SHSU Information Resources Update

SamNet

SHSU's wireless system is being upgraded. The changeover will occur May 17th. The new SamNet will facilitate:

Easier authentication onto the SamNet Wireless network via any web browser (You don't have to know ahead of time how to set it up and you can access Blackboard and SamMenu without additional configuration steps.)
Support for more wireless devices.
Bandwidth priority for SHSU users over guests.
Mobility anywhere inside the SamNet Wireless network without losing connection. (The device can just hop from one point to the next.)
Load-balancing. The access points are load balanced so that one point doesn't get overloaded with connections.

Check out the SHSU Technology Tutorial for SamNet Wireless.

Space

The University is committed to providing the storage space you need for your e-mail, S: drive documents, and departmental T: drive documents. If more space is needed for your academic research, administrative functions, or teaching, we will try our best to accommodate your increases in quota.

To ensure SHSU is making the best use of the State resources possible, you are requested to first check your e-mail and S: and T: drives and remove any non-work-related documents, pictures, videos, and music. You will also need to remove any duplicate files which you are storing before requesting the increased space.

As further incentive for doing a thorough housecleaning to remove personal items, remember that anything stored on a State of Texas computer is subject to the Open Records request system.

Social Security Numbers and More

The Identity Finder software is now on all the campus PC workstations. Identity Finder lowers the risk of data loss and identity theft by finding and securing personal information such as social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank accounts, and passwords in files, e-mails,and databases. Want to know how to scan your files for risky information? Check out the tutorial.

Semester Break

As we mention each month in the Update, the weekend after graduation is set aside for major maintenance for the information technology infrastructure. Outages may occur from Friday, 5/22, at 6 p.m. till Memorial Day, 5/25, at 8 a.m.

The AB1 Data Center will be down Saturday, 5/23. This planned outage will include Blackboard, Nell, SamWeb, SamMenu, Exchange mail, telephones, and all other campus-wide IT systems. We will be working with McCaffety Electric and Strike ProTech: to complete a number of items, such as:

Installation of new Data Center firewalls
Testing of Emergency Power Off system
Testing of fire suppression system
Server IP addressing changes

Please just enjoy your holiday weekend and take a break!

SHSU Remote Access

Are you new here? Perhaps you don't know that you can login and use your S: or T: drive documents from home or when you're traveling? Just connect with the campus remote terminal server.

In the past, we allowed campus users to add local printers from the remote.shsu.edu login. This caused a serious problem in March when someone's personal printer driver killed the server. To better achieve uptime for the remote servers, the ability to add home printers has now been removed.

Although you won't be able to print directly to your home printer, you can still get your documents home to print them. When initially connecting to the remote server, under the "Local Resources" tab click "More" and there is an option to select your computer's hard drive to share with the remote server. You can then print all of your documents to the PDF printer, and save them to your home computer for printing.

Some Writing Tips

Web Marketing Today offers suggestions for writing specifically for the Internet. Just because you can provide a multitude of fonts and colors on your web site or e-newsletter, doesn't mean you should. Recommendations include avoiding "small type, brash color combinations, and wide columns." They advise, based on market research, Verdana or Arial fonts to enhance readability.

Semester Start-Up for Bb

Sometimes students get overwhelmed with the many choices that exist in Blackboard. You can lower their anxiety levels by turning off buttons, areas, or tools you are not using.

Login to Blackboard.
Select your course.
Go to the Control Panel.
Select the Manage Course Menu in the Course Options panel.
Select the Remove button for the areas you're not using.
Caution: if you accidentally remove an area that has content in it, the content will be deleted too, so be careful.

Students may get confused since not every prof stores info in the same categories. Demo your course for students at the beginning and cut down on the "Where's the syllabus?" and "What's my grade?" questions. If you're using advanced tools like the groups or assignment tool, create a separate "How to Use Blackboard" content area within your course for students.

Sharing In the Fix

Adapt: At times, your workstation may be down. Use one of your department's laptops or another workstation, or if worse comes to worst, use oneof the campus labs. You CAN still work, even if your normal PC or Macintosh is down.

Give Us the Whole Picture: Everyone wants immediate attention. Explain what exactly will be impacted and what other solutions you have thought of to fix the issue.

