Basic Computer Troubleshooting Tips and Tricks

• A great first step is to turn the device off and back on again.

• In most cases, someone else has already resolved your issue. Search Google describing your issue and you will most likely find a step by step guide to resolution.

• Check the device manufacturer support page.

Basic Computer Troubleshooting Tips and Tricks

 

• A great first step is to turn the device off and back on again.

• In most cases, someone else has already resolved your issue. Search Google describing your issue and you will most likely find a step by step guide to resolution.

• Check the device manufacturer support page.

Basic Computer Troubleshooting Tips and Tricks

•  A great first step is to turn the device off and back on again.

• In most cases, someone else has already resolved your issue. Search Google describing your issue and you will most likely find a step by step guide to resolution.

• Check the device manufacturer support page.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Check out our new article reviewing Keyboard Shortcuts.

Basic Computer Troubleshooting Tips and Tricks

 

• A great first step is to turn the device off and back on again.
• In most cases, someone else has already resolved your issue. Search Google describing your issue and you will most likely find a step by step guide to resolution.
• Check the device manufacturer support page.

Susie's Tech Tips #3: Home WiFi Tips

As we continue to work remotely from our personal devices and technologies, it is important that we remember that the WiFi we are accustomed to having access to at the college is not the same as at home. 

ITS would like to offer some tips that might be helpful in getting the most out of your personal internet connection! 

1. Consider if your internet is really the issue. The issue might actually be the device you are using. A good way to test this is to restart the device you are using, and see if you are able to better connect to your internet. Sometimes all it needs is a restart. 

2. Determine the speed of your internet by running a speed test. This is easy and can be done by getting whatever device you are using as close to your router as possible. Next, turn the WiFi on your device off and then back on again. Once that is done go to speedtest.net, and there you can run a very quick test. For sufficient WiFi your speed should have at least 10 mbps download and 5mbps upload for watching videos and video conferencing. 

3. Make your WiFi more accessible. Wifi can be thought of similarly to music coming out of a speaker. The closer you are to it the more clearly you can hear it. You should consider moving your router. Sometimes the shape of your home can create a barrier for your wifi, and moving it to a more central location in your home, or closer to where you are working could help alleviate some of your connection issues. 

4. "Have you tried turning it off and then back on again?" A timeless question, that although seems trivial, holds quite a bit of power. Resetting your router and leaving it off for 15-30 seconds  can be a very helpful and successful troubleshooting tool for connectivity issues. 

5. Get the most out of your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Ask about upgrading your service, or updating your modem. Additionally you might want to consider doing some research and seeing what the BEST ISP in your area is, and switching to that ISP if you are not already using them. 

6. Preserve and persevere! If you have done everything you possibly can and are currently working on the fastest WiFi that you are able to receive, then you must preserve the bandwidth that you have. This means that you have to do things such as turning off anything that uses a lot of data, like iCloud or Dropbox, turning off your camera when video chatting, or using your phone as a personal hotspot and tethering it to your computer. 

To find out more about these tips and others like them please reference this article. 

If you have a moment, it would be greatly appreciated if you could fill out this form to provide feedback or ask questions about this tip!

Susies Tech Tips #2

Tech Tip #2 

This weeks tech tip focuses on how to get the fastest response/help when you are creating a ticket. As we have transitioned to online learning and working and issues arise, this tip will help you to create a ticket that has all the right information so ITS can help you faster! 

When you are submitting a ticket it is important for ITS to know as much as possible about your request.

For faster help please reference the suggestions below for creating a ticket: 

1. Describe what you are trying to accomplish.
   Ex: You are unable to enter your Jaspernet account.
   Make sure that you specify which service you are trying to log into (email, banner, self service, etc.)
   
2. Describe what you tried to do to accomplish this.
   Ex: You are not able to log into Banner.
   Make sure to differentiate if it is a problem that is causing you to receive any kind of error message for or if you have forgotten your login credentials.
   
3. Describe exactly what happens and include screenshots.
   Ex: You are receiving an error message when trying to upload something to Moodle.
   Explain step by step starting from when you login to Moodle up until you receive the error message and how many times you tried to do this. Make sure that you take a screenshot, if possible, of the message and attach it to the ticket.
   
4. Other important details to include:

• Time and Date
• Is this a recurring issue?
• What is your computer make and model? 
• What operating system version are you running?
• What browser version are you running?
• If you are having problems with a software, what version are you using?

** Bonus Tip ** 

While most people are aware that you can create a ticket by emailing ITS, we would also like to encourage you to use our vast Service Catalog to submit tickets. Submitting via the service catalog ensures that your ticket is going to the appropriate team right away and will result in a faster resolution. 

