May 23, 2013

Posts Comments

Protect your UM Passwords!

April 30, 2013 by

The University email system has been inundated lately with phishing emails. These take various forms and purport to come from both people and groups you know. This illuminates one key point the IT security awareness presentation emphasizes, that the “From” part of an email message is easily forged by criminals to lead you into believing a message comes from a legitimate source. As always, a best practice is to not click links in email messages. While we all realize your common work correspondence includes links, these phishing messages are unsolicited emails that were not part of an ongoing email conversation. Another key feature these messages rely on is they imply they are from IT professionals asking you to “verify” your login information. IT will NEVER send you an email asking you to verify your login credentials.

Some of the sites these emails direct you to will attempt to install malware on your computer. If your system and antivirus patches are not up to date, key logging or screen capturing software can be installed on your computer. Software to destroy all the data on your computer could be installed, or as a worst case a root kit can be put in place to completely take over the computer system without your knowledge or consent.

Inadvertently revealing your login password via these phishing attempts is magnified significantly with the use of VPN.  Your VPN credentials are the same as your email credentials. Once authenticated via VPN, a remote host becomes a “trusted” host.  If a criminal logs into VPN as “you,” the remote computer they are using then becomes a “trusted” host  and security measures put in place are circumvented.

Some best practices to keep in mind concerning your user  account:

  • NEVER click links in unsolicited emails!
  • Use good passwords and change them every 90 days. Good passwords are a minimum of 8 characters with upper/lower case letters, special characters and numbers.
    • Even better passwords can be based on a phrase and approximately 15 characters if your system will permit.
  • Always be suspicious of a site that asks for your account or personal information. Familiarize yourself with the address bar at the top of your browser. Beware entering your account information if the site does not end in “olemiss.edu.”

Additional trust is given with VPN access. Please take care of your account!

 

Filed Under: Email, Security

Try Web HD. No Lines. No Waiting. No ‘Hold’ Music.

February 18, 2013 by

Recently, the Office of Information Technology (IT) migrated to a new call tracking platform named Web Help Desk.   In addition to supporting the needs of IT technical staff with tracking your calls and emails, Web Help Desk allows individuals with a valid UM WebID to submit service requests through a web interface.

In addition to submitting service requests with Web Help Desk, you can also check the status of your request, update the request and search the FAQ Knowledge Base. When a service request is submitted using Web Help Desk, you will receive a confirmation email that includes the request details and ticket number.

Common Tasks

To create a new service request:

  1. Login using your UM email address and password.
  2. Select the Request Type that best fits your issue from the drop down arrow.
  3. Next, in the Request Detail box describe the problem you are reporting. Be as specific about the key details of the problem as possible.
  4. If you have a file to attach, use Add File to upload and then Save.

To view your service request history:

  1. Select the History option from the Menu at the top.
  2. All of your active and closed requests will display.
  3. To view request details select the ticket number.

To edit your service request:

  1. Select the History option from the menu at the top.
  2. All of your active and closed requests will display.
  3. To view request details select the ticket number.
  4. Then, select Add Note, enter your updated information, and Save.
  5. If you need to cancel the request, simply select Cancel Ticket and then Save.

To access frequently asked questions (FAQ):

  1. Select the FAQ option from the menu at the top.
  2. Select the category to search, or search using the “contains” option.

Really! It is that simple to submit, update, and track your service requests using Web Help Desk.

If you have additional questions, please contact the IT Helpdesk at (662) 915-5222 or helpdesk@olemiss.edu.   You can visit our website for more information, or contact us Monday through Friday, 8 AM – 5 PM CST.

Filed Under: Email, GUI Installation, Helpdesk, myOleMiss, Password Reset, SAP, Training, WebIDs

Student Email Alert: Automatic Email Forwarding Ends on February 8, 2013

January 8, 2013 by

In March 2012, the University of Mississippi (UM) went live with UM Gmail.  Once all students were provided with UM Gmail accounts in summer 2012, UM Webmail was taken offline in October 2012.

Now, the final step is near.  As a reminder, on Friday, February 8, 2013, automatic email forwarding from WebID@olemiss.edu to WebID@go.olemiss.edu for students will no longer be in place.

Who is Impacted?

Students admitted before March 18, 2012 are impacted.  If this applies to you, the Office of Information Technology (IT) made changes to help minimize the impact.  First, your official UM email address is already set to WebID@go.olemiss.edu.   That means class roles, myOleMiss and Blackboard will reflect your correct email address.  Also, when IT migrated mailing lists to Google Groups, we changed the email addresses to WebID@go.olemiss.edu for students.

