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You may be aware that Microsoft has released or is releasing
versions of a new operating system named Vista. Vista is being
promoted by Microsoft as offering many benefits in the way of
improved security and compliance, optimized desktop
infrastructure, finding and using information, and enabling the
mobile workforce. Vista is currently being tested against all of
the PC hardware and software that the Smith School
offers/supports. Due to a lack of support for Vista by third
party software vendors (Novell among others), we do not
currently have 100 percent compatibility between Vista and our
environment. We will continue testing as hardware and software
vendors release updates that move us toward that 100 percent
compatibility. Until that time when we determine Vista is
compatible with our environment, we will not support Vista on
any PC. The Office of Smith IT will keep you updated as we
evaluate Vista and determine the optimal strategy in rolling
Vista out to the community.
The campus modem pool was originally created to enable faculty,
staff and students to have remote access to the campus network
at a time when commercial dial-up options were limited or
unavailable. Eventually, this remote access service evolved to
provide Internet access.
The vast majority of the campus community have switched to
other commercial options over the years, and the modem pool
usage has declined dramatically. Because of this decreased usage
and the availability of other options, the number of modems
supporting the campus dialup service is continually being
reduced. The Office of Information Technology (OIT) will
eliminate dial-up service completely on June 30, 2007.
Please contact the Office of Smith IT Help Desk at
301-405-2269 or
helpme@rhsmith.umd.edu with any questions.
Remember
that when you log into any computer with your Smith Novell account that
anyone who uses that computer while you're logged in has access to all
your personal data on K: as well as data on the departmental drives that
you and others in your department share. Please never log into a
computer for someone else with any account. We can help you work
out another way to accomplish what you need to do without breaching the
security of the network. The Office of Smith IT can provide temporary
accounts for visitors or student workers if you need them. Just fill
out the New Account Request form at:
http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/smithit/moreitresources/online_forms.html
to request accounts on Novell or Notes.
Because of need for greater network security, we will be searching for
uses of multiple logins. If you are currently able to login to more
than one machine at a time, expect that ability to go away in the very
near future. If you have any concerns about this policy, please email
helpme@rhsmith.umd.edu.
As you
may have heard in the news recently, as much as 9 out of every ten
emails sent nowadays are spam messages and things are only getting
worse. (http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/11/27/uk.spam.reut/ ).
Postini
is a SPAM filtering service that is provided with your Smith email
account. Some SPAM may sometimes slip through Postini and get into your
inbox. It appears spammers are getting wiser to SPAM Filtering, however
there are steps you can take to help fight back.
If you
get a spam message, the best thing to do is to report it to Postini.
They will then examine the message for identifying features that they
can use to tweak the spam filters to do a better job in the future.
Previously to submit a message was a relatively complicated procedure,
however we have now simplified this so that if you open an email that
you believe to be spam, you can click the "Forward to Anti-Spam" button
which will forward the message to Postini with all the required headers.
Once
you have sent the spam message to Postini you can delete it from your
mailbox. There is no need to forward the spam message to the Helpdesk.
They cannot submit the message on your behalf because important
information is lost when you send them the email, meaning that Postini
cannot process it.
If you have an email client you prefer to Lotus Notes, you can use
it with the Lotus Domino email servers, as they support several
different standards. You could use Thunderbird, Eudora, Mac OS Mail,
Outlook or many others.
Generally the other email clients are fairly easy to setup if
you consult your email client's help files and follow the instructions
there. You can use either IMAP or POP clients with the
following settings (and caveats..):
IMAP:
If you set your IMAP client to use the following servers:
Incoming mail server: imap.rhsmith.umd.edu
Outgoing mail server: smtp.rhsmith.umd.edu
Your username and password are the same as your iNotes login (used
to access your Lotus Webmail). Authentication is required for outbound
emails (same username/password combination as used for incoming email).
Notes:
With IMAP your email is stored on both the server and in your local
(IMAP) client, so if you use an IMAP client remember to monitor your
mailbox size to prevent you from reaching your mailbox quota. What you
delete in your IMAP client will be deleted on the server. You will
continue to be able to see all the messages stored on the server when
you use iNotes or the Lotus Notes client. The server side copy of your
mailbox will continue to be backed up.
If you wish to use IMAP, we recommend you email the Helpdesk so
that we can run a conversion process on your mail file that will make it
work better with IMAP.
POP:
If you set your POP client to use the following servers:
Incoming mail server: pop.rhsmith.umd.edu
Outgoing mail server: smtp.rhsmith.umd.edu
Your username and password are the same as your iNotes login (used
to access your Lotus Webmail). Authentication is required for outbound
emails (same username/password combination as used for incoming email).
Note:
With POP clients, you are downloading your email to your local
client and therefore your data will not be backed up. You will be
responsible for backing up your local data in your email client.
Additionally, if you login into iNotes to look at your email, you will
only see new messages that you have not yet downloaded to your local
client.
Dell and
Apple discounts exist for anyone with a University Directory ID. These
discounts are only available to individuals – not to campus purchasing
units. The bundles displayed offer deeper discounts than the individual
configurations, but all are discounted. Check out the deals at
http://www.act.umd.edu/ .
Our installations of McAfee are set to automatically update
virus definitions, however, when security exploits are
announced, this needs to be done more frequently. To protect
your computer please manually update your McAfee virus
definitions as soon as possible. To do this,
1. Right click on the red "V" in the taskbar at the bottom right
of your computer screen.
2. Choose "update now" and it will update to the latest version
of "dat."
Of course, new viruses or "exploits" are most likely being
created, so you should manually run McAfee updates daily.