For more help, please contact ITS at its@manhattan.edu or 718-862-7973

8 Essential Tips For Recording Professional Quality Videos From Home

If you are looking for some quality tips from an award winning professional on how to record quality video while you are working from home, then look no further!

Laura Meoli Ferrigon is the Assistant Director of Digital Media here at Manhattan College and has shared with us an article that she wrote, listing 8 essential tips for recording professional quality videos at home. Check it out!  

For those of you don't know Laura, she is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker with 10 years experience creating multimedia for organizations, brands and individuals. She has written a book and also won various other awards! Visit her website to find out more about her and her work.

Susie's Tech Tips #1

In light of all of the disturbances and changes in routine that the COVID-19 virus has caused, I thought it was important that the first Tech Tip be a helpful recommendation related to these changes and disturbances. 

Tech Tip # 1 

ITS understands and sympathises with the uncertainty and uncomfortability surrounding working remotely and we want to make sure you have the resources and tools that you need. This tip is a good place to start if you are unsure of what you will need, technology wise, to work remotely.

Before you request VPN or a Remote Desktop connection- try to do the things you would normally do at work from home, first. This is important because it will allow you to see what you can and cannot do from your home computer/connection. 

There have been many measures taken by ITS and the college to make working remotely as seamless as possible, including removing some VPN requirements from certain services to ensure those who use them regularly can access them easily. 

If you have tested this at home and are still having difficulties accessing what you need to, please reach out to ITS as soon as possible so we can help you resolve the issue quickly. 

If you have a moment it would be greatly appreciated if you could fill out this form to provide feedback or ask questions about this tip!

For more help, please contact ITS at its@manhattan.edu or 718-862-7973

Friendly Reminder To Back Up Your Data

With the convenience of the cloud and apps like Google Drive, it’s pretty easy to forget to back up your data. This is just a friendly reminder to do so!

Data on Google Drive:

Make sure that you have all of your data backed up either on your hard drive, a storage device, or a separate cloud storage service.

File Streaming:

If you are using Drive File Stream, it is very important that you are regularly checking drive.google.com to make sure that your data is syncing/saving properly. 

Once you’re logged into your google drive via web browser make sure that any files you worked on using drive file stream are present and up to date. You can access your drive via file stream or web browser on any device. 

Losing data can be incredibly stressful, but it is preventable! Here are some previously shared tips: 

• Your critical data should never reside in a single place.
• The ideal backup strategy will typically include both an online backup service (Google Drive) to ensure your data is secure no matter what happens to your mobile device or computer.
• Running consistent, automatic backups is a straightforward process that will take a little time to set up and will require even less to maintain.
• Backups can be configured to run in real time when files on your computer are changed.
• Routinely test your backup solution to ensure you can recover your data in the event that you do actually need to restore from a backup.

If you have any questions or concerns about this please reference our knowledge base articles or contact the ITS Help Desk for further assistance! 

Information partially taken from: https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2017/9/september-2018-do-you-have-a-personal-backup-plan

Happy Data Privacy Day!

January 27th is Data Privacy Day! 

The internet has opened so many doors for us and truly is a part of our day to day lives. We don't often take the time to think about the fact that we put a lot of our personal information out there. On Data Privacy Day we are reminded that we need to be vigilant in taking care of our precious personal data and making sure it is protected. 

Some Simple Tips for Protecting Your Data:

1. Check your privacy settings. Most of your social and eCommerce accounts will have a place where you can view and change your privacy settings. Every couple weeks you should review your privacy settings and make sure that it is set to what you want. You should consider the personal data that you are willing to make public (ie: email, phone number, birthday, location). 

2. Don't use a public service to store any private data. Google Docs is a great tool and very helpful for students and businesses alike that need a central place to store their work. However, you should not store personal information such as passwords or other sensitive data on a public service. 

3. Use private browsing. Using a private browsing window like a Incognito window, is very helpful for deterring internet tracking. Normally when you open a browser, it stores the websites you visit, the items you search for, or anything you might have bought. This information can be given to marketers. When you use a private browsing setting, this information is not stored. 

4. Use strong passwords. When you create a password is should not have any personal info like your name or birthday. It is also strongly advised that you create a long password, 12 characters (letters, numbers, and symbols) long. Additionally creating unique passwords for each of your services is strongly advised. While it may seem convenient to have the same password for everything, it puts you at a larger risk and makes it easier for potential malicious users to access your accounts. 

5. Use passwords and passcodes for access to your electronic devices.  Make sure you are protecting the device or devices you have that store all your precious information! A simple passcode or password being enabled on a device can go a long way in protecting your data. 

6. Use secure WiFi. A secure WiFi connection is very important. Public WiFis do not always have data encryption and this means that anyone that has access to the WiFi can track your browsing information. Try and keep login and monetary transactions to a minimum on public WiFi to avoid your passwords and credit card data getting into the wrong hands. 