To get the word out, consider using your email signature block to promote your WebID@go.olemiss.edu email address.  On February 8, email sent to WebID@olemiss.edu will not be automatically forwarded to WebID@go.olemiss.edu.

Who is Not Impacted?

  • Employee email is not impacted.  Employees are provided an UM Mail (Exchange) account and may request an UM Gmail account.   There is no automatic forwarding to UM Gmail in place.  If an employee has created an email forwarding rule from UM Mail to UM Gmail, that forward rule will  remain in place.
  • Students admitted on or after March 18, 2012 are not impacted.  For these students, the automatic email forward is not in place. They were only issued UM Gmail accounts (i.e., WebID@go.olemiss.edu).
  • Students who became employees or graduate instructors are not impacted.  In short, these individuals have an employee affiliation. As mentioned above, employee email is not impacted.

Final Comments

You can read more about UM Gmail at go.olemiss.edu.  If you require assistance or have questions, please contact the IT Helpdesk at 662-915-5222 or helpdesk@olemiss.edu.

Filed Under: UM Google Mail

IT Introduces UM Mail Vaulting Service for Email Storage

September 27, 2012 by

Is your mailbox filling up with historic messages that you need to retain? With the implementation of Symantec Enterprise Vault, the Office of Information Technology has a new solution for you.

Symantec Enterprise Vault is a content archiving system that moves emails and their attachments to an online storage area called a vault. EV requires an Outlook plug-in that is compatible with Outlook 2003-2010 for Windows and Outlook 2011 for Mac OS. In addition to working with the Outlook client, EV tools can be accessed through Internet Explorer versions 7, 8 and 9.

How It Works

After an email is archived, the email is replaced by a shortcut/link in your mailbox that provides instant access to the archived email message. When you need an item that has been archived from your mailbox you can easily search, view or delete it yourself. Archived emails remain available to you in Outlook and through the Outlook Web Application (OWA).

Vault is intended to help you manage your email more efficiently. However, you should continue to perform basic housekeeping tasks periodically, such as deleting emails that are no longer needed. Your messages are auto-archived when your mailbox exceeds 75 percent capacity. Additionally, you can select messages to manually archive at any time. Vault provides you with 5GB of storage space for archived messages.

If you have messages that are held in your personal folder (PST) files on your local computer, they will not be archived. Messages must be in the Exchange mailbox to be archived. To archive messages or folders stored in your personal folder files, you can move a message or folder to your Exchange mailbox.

Installation

When you are ready to give Vault a try, contact the IT Helpdesk at helpdesk@olemiss.edu or (662) 915-5222. After Vault is enabled for your email account, download and install the required Outlook plug-in from our website.

Filed Under: Email, Helpdesk

UM Webmail Taken Offline October 5, 2012

September 24, 2012 by

With the migration of email services from UM Webmail to UM Gmail complete, logins to UM Webmail will be disabled on October 5.  UM Mail (Exchange) is available to employees.  UM Gmail is available to students and any employees that have requested access.

UM Webmail login restrictions include web (http://webmail.olemiss.edu), POP and IMAP access.  Individuals that continue to login to Webmail to review older messages or contacts will need to export or transfer contacts or messages to a local computer or other email system.  Email forwarding from @olemiss.edu to @go.olemiss.edu will remain in place until February 8, 2013 for students that previously used UM Webmail.

You can read more about UM Gmail at go.olemiss.edu.  If you require assistance or have questions, please contact the Information Technology (IT) Helpdesk at 662-915-5222 or helpdesk@olemiss.edu prior to October 5.

Filed Under: Academic Technology, Email, Helpdesk

Mailing List Service Migrates to Google Groups

August 7, 2012 by

On July 25, Information Technology (IT) completed the migration of our mailing list service to Google Groups. Google Groups is Google’s version of a mailing list service. Some of the advantages of Google Groups include a web interface for self-service group management, web-based archive mail review and support for email attachments up to 25 MB.

Key Migration Points

Below is recap of key points sent to mailing list owners when we migrated to Google Groups.

  • We migrated mailing lists and members. If the list was used in the past 18 months, IT migrated the mailing list to Google Groups.
  • Mailing list names and list email addresses remained the same (e.g., hd@listserv.olemiss.edu).
  • Student email addresses were modified from WebID@olemiss.edu to WebID@go.olemiss.edu.

Getting Started: Member

For mailing list members, there are very few changes. Since the mailing list names have not changed, you may email the list as you did before the migration. Students emailing a list should remember to use their UM Gmail account and not their personal Gmail account.

