to the survey.  The rich collection of information is still being analyzed and will be very helpful as we map out the ITS projects and goals for the next year.  We will be including some of the more interesting information in future issues of this newsletter.

Email Phishing over the Internet
What is phishing?

Phishing is an attempt by a scam artist to gather personal information from unsuspecting individuals. The “ph” is used instead of the “f” because phishing is a term used by hackers. This term dates back to the “Phone Phreaking” telephone scandals in the 1970’s.

Scam artists try to obtain information like username, password, social security number, bank account and credit card info. This personal information is used for fraudulent purposes and malicious activities like using an e-mail system to send spam e-mail messages. Identity theft is the most common use of an individual’s personal information.

Many companies and other educational institutions send educational email to their clients informing them that they should not respond to phishing emails.  We cannot emphasize enough the danger involved in responding to phishing attempts.  In addition to endangering university systems which may be compromised by your hijacked account, the risk of identity theft is real.  If you are unsure that a message is legitimate, please ask the ITS department to validate the authenticity of the sender.  You can send the message to helpdesk@jcu.edu and we will gladly check for you.

Individuals need to ask themselves: why would the person sending this message ask me for this information? Any legitimate bank and/or educational institution will not need any personal information from customers or students. This information is already in the institution’s databases. Therefore there is never a need to ask for this type of personal information.

The Federal Trade Commission has setup a website in an attempt to educate citizens about phishing over the internet. You may reach the website at the following web address: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt127.shtm

Office 2007 Rollout & Training
Office 2007 has many enhancements and is significantly different from previous versions.  Human Resources has scheduled multiple on-campus classes to reduce the learning curve associated with transitioning to this version and to minimize work disruptions.  We strongly recommend everyone take advantage of this opportunity.   Special classes are being scheduled for Access because the program is radically different from previous versions.  If you have Access databases, you need to attend a class or an online tutorial before installing Office 2007 on your system.  The schedule of classes can be found at Office 2007 Registration.

The deployment of Office 2007 to FSA computers has begun.  If you are getting a new computer, it will come with Office 2007 already installed.  For those not receiving a new computer, Office 2007 has been installed in the background on your computer. 

You can easily complete the installation with instructions  given out at the training class.  All existing computers need to be checked to determine if they have our minimum memory requirement, 1GB RAM.  Systems purchased last summer or later, meet this minimum.  To check your system’s installed memory, right-click on MY COMPUTER and then select PROPERTIES.  Your amount of installed RAM will be displayed in the bottom right half of the pop-up box.  Additional RAM can be purchased for approximately $49/GB.  Send a purchase requisition to Information Technology Services for the additional RAM desired and it will be installed shortly thereafter. 

As part of the upgrade to Office 2007, the Office 2003 applications will be removed from your computer.  Only the old applications will be removed, not your documents – they will remain intact.  Any document created in an Office 2003 application is fully compatible with the corresponding Office 2007 application.  Documents created in Office 2007 can be accessed in Office 2003 using the Compatibility Pack which you can download and install from this link:
 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en.  

The instructions for self-installing Office 2007 will be given to attendees of the hands-on training at the end of the class.  If you cannot attend one of the hands-on sessions, there are many free Microsoft online tutorials accessible via this link, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/default.aspx.  If you choose to utilize the online tutorials instead of attending the hands-on training, contact the Help Desk for instructions on completing the installation.

Office 2007 will be installed in all classrooms and labs by the end of this summer, with Office 2003 also available at these locations via Citrix.

The final stage of the deployment of Office 2007 will be over the Christmas Break.  Any FSA system not running Office 2007 at that time will have the software installed remotely so please plan your training accordingly.

If you have any questions concerning the Office 2007 rollout, contact the HelpDesk at x3005.