Put It in the WO: SamWeb's WO system is the place to correspond regarding issues. When you get an e-mail from the WO system letting you know that a UCS staff member has done something, don't just hit reply to that e-mail. Take the time to login to SamWeb, and Computer Services, and update your WO there.

Be Prepared: Think ahead. Coillaborate with other members of your department to develop your Business Continuity Plan in case the power is out, the campus is closed, the somputers are down, or other emergencies. Have contingencies in place.

Semester Help and More

Need help figuring out the final grades for your students with Bb? Attend the Blackboard Grade Center: End of Semester Help Session. Other sessions this month will be Social Media and Printing Labels. Check the Calendar and sign up now to reserve your seat. You may also request one-on-one training or training for your department for some of the campus-specific programs which we have. Just e-mail the Helpdesk.

Storing Voice Mails

It's almost summertime and for administrative offices, that just means things get even busier. Many of you are managing your VM for the department through the actual telephone, rather than Outlook. Therefore, to help manage the quantity of VM which you are receiving on the main departmental phone, the deleted items will now be removed after one week.

Currently, the default is to purge the deleted mails after 60 days. With the heavy volume that many of you are receiving, that amount of stored VM was overloading your VM system. So as of the afternoon of May 5th, deleted items in voice mail for generic departmental phones will be deleted after just seven days.

Staff New Hires

We are pleased to announce new staff members for the Information Resources division.

Katherine (Kay Kay) Davis will be joining the division on May 18th in the new position of Assistant Vice President for Information Resources. Kay Kay is a Texas A&M graduate and brings substantial administrative and IT experience from TDCJ.

For the UCS-Administrative Applications department, Eric Amason has accepted the Programmer Analyst I position. Eric has worked as a student programmer for two years. He will be working with SamWeb programming initially. Eric will be an August 2009 SHSU graduate. Another position will be filled within the UCS-Administrative Applications department. QiYu (Robert) Li will be a Database Administrator II supporting the Institutional Research Office functions. Robert has been a student assistant in the IR office, and is completing his graduate degree at SHSU. Both Eric and Robert will be learning the Banner ERP along with the rest of our staff.

Corey Arnold is the newest System Analyst within the UCS-Systems department. Corey's nine years of technology experience will immediately help manage the 100 Microsoft Windows servers at SHSU. (Did you know there were that many??)

Support Times and Recommendations

The Helpdesk provides support for SHSU equipment and software on the local area network. Each month's update will include the versions of software and minimum requirements for hardware with the new or changed information highlighted and bolded.

Memory Sticks: Purchase (and encourage your students to buy) flash drives that are USB Mass Storage Compliant.

Floppy disks (3 1/2" or 5 1/4") should not be used as a storage device for University information.

Wireless peripherals such as mice and keyboards have proven problematic in the campus environment and should not be purchased and/or installed.

Operating Systems: The supported version of Macintosh machines will be OS X, version 5 after the Leopard conversion which is underway. The supported version of Microsoft's operating system is Windows XP.

Software Packages: The supported versions of office suites are Microsoft's Office 2007. The new version of an office suite for Macintoshes is Microsoft Office 2008 and is being packaged for installation on campus machines.

Hardware Configurations:

The minimum requirements for the SHSU local area network support for a PC are a 2.5 GHz processor, 1.5 GB RAM, and an 80 GB disk, with 15 GB free. Our recommended configuration is a 3.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB memory, and a 250 GB hard drive.

The minimum configuration for a Macintosh on the LAN is a 1.6GHz PowerPC single processor, 1GB RAM, and a 40GB hard drive.

Computer Services may schedule significant periods of downtime for major system upgrades and maintenance. For your planning purposes, the weekend following each graduation will be set aside for scheduled outages. Additionally, certain systems may be unavailable on Friday nights after 6 p.m. and on holidays. To permit patches and routine updates, managed Macintosh nodes may be automatically rebooted between Friday at 6 p.m. and Saturday morning at 8 a.m.

All offers, training, and software above pertain to faculty and staff at SHSU only. If you have any questions, compliments, comments, or concerns, please let us know.