If you want to join a list, just send an email to groupname+subscribe@listserv.olemiss.edu where groupname is the exact name of the mailing list. The mailing list owner will take the appropriate action to complete your request.  Likewise, you can unsubscribe by emailing groupname+unsubscribe@listserv.olemiss.edu.

Getting Started: Owner

When you are ready to create a new mailing list, contact the IT Helpdesk for now. In the near future, IT will be building a web interface in myOleMiss to provide a self-service mailing list creation option. Also, we encourage all list owners to have UM Gmail accounts for full access to the Google Group management interface.

Once you have a list, the most common tasks are adding list members and creating list managers. You can review the Google Groups FAQ for answers to these questions or contact the IT Helpdesk to step you through the process.

Final Comments

IT created a Google Groups FAQ to answer the most common questions. For any other questions about mailing lists, please contact the IT Helpdesk at 662-915-5222 or helpdesk@olemiss.edu.

Filed Under: Academic Technology, Email, Helpdesk, UM Google Mail

Need a Summer Break from UM Today Daily Emails?

May 18, 2012 by

Summer is almost here and, if you are not teaching or enrolled in classes or if you are traveling, you may want to disable the daily UM Today email summaries.

To do this, sign in to myOleMiss and choose “Preferences” from the upper right of the UM Today listing. Once here, you should see an option to set your UM Today email format. You can set it to text-only, mobile-friendly, or you can disable the messages altogether. The default, HTML format, includes all of the graphics and menus that display best from a computer with a Web browser. Note that this menu also lets you prioritize your messages within the UM Today listing and even suppress messages by type.

You can view UM Today messages anytime from myOleMiss. Although disabling the daily messages may give you some email relief, keep in mind that you may miss important announcements by doing this.

Filed Under: Email, myOleMiss, UM Today Tagged With: ,

WebMail for Students Moving to UM Google Mail

March 15, 2012 by

Figure 1. Poll Results from UM community in support of moving student email to Google.In June 2011, a committee was formed to consider a University of Mississippi (UM) partnership with Google to offer Google Apps for Education to students. Google Apps for Education offers email, document creation, calendar services and home pages to use in private and collaborative projects.

In June 2011, a committee was formed to consider a University of Mississippi (UM) partnership with Google to offer Google Apps for Education to students.   Google Apps for Education offers email, document creation, calendar services and home pages to use in private and collaborative projects.

In September 2011, the committee requested input from the university community on this initiative. The survey results (Figure 1) showed an overwhelming desire to pursue Google Apps for Education as the replacement for UM Webmail.  Soon after, the Office of Information Technology (IT) began preparations for this initiative.

UM Students

Beginning on March 19, 2012, UM will provide each student with the ability to opt in for a Google email (Gmail) account.  For students, the new UM Gmail account will be a replacement for the current UM Webmail account.  Although this account will be hosted with Google, it will have the “go.olemiss.edu” extension rather than “gmail.com.”   The UM Webmail account,  WebID@olemiss.edu,  will continue to work for a while.  Once students opt in to UM Gmail, any email sent to WebID@olemiss.edu will be automatically forwarded to WebID@go.olemiss.edu.

Beginning on July 9, 2012, any remaining student accounts on UM Webmail will be automatically migrated over to UM Gmail.   Similar to the early adopters, any email sent to WebID@olemiss.edu will be automatically forwarded to WebID@go.olemiss.edu.

Further, for new student accounts created on or after March 19, only a UM Gmail account will be created.   These students should only use WebID@go.olemiss.edu for email correspondence.

UM Employees

On March 19, 2012, faculty and staff may also sign up for UM Gmail.  Instead of a replacement, this will be an additional account for UM Gmail and other Google apps, leaving the UM Mail (Exchange) account to be used for official UM correspondence.  UM Gmail accounts are being made available to employees so they can use Google Apps for Education in their roles as instructors and students.

Why UM Gmail?

The major advantages are that Gmail offers substantially more disk space than UM is able to offer, and Gmail offers better support for mobile devices,” says Kathy Gates, Chief Information Officer (IT).   “We anticipate that these two features will be highly appealing and may lead to more students using their university-assigned email accounts.”

All Gmail accounts will have 25 gigabytes of personal storage space.  There is a 1 GB limit on the storage of files that are not in the Google docs format.   Examples would be PDF or JPEG files.  Fortunately, files can be converted to Google file formats during the upload and save process.

What About Security?

For everyone, the UM Gmail password will be the same as your existing WebID password.   During the UM Gmail sign up process, a password reset will be required to meet the Google password requirements (e.g., 8 characters).   You can read about Google’s security and privacy statement online or review Google’s Public Policy Blog.

