CaTS Blog

*Raider Commons Now Available to the Campus Community*

At the direction of the Provost, CaTS and Communications & Marketing, working in conjunction with Student Government, were asked to investigate an internal online social community to serve as a welcoming "gathering place" for faculty, staff, and students to openly communicate and collaborate on issues. Currently called Raider Commons, this environment enables people to opt-in to focused discussions on topics of personal interest.

Over the past several months, Raider Commons has been beta tested by faculty, staff, and students. A subset of this group comprised an Advisory Committee to offer recommendations and feedback. With key issues now resolved, we'd like to invite the campus community to participate in an evaluation of Raider Commons by using your CAMPUS user name and password to access http://commons.wright.edu.

Some of what you will find in Raider Commons includes:
•A site organized into organic groups covering topics of Politics & World Affairs, Campus Issues, Cultural Events, Recommendations, and more.
•Individual groups with opportunities for members to use familiar social networking tools to create blogs, wikis, documents, polls, calendar events, or simply converse on a Shout wall.
•The Our Commons group – designed to be a community repository of documentation, FAQs, and discussions related to the use of Raider Commons.
•The opportunity to create your own group. Please note: policies regarding removal of persistently inactive groups will apply.

When you first enter Raider Commons, it can be challenging to know where to begin. Start by simply browsing and follow discussion posts in groups of interest to you. If you wish to participate, join and try contributing to one of the existing groups. Add a blog entry or discussion topic. If you are curious about the difference, read the wiki post in the Our Commons group titled "Understanding Content Types - wiki, blog, shout, or discuss?"

If you have questions or concerns, please contact the Help Desk at (937) 775-4827 or helpdesk@wright.edu.

A short video tutorial on using and navigating Raider Commons will be available soon within the Raider Commons Help system.
 

*Active Directory Transition Additional Information*

Over the past year, most Novell users at Wright State University were converted to Microsoft Active Directory. As you may recall, Active Directory is the system on campus that is used to give you access to your personal and departmental files on network drives, as well as access to network printers. As a result of this transition, the password for your campus “w” account is now case sensitive. For instance, if you capitalize a letter in your password when changing it, you must remember to always capitalize that letter when typing in your password.

To complete the Active Directory project, all Novell users must be converted by the end of winter quarter. At that time, Novell will be retired on WSU’s campus, and you will not be able to access your files and printers if your workstation hasn’t been converted. If you do not recall having your computer converted from Novell to Active Directory, please call the Help Desk at (937) 775-4827 as soon as possible so that a technician can come to your office and do the conversion.

*Passwords on Mobile Devices*

Please remember to change your stored password on your mobile device after you change your password. If you don’t do this, the mobile device will continue trying to use your old password, and could cause a lockout on your account. If you have questions or need assistance with passwords, please contact the Help Desk at (937) 775-4827.

CaTS would like to make you aware of some of the changes happening around campus during fall quarter. If you have questions about any of these items, please contact the CaTS Help Desk at (937) 775-4827 or 1-888-775-4827.

1) Important Announcement: Overhead Projectors with Acetate Rolls To Be Removed From Classrooms

During the past two quarters, a Classroom Equipment Preferences Form has been available for instructors to submit to CaTS any teaching and equipment preferences they have for their classroom. With the success of this form, CaTS has learned that the need for overhead projectors with acetate rolls has dropped significantly. In response to this low demand, overhead projectors with acetate rolls will be removed from all classrooms beginning winter quarter 2012.

For those instructors who still need this equipment for their classrooms, please add the “Transparency/Overhead Projector” option to your equipment preferences list using the Classroom Equipment Preferences Form, which can be found at https://support.wright.edu/instructorprefs/.

See what an overhead projector looks like at https://www.wright.edu/cats/images/other/overhead.jpg.

2) Table Top Podium Added to Classroom Equipment Preferences Form

Table top podiums for use in the classroom have been recently added to the Classroom Equipment Preferences Form. The table top podium is the moveable podium already located in some of the university’s classrooms. If you would like to have a table top podium in your classroom, you will need to log in to the Classroom Equipment Preferences Form (linked in the previous announcement) and add the podium to your list of classroom preferences. Please note that if you have filled out this form before, all of your previous preferences were saved, and you will only need to add the podium to your list.