Summer Computer Purchase Installation Status
The installation of the summer computer purchase is well underway at this time.  The base configuration of the mini-towers includes 2GB RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and a CD/DVD burner.  These systems do not have a 3.5” “floppy” drive.  If you still have data on 3.5” discs, you should start the process of moving your data to USB Flash drives or CDs.  If you need assistance with the transfers, please call the HelpDesk.  The standard JCU software loaded on new systems remains the same as in previous years, with the exception of the change from Office 2003 to Office 2007.  See the article on the Office 2007 Rollout for more information on this topic.

During this summer’s installation process, we have approximately 130 systems to set up plus many more displays, printers and other peripherals.  To facilitate the transition from Office 200x to Office 2007, individuals that signed up for the Office 2007 training classes offered by Human Resources were contacted first to schedule their installations.   The Desktop Specialists will be calling the remaining group of individuals receiving new computers to schedule their installations.  The majority of installations should be completed by August 29th.  Any installation not completed by August 29th, will be postponed until after September 12th.  The postponement of installations will allow you and us to handle the myriad of activities surrounding the start of a new school year more efficiently without the disruption of installing new equipment.

FTIC Classes
The Faculty Technology Innovation Center is offering a number of hands-on workshops throughout the year. Check the FTIC web site at http://www.jcu.edu/ftic/workshops.asp regularly as new sessions are added each month. Unless otherwise noted all workshops are held in the FTIC lab (SC-134) Bohannon Center.

Creating Wikis and Blogs in Blackboard

Instructors wanting to include student wikis and blogs in their teaching can now do so using the Teams LX and Journal LX tools available in Blackboard. Teams LX makes it easy for students to create multimedia-rich wiki websites alone or as part of a group. Instructors can then review and assess the contributions of individual students using powerful tracking features. Journal LX allows students to create private or group blogs that can be read and commented on by their classmates as well as the instructor.

To add a wiki or blog to a Blackboard course:

1. Enter a course.
2. Click a content area link in the course menu frame.
3. Click the Edit View link located at the top right of the page.
4. In the select field, select Wiki or Blog.
5. Click the Go button.

Network File Storage Changes
Over this summer, additional disk space was added to the University’s network storage. This increased storage allows us to offer more network space to all students and employees. The two areas that were increased were users home folders (H: drives) and department folders (O: drives). We encourage users to save their work to these locations since they are backed up on a regular basis. The following quota changes have been made:

Employee (faculty, staff, & administrators) home directories (H: drive) – increased by 400%, from 250 MB to 1 GB.

Student home directories (H: drive) – increased by 250%, from 100 MB to 250 MB.

Department folders (O: drive) – increased by 500%, from 1 GB to 5 GB.

To help improve performance and integrity of data, we have also moved the storage location of the Desktop folder for ACADEMICS domain user profiles (mainly students).

In the past, many students have had issues when they save items to or remove them from their desktop, such as documents, links, and folders.  If the student exceeded the quota associated with their desktop they would not receive an error message until they logged off.  At that point it was too late. If there is any kind of error when a student logs off of the computer, any changes they made are lost.

To prevent this, we will be moving the Desktop location from the roaming profile to the H: drive.  Any changes to files on the Desktop will be immediately saved to this location.  There is no waiting, errors on log off will have no effect on the data stored there, and there is more network storage space than is available with the roaming profile.

Banner Changes Coming
This fall the way we identify ourselves in Banner will be changing.  The familiar Banner ID (aka "the B number" or "the T number") will still be around and still be your primary identifier.  But a new alternate id will be generated that will be much easier to remember.  It can be used to sign on to Banner Self Service or to look up someone in Banner Forms just like the B number.  This is part of our continuous effort to make Banner friendlier and more useful to the JCU community.

The new id will be the first nine characters of your email or network account, for example bstudent0 for bstudent09.  If that would duplicate an existing alternate id, the last character will be replaced with a tie-breaker generated from a to z.  (I'm talking to you, janderson08, janderson09 and all the rest of you jandersons!)  Social Security numbers will no longer be used as alternate ids, but an upgrade to Banner will still allow searching by SSN for a limited group of JCU employees.