Information partially taken from: https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/privacy-ten-tips-2018/23022/. 

Please continue checking our blog for more helpful tips and posts!

Happy Holidays from ITS!

ITS would like to wish everyone a happy and safe holidays as the Fall 2019 semester comes to an end! Over the break, we will be hard at work to improve and maintain campus technology.

Be sure to keep an eye out for future blog posts in January about upcoming improvements in technology as well as helpful tips and tricks!

Create a Google Calendar Event Right from Gmail!

Did you know that in Gmail, you have the ability to create a Google Calendar event right from an email?

All you need to do to get started is simply select the three vertical dots button

at the top of an email, and select Create Event.

To learn more about this and other helpful features, please visit this article on The Suite Life: 3 quick tricks to help you stay on top of your schedule.

This was partially reposted from: The Suite Life: 3 quick tricks to help you stay on top of your schedule.

Google Summer Collaboration Challenge Week 2

Getting started with Docs

Let's start by getting introduced to Docs - an online replacement for Microsoft Word. The following tutorial will walk you through a number of steps to become more familiar with Docs. The same can be repeated for Sheets (replaces Excel) and Slides (replaces PowerPoint).

Track changes, make progress 

It can take dozens of edits to make a document just right—especially a legal agreement, project proposal or research paper. These new updates in Docs let you more easily track your team’s changes. Now, your team can:

1. Name versions of a Doc, Sheet or Slide on the web.
2. Preview “clean versions” of Docs on the web to see what your Doc looks like without comments or suggested edits.
3. Accept or reject all edit suggestions at once in your Doc so your team doesn’t have to review every single punctuation mark or formatting update.
4. Suggest changes in a Doc from an Android, iPhone or iPad device.
5. Compare documents and review redlines instantly with Litera Change-Pro or Workshare Add-ons in Docs. 

Assignment:  Complete the "Introduction to Docs" tutorial by creating, editing, and sharing a new Doc.

Extra Credit:  Try the same tutorial for Sheets and Slides.

Working OFFLINE

 A useful feature for Google Apps (Docs, Slides, and Sheets) is the ability to work offline without an Internet connection.  By enabling "Offline Mode" within Google Drive, you'll have access to edit all of your files from a Chrome browser wherever you are - even when WIFI is spotty or unavailable.
View this video to find out how to enable offline mode for Google Drive.

Assignment:  Enable OFFLINE MODE for Google Drive.

Note:  it may take a while to make all files and folders accessible offline.  After enabling "offline mode", disconnect from WIFI and try creating and editing a new Doc or Sheet.

Once you complete reviewing the materials from the second week of the Google Collaboration Challenge take a few minutes to answer these questions: Week 2 Google Drive Questionnaire

Partially reposted from: What Can You Do With Docs?

Google Summer Collaboration Challenge Week 2

Getting started with Docs

Let's start by getting introduced to Docs - an online replacement for Microsoft Word. The following tutorial will walk you through a number of steps to become more familiar with Docs. The same can be repeated for Sheets (replaces Excel) and Slides (replaces PowerPoint).

Track changes, make progress 

It can take dozens of edits to make a document just right—especially a legal agreement, project proposal or research paper. These new updates in Docs let you more easily track your team’s changes. Now, your team can:

1. Name versions of a Doc, Sheet or Slide on the web.
2. Preview “clean versions” of Docs on the web to see what your Doc looks like without comments or suggested edits.
3. Accept or reject all edit suggestions at once in your Doc so your team doesn’t have to review every single punctuation mark or formatting update.
4. Suggest changes in a Doc from an Android, iPhone or iPad device.
5. Compare documents and review redlines instantly with Litera Change-Pro or Workshare Add-ons in Docs. 

Assignment:  Complete the "Introduction to Docs" tutorial by creating, editing, and sharing a new Doc.

Extra Credit:  Try the same tutorial for Sheets and Slides.

Working OFFLINE

 A useful feature for Google Apps (Docs, Slides, and Sheets) is the ability to work offline without an Internet connection.  By enabling "Offline Mode" within Google Drive, you'll have access to edit all of your files from a Chrome browser wherever you are - even when WIFI is spotty or unavailable.
View this video to find out how to enable offline mode for Google Drive.

Assignment:  Enable OFFLINE MODE for Google Drive.

note:  it may take a while to make all files and folders accessible offline.  After enabling "offline mode", disconnect from WIFI and try creating and editing a new Doc or Sheet.

Once you complete reviewing the materials from the second week of the Google Collaboration Challenge take a few minutes to answer these questions: Week 2 Google Drive Questionnaire