See an example of a table top podium at https://www.wright.edu/cats/images/other/podium.jpg.

3) Reminder: Important Information About Lab Shared Area (N:\Drive)

With the transition from Novell to Active Directory nearly complete, CaTS would like to let you know about a change that will affect how you share files with your students. Currently, instructors can use the Novell N:\ drive, also known as the lab shared area, to store files that students can access.

If you are using the lab shared area, please be aware that after fall quarter ends, this area will no longer be available. Going forward, faculty and student collaboration will be facilitated through Pilot. Pilot offers the ability to share content with your students in an easy, user-friendly manner.

CaTS and CTL would like to help make this transition to Pilot as easy as possible. If you have instructional material located within this lab share area or you plan to move forward using Pilot, please contact the CaTS Help Desk at (937) 775-4827 or send an email to helpdesk@wright.edu to add your name to a list of interested faculty.

4) Clocks Now Being Installed in Classrooms

You asked for it, you got it! Due to high demand from WSU faculty, clocks are now being installed in all university classrooms and computer labs. While the process is still on-going, all classrooms will have a clock by the beginning of winter quarter.

5) Information on RaiderMail, WSU’s New Email Service for Students

Wright State University recently launched RaiderMail, a brand new student email system. RaiderMail, which is built on the Microsoft Live@edu services, gives students a 10 GB inbox, the ability to collaborate on class and club projects, have remote access to documents, and more.

Although faculty and staff do not currently have accounts on RaiderMail, we’d still like you to be aware that you may hear students talking about the new email service, and that any emails you receive from them will come via this new system. Please note, though, that this will not affect your email inbox or change how you communicate through email with your students.

You may have also heard that the H:\ and K:\ drives (network storage drives) for students are going away soon. Students will lose this access in March of 2012, and will have to use another method of file storage such as SkyDrive (provided with their RaiderMail account) to store data. PLEASE NOTE that this change does not affect your H:\ and K:\ drives. You will continue to have access to these network drives.

6) PC Encryption

If a university-owned computer is lost or stolen, and if that computer is storing legally protected sensitive data (social security numbers, credit card information, grades, transcripts, etc.), the university may be held liable for this loss. To combat this situation, CaTS is now installing a software program called CheckPoint Full Disk Encryption on new university-owned laptops.

This software stores data in an unreadable format unless the proper credentials are provided. By using this software, the university can track which computers have been encrypted and can help avoid potential legal and financial risk.

CheckPoint Full Disk Encryption will be licensed when you purchase a new laptop from Pomeroy starting 10/1/11. Because of the network resources required, the software will be installed by CaTS Desktop Services.

Please be aware that at this time, CaTS is initially focusing on new Windows-based laptops for this project. This same software will be available soon for Mac laptops.

For more information about the new encryption process, see the CaTS PC Encryption website, located at https://www.wright.edu/cats/general/encryption.html. You can also call the Help Desk at (937) 775-4827.

Beginning August 2, 2011, the MyFiles website will no longer be available. Currently, MyFiles allows you to access the files you have stored on your personal WSU network drive (H:\) from any computer with an Internet connection.

After August 2, all users wishing to access their H:\ files from off-campus must use the university’s VPN connection. This connection allows authorized users to securely connect to the WSU data network to access their files. In order to use the connection you will be required to install the VPN software on your computer and use it to connect to your files.

For instructions on how to download, install, and use the VPN client, please visit the following website: The VPN Website. You will need to click on the link for “AnyConnect VPN Registration” to start the process.

After downloading and installing the software, re-visit the above listed website and click on the “Accessing Your Files from Home” link under the “Existing AnyConnect VPN Users” section.

If you have any questions concerning this change, or if you need assistance in using the VPN, contact the CaTS Help Desk at (937) 775-4827 or toll free at 1-888-775-4827.