More Information

More information is available at http://go.olemiss.edu.  For questions and assistance, contact the IT Helpdesk at 662-915-5222 or helpdesk@olemiss.edu.

 

Filed Under: Email, UM Google Mail, Web Applications Tagged With: , ,

Google Mail for Students – Need Your Input!

August 16, 2011 by

Google offers a service called “Google Apps for Education” that includes Google mail (Gmail). The Office of Information Technology (IT) has been exploring Gmail behind the scenes for over a year and now seeks input from the campus community on whether this would be a good option for UM students.

As of Fall 2009, about 30% of U.S. universities had outsourced student email, but the vast majority were still hosting employee email in-house, mostly due to security and privacy concerns. This past year, UM employees were migrated to a Microsoft Exchange environment, which includes full-featured email and calendar functionality that is well-suited for professional use. This work has paved the way for making changes to the student email platform, if that is what we choose to do.

Pros

The major advantages are that Gmail offers substantially more disk space than UM is able to offer, and Gmail offers better support for mobile devices.  We anticipate that these two features would be highly appealing and may lead to more students using their university-assigned email accounts.  Other universities that have outsourced to Gmail also cite the availability of Google apps as being a major advantage.  That is, they chose Google Apps for Education for Gmail, but they found that the other services such as Google Docs were just as valuable.  There would be some initial technical effort to get set up with Google, but over time this change could free up IT staff to focus on other, higher priorities.

Cons

The major concerns among universities considering outsourcing their student email are security, privacy, support, and long-term availability.  The security and privacy concerns exist with any outsourced system and would need to be addressed in the contract.  For example, we would want to make sure that the provider does not exploit student accounts in any way such as selling the email addresses or data mining messages for marketing purposes.  If we outsource to Google there may be support issues, particularly related to account management and archiving.  Some of these services are available for a fee, but, generally, support is very limited with the free education version.  Some have concerns that Google may begin charging in the future, but at least for now Google seems to be committed to offering core services to education for free (see http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=139019&hl=en).

Accessibility

Google has been in the news recently over the accessibility of its interfaces.  In March 2011, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) asked the Department of Justice to investigate several institutions that use Google apps for Education, because, according to the NFB, these institutions had adopted technology that was not accessible to the blind.  Google responded with an aggressive plan for making its interfaces accessible by the end of this year.

The Decision Making Process

A committee has been established to guide the decision-making process and subsequent roll-out if we decide to go forward.  The committee members are:

  • Ashleigh Elkins, Student
  • Maurice Eftink, Associate Provost
  • Kathy Gates, Chief Information Officer
  • Suzette Henry, Manager of Systems Administration
  • Kyle Ketchings, Student
  • Anne Klingen, Director of Independent Study
  • Denise Knighton, Associate Registrar
  • Teresa McCarver, Helpdesk Manager and Instructor in Computer Science
  • Robin Miller, Deputy CIO and Director of Technical Services
  • Coulter Ward, Assistant Dean of Students for Student Organizations

Students, faculty, and staff are invited to express any concerns and provide input on this important topic in several ways.  First, there will be three face-to-face focus groups in early September:

  • Tuesday, September 6, from 11 am until noon in Union 404 A and B
  • Wednesday, September 7, from 11 am until noon in Union 404 A and B
  • Thursday, September 8, from 5-6 pm in the Union Ballroom

Second, a student poll will be available in myOleMiss beginning Tuesday, September 6, and will run for about two weeks.  Third, comments can be submitted by contacting any of the committee members directly or by sending email to it@olemiss.edu.

All of this feedback will be used to make a final decision.  If the decision is to outsource to Gmail then the target implementation date will be February 2012.   Please consider this topic and share any opinions and concerns that you have.   We hope to have a final decision by September 30.

Filed Under: Email Tagged With: ,

Important News About Employee Email

April 5, 2011 by

Faculty and staff email accounts will be migrated from the current email system, to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 by August 1, 2011.

Introduction to Exchange Server 2010

The Office of Information Technology (IT) is pleased to announce that faculty and staff email will be migrated from the current email system to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, beginning April 6th.  This change is being made to provide faculty and staff with the most up-to-date email features available.  Further, because the load on the campus network and servers is expected to grow, with another large increase occurring in August 2011, it is necessary for this change to begin now.

The deployment of Exchange Server 2010 will integrate email and calendar functions into one user account, so that both can be accessed from one email client (e.g., Outlook).  Faculty and staff will no longer have to request a separate Exchange account for calendar sharing.  This change will also effectively separate faculty and staff email from students’, so that each email system will exist independently of the other.