Update Your Windows Critical Patches
If you have a computer with our software image (such as your
office computer), that PC is set to automatically update
critical Windows patches overnight. We recommend that you remain
logged into Novell overnight, and THEN RE-BOOT YOUR COMPUTER IN
THE MORNING. This will download the latest critical patches
available for Windows, and when you re-boot your computer in the
morning they will be installed. As always, the Office of Smith
IT recommends that you distrust all communication (attachments,
files, links, etc.) that comes unannounced to best protect
yourself from malicious attacks.
Instead of having
to contact the Smith IT Helpdesk to reset your Postini password,
you can now do it on your own. Postini has been reconfigured so
that all users can reset their password without Smith IT
assistance (although we are still happy to assist you).
To do this, go to
http://www.postini.com and click the Customer Login link at
the top-right. Enter your email address and a password of your
choosing in the Password field and click “Log In”. The attempt
will fail but on the failure page you can click the “forgot your
password” link to have a new random password emailed to you.
You can then login with that password and change it to whatever
you wish.
Please look forward to an automatic reply when you submit an
email to helpme@rhsmith.umd.edu. You can be confident that your
email has been received when you receive our automatic reply. It
will look like this:
This is an automated response – PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS
MESSAGE!
Thank you for your submission. We have received the email you
sent to helpme@rhsmith.umd.edu requesting assistance. The Office
of Smith IT Help Desk monitors and manages the helpme@rhsmith.umd.edu
email inbox several times a day. We will process your request
for assistance in the order it was received and during the
helpdesk operating hours. A Request For Service ticket will be
generated at that time and assigned to the appropriate support
personnel. If this is an urgent matter, we recommend that you
call the Office of Smith IT Help Desk at 301-405-2269 or come by
our offices in 3520 Van Munching Hall during our hours of
operation.
Hours of Operation:
Monday thru Friday - 8am to 6pm (except University Holidays)
Please Note:
Classroom support staff is also available to assist during all
hours that classes are in session including evenings and
weekends. In the event of an unscheduled system wide outage,
Smith IT System Administrator's have 24/7 notification tools in
place and will respond accordingly.
Please feel free to contact us with any questions or requests
regarding the status of your submission.
The Office of Smith IT asks instructors to
request their Blackboard course sites every semester so
we can ensure that everything is set up exactly as you would
like it the very first time. Request your Blackboard course
sites now for Fall 2007 if you haven't done so. You may also begin to
request BB courses for Winter and Spring 2008 now if you like,
while they can only be setup starting the end of October, when
the campus BB course setup system is ready.
Two ways to request a course site
1.
Campus-Wide new ELMS Course Request Form. Starting from
January 2007, course instructors can use this ELMS form to
request new courses. You can find it when log into Blackboard
Course System and look in "Common Tasks for Instructors" frame.
It requires Directory ID and password to login. It is convenient
for standard course request.
2. The Smith School BB Course Request Form. It has been used
for years by our faculty/staff to request any courses, and
allows for more flexibility. Note:
It is required to use our Smith BB Course Request form in
the following situations, to ensure proper naming conversion
is followed:
- If you are a new or adjunct faculty who does not have an
active UM Directory account yet.
- When the course is not listed in Testudo or UMEG, or not
listed under your name (please indicate in Comments field).
- When you're teaching a Cross-listed course and want to
combine different course IDs into one course.
- When a Staff member requests a course for a faculty
member.
- When you have special requests.
- All EMBA Courses are required to use this Smith
School form.
The Smith form can be found under the “Request BB Course” tab on our
Blackboard information pages at
http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/blackboard/. If you are
already in the BB course system, click on "Help" icon at the
top, it will bring you to our BB information pages.
Daylight Savings Time Impact
Daylight Savings Time will be starting 3 weeks earlier and ending 1
week later beginning this year. This is due to the Energy Policy
Act of 2005 passed by the American Congress. The standard DST
period would have been April 1st through October 28th, but this year it
will be March 11th through November 3rd. This affects ALL computer
programs that utilize date/time, which is just about everything --
remember, all files are date/time stamped. It is particularly hard
on calendar and email systems. Read more about
the impact and what Smith IT is doing about it.
It is time to update the software image for the classroom and
open lab computers. We request your input each semester to
ensure that we meet all your needs. If it is not requested, we
don't assume it is still needed! This is also your chance to
request additions to software applications available via the
eSmith Portal. This is especially important for those who
require software to be used outside of the Van Munching Hall
labs. Read the Full Notice
IMPORTANT NOTE: Smith IT will replace the computers in the VMH
classroom racks this summer. We will be starting from scratch to
build a new software image for the classrooms. It is essential
that you let Smith IT know ALL SOFTWARE NEEDS for those
computers. Even if the software is already on the existing
classroom computer, you will need to submit a request to add the
applications you or your students use. The classroom software
image will contain only the following software without a
response from you:
- MS Word, Access, Excel, and Powerpoint 2003
- McAfee Virus Scan
- Internet Explorer and Firefox
- Icons on the desktop linking to Blackboard and eSmith Portal
- Acrobat Reader
- Lotus Notes Client
- Realplayer
- Shockwave
- Quicktime
Please follow this link to a Web form to submit software
requests for the classrooms and open labs and the eSmith Portal:
http://www.smith.umd.edu/smithit/application_request.asp. This
will collect the request in a database that can be accessed by
everyone involved so please do not make requests by e-mail. It
is important for us to have all requests by June 10, 2007, and
access to a copy of the software media by June 15, 2007 in order
to ensure installation and functionality for the Fall 2007
semester. If you had already delivered the media to Smith IT,
please indicate that on the form.
Adhering to these deadlines will give our teams time to update
the image and test it on the new hardware platforms before the
beginning of the semester.
If you have any questions or comments please send them to
labimage@rhsmith.umd.edu.
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