Helpdesk. Shopping for Technology. Talkin Tech Highlights... Computing on the Go!

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1 Helpdesk Volume 1, Issue 2 November 15, 2007 Printer-friendly version Make sure your newly purchased equipment complies with CCAC Hardware Standards, and learn what ITS can support. See CCAC Equipment Standards Shopping for Technology Are you shopping for a computer for home? Planning to give a gift this holiday season? We can help with some guidelines and links to helpful sites to assist you in evaluating your options. The average replacement cycle for a personal computer is now 4 years, so this information may be useful whether you are buying a computer for yourself or your children. See our Shopping for Technology webpage for friendly guidelines. Thinking about buying a laptop? Looking to buy the latest gadget? We can point you to some consumer-friendly sites for advice in purchasing a laptop, PDA, etc. See our Computing on the Go webpage for information. Cleaning up after the holidays? Read our webpage on Discarding Computer Equipment before you throw a computer, printer or cell phone into the trash. Or learn how you can responsibly donate or recycle technology equipment. Want your new gizmo to be compatible with CCAC technology? Check our the CCAC Equipment Standards shown at the left. Talkin Tech Highlights... Computing on the Go! This Talkin' Tech provides guidance for those who: have more than one office, work from home or different locations throughout the College, teach in multiple classrooms. See the Talkin Tech Indexed Issues

2 Datatel Tip! Finding it a challenge to find a student or person in the Datatel database? Have you tried using the soundex lookup? Type a forward slash before the last name: /dostoevsky,f Outlook Migration Last Call for Mailbox Moves! The ITS Network Services engineers have successfully moved over 1350 mailboxes to the new Exchange servers. This upgrade provides you a larger mailbox quota and increased availability, as well as enhanced security and performance. We anticipate concluding this project by the end of November. If your mailbox has not been migrated yet, please contact Tom Wilk or Mike O Brien at your earliest convenience. Any mailbox that has not been moved in collaboration with the user will be either moved without your involvement or deleted. See the Outlook Upgrade webpage for more information. Datatel Colleague Moving to Release 18 Coming Soon! Over the 2007 Thanksgiving weekend, ITS will perform the upgrade of the Datatel Colleague live database to Datatel s newest version, Release 18. For you, the end user, there will be very little change to the desktop interface, basic look and feel and database functionality. Most changes are behindthe-scenes architecture which upgrades the system to next-generation database frameworks and prepares us for the future. The ITS Development staff has been working since late 2006 to re-write customized fields, reports and programs and test the new system. Appropriate CCAC administrators and staff have been performing end-user testing in October and November. So far, the following modules have been tested by the Colleague data owners: Core Demographics Registration, Faculty, Grades, Student Records Admissions, Financial Aid Financials, Purchasing, Human Resources CCAC Central See the Datatel Colleague webpage for scheduled conversion dates. LIBRARY SYSTEM UPGRADE ITS and the CCAC Library has recently implemented a new library automation system provided by SirsiDynix. Properly titled Unicorn, this new integrated library system handles the acquisitions, cataloging, serials, and circulation processes for all campus libraries. Students and library users logging into the online catalog will see a new interface. Additional features will be added to the new online catalog in the next couple of months.

3 R25 Space Scheduling Software Are you a heavy user of Campus facilities? The College has recently expanded the licenses for the R25 software to make room scheduling information available to more users. Training is available at each campus during the month of December. See the ITS Training Calendar for dates and times. Student Opinion Survey (SOSO) Results Now Online! Attention Faculty! The ITS Integration team has assisted the Academic Deans and the Registrar to automate much of the process of preparing and scanning the Student Opinion Surveys which are conducted each term. These results are now scanned and stored in a database, which is available on the web for Deans and faculty to view online. Faculty: Your results will be available online three weeks after the term has concluded. To register the first time only, you will need your Colleague ID number. View our SOSO Tech-Torial or download the instructions. DATATEL USERS Need a Report? Mailing List? Labels? The ITS Operations Center provides this service to college departments. To submit a request for jobs, reports, lists or labels, submit your request to the Helpdesk. Please allow at least a two-day notice for completion of this service. See the Datatel Jobs web page for further instructions. Need a Survey? Do you need to conduct a survey to gain feedback from - Students? Employees? Constituents? Looking for a tool to make this easy for you? The ITS Integration Team can help you to develop a web-based survey customized to meet your needs. After one or two meetings with an ITS Integrator, we can have your survey up and running in no time. With our Survey Developer tool, results will be available on a secure website for you to review. For more information Call ITS Integration Don Broderick Want to run these yourself? Check out the online documentation found on the Datatel E- Learning site, Module 4, Unit 2.

4 Network and Datatel Account procedures Use it or Lose it! Did you know that Information Technology Services (ITS) maintains: over 2,500 employee network accounts! over 21,000 student network accounts! over 700 Datatel accounts! In order to manage this volume and meet our Security Audit requirements, we must periodically deactivate accounts which have not been actively used and ensure that all users are appropriately authorized to have access to network or database resources. For these reasons, you should know that we follow these procedures: Employee Network Accounts: all changes (suspensions, deletions, etc) must be authorized via the Human Resources department. See Network Account Procedures for more information. Student NetID Accounts: each term we will deactivate all accounts for former students who have not used their account within the last 160 days. See Student Network Account Procedures for our schedule. Datatel Accounts: we routinely deactivate any Datatel account which has remained inactive for over 160 days. All authorizations for new or revised Datatel security profiles must be generated by the appropriate Datatel Data Owner. See Colleague ID s and Password procedures. Build your Skills and Enhance Productivity through Training Brought to you by ITS Helpdesk, Your Best Friend for Technology The ITS Department provides training in Datatel Colleague and other system-wide applications that we support. See the ITS Training Calendar for workshops on Datatel, Appointment Central, and R25 Space & Event Info. New Tech-Torials Online! 1. Planning a Meeting in Outlook 2. Changing your Screen Resolution 3. Viewing your SOSO (Survey of Student Opinion) Check out the ITS Tech-torials today and bookmark this site. Check out this new online resource, developed by our Helpdesk analysts. Each Tech-torial includes a video to watch, along with a short, step-by-step instructions document you can print. We hope that these videos and step-by-step instructions are beneficial for guiding you in your busy work day. More to follow...

5 Find us on the Web! KEYWORD: Helpdesk ITS EMPLOYEE HELPDESK or The Help Desk will provide a single point of contact for all CCAC administrators, faculty & staff regarding supported software and hardware. Our goal is to Reduce your downtime Help you become more productive on the job. More About Your Helpdesk Students should contact the Campus Computer Lab for general information and NetID issues. Allegheny Boyce North South Fall Hours of Operation Monday through Thursday 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Friday 7:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Our Helpdesk Analysts need to be well-versed in over 150 categories of technology problems, ranging from hardware to software, from networking to databases, from phones to . Our Top-Ten categories for 2007 to date are shown in the following chart: Fall Break (November 19-25): Mon -Tue: 8am - 5:30pm Wed: 8am - 4pm Thurs - Sun: closed Note: If you have an urgent matter during the hours we are closed, please contact the ITS Operations Center at ITS Operations Center hours of operation are Monday through Friday 7:00 am until 11:00 pm Saturday 7:00am - 3:00pm.