The Exchange platform will immediately provide a feature-rich environment whether you use Microsoft Outlook 2010/2011 or a web-browser to log in to the Outlook Web Application (OWA).  Another major benefit resulting from migration will be that your email will be in sync across multiple devices. This means that if you use multiple devices to check your email, you will no longer have to delete the same messge from each device.  As long as you leave a message in your Exchange inbox, it will be available to you regardless of the access method.

Configuration of Exchange on desktop clients (e.g. Outlook 2010/2011) and mobile devices is now much simpler because of Exchange’s Autodiscover capability.  Setup on mobile devices is easier because in most cases the user will only need to enter an email address, password, and the Exchange domain address.  The device should then be able to configure itself.

Exchange also provides for greater mobility by allowing off-campus access without having to connect to the virtual private network (VPN).  This feature is compatible with Outlook 2007 and 2010 on a PC.  For Macs, Apple Mail and Outlook 2011 are the supported email clients.

Exchange 2010 Migration Process

All faculty and staff email accounts will be migrated from the current email system to the Exchange Server 2010 by August 1, 2011.  It is important that the migration be completed by this date before the beginning of the Fall 2011 semester.  Beginning Wednesday, April 6th, faculty and staff will be able to sign up for a migration date during the months of April, May, June, and July, to have their email account migrated to Exchange.

Nine-month employees are requested to sign up for a migration date as soon as possible so that your account can be migrated before you leave for the summer.  Faculty and staff who do not sign up for a migration date before July 15, 2011 will have their email accounts migrated at the discretion of IT.  Department heads or supervisors who are aware of faculty members who are on sabbatical may need to contact IT on behalf of the faculty member to make alternate arrangements for migrating their email data to Exchange.

To migrate your account for Email Migration Registration at www.olemiss.edu/migrateme.

To migrate your departmental email address, please sign in at www.olemiss.edu/migratedept using your departmental WebID and password, and then complete the email migration registration form.

Before your migration date, IT strongly encourages you to clean up your Webmail email account and/or desktop email client by deleting old messages that you no longer need from the Inbox, Sent, and Trash folders.  By cleaning up your account prior to your migration date, the migration process will run much smoother.  Please note that on the date of your migration, you will not have access to your email from 10-11:00 A.M.  Access to myOleMiss and Blackboard may also be interrupted temporarily until after 11:00 A.M.

Supported Desktop Clients and Mobile Devices

The supported desktop email clients for connecting to Exchange 2010 are:

Desktop email clients:

Outlook 2007 [Windows]
Outlook 2010 [Windows]
Outlook 2011 [Mac OS X]
Apple Mail, iCal, Address Book [Mac OS X]
Outlook Web App

Supported browsers:

Internet Explorer
Firefox
Chrome
Safari

Mobile devices:

Windows Phone 7
Blackberry
Android
iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch

Migration applies to all faculty and staff accounts even if email is forwarded to a separate departmental email server.  If you plan to continue forwarding email to another server, it is necessary to set up the forward after migration by logging into ummail.olemiss.edu.

In order to make the email migration process as seamless as possible, IT will need some basic information from you about how you access your Ole Miss email.  This information will be requested when you visit the online migration signup form.  For example, if you access your Ole Miss email through Webmail in a web-browser exclusively and intend to use the Exchange equivalent, Outlook Web App (OWA), then after IT migrates your account on the date of your choosing, you will access your email by visiting, ummail.olemiss.edu.

Alternatively, users who use Outlook 2007 or 2010, and already have an Exchange account set up for access to the shared calendar function, will not have to make any changes to Outlook unless Outlook was set up as a POP client.  In that case the Send/Receive group will need to be edited.

IT recommends that all users upgrade to one of the supported email clients listed above.  Anyone who is not currently using one of the preferred email clients, and needs their email data and address books migrated from an unsupported email client such as Eudora, will need to indicate this within the online migration form.

Training

IT plans to conduct Outlook 2010 email and calendar training sessions during the following time periods:

Week of April 11th
Week of April 18th

For information relating to these training sessions and to register, please visit ittraining.olemiss.edu.  Microsoft also provides training for Outlook 2010 which may be helpful during this transition.

Please visit the migration FAQ as well for additional information relating to the migration process.  We are currently in the process of updating our email configuration guides and will be continually updating the IT Helpdesk Web site with useful information.  Please do not hesitate to contact the IT Helpdesk at 662-915-5222, if you have any questions related to email migration.

Filed Under: Email, Mobile Tagged With: ,
«Older Posts