Friday, March 13, 2015

Updated version of myMC Portal to lauch at end of Spring Break

Get ready for a more modern experience.  ITS will be rolling out an updated, retooled, version of the myMC portal at the end of the Spring Break.

The myMC portal is a work in progress and has been evolving into a single point of entry to online tools, services, and information for Manhattan College students, faculty, and staff. It also contains the Announcements tool used by employees to post informational announcements to various segments of the Manhattan College community. The portal, which is personalized to each individual, also aggregates various types of information from many sources into one location.  Secure access to internal content and other applications is provided and facilitated via single sign-on.

This release also provides the start to a more modern apps-like experience for users. Central to this release are Search and Discovery tools to help users find what they need, better internal directory listing and search, and distributed editing of certain types of content in the portal. We've also been hard at work pulling together and packaging the myriad of "take-action" deep links to parts of various internal systems and posting those for the appropriate audience to better enable users to find and use the "services" they need to study or work here.

This version also debuts new "marketplace" features such as Favorites where one can add portlets (e.g., apps, services, etc.) from the collection of available ones to their own portal layout.  Not totally functional yet, users will be able to rate and comment on each portlet, thus providing feedback and helping to guide future development.

The structure is responsive so works across all devices and features a new and more modern layout.  



Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Thin Client Work-Around

We have started putting a temporary work-around in place to resolve issues we have been experiencing with the thin client computers in certain classrooms.  A more permanent solution is being investigated.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

NETWORK Issue affecting VERIZON customers

ITS is aware of a network issue preventing VERIZON customers from accessing all campus services.  ITS is working with our ISP (Internet Service Provider) to work around the Verizon issue.  We have confirmed that customers with service from other providers such as Time Warner are currently unaffected.

Updates will be posted as more information becomes available.


UPDATE:  7:10PM
ITS has received confirmation that Verizon is experience major network issues across the North East.


UPDATE  8:15PM
Access to manhattan.edu restored to Verizon customers.
ITS has worked with our ISP to route traffic away from the affected Verizon network segments.   We will continue to monitor the situation until we have confirmation that the Verizon has resolved issues on their network.

Monday, March 9, 2015

Banner JAVA 8 Issues - Solution in sight......

ITS is patiently awaiting updates from our Banner partner Ellucian related to JAVA 8 support in Banner applications.  Since the fall semester, ITS has received numerous reports of Banner not functioning after an automatic update of JAVA from version 7 to 8.  We've been in contact with Ellucian regarding this issue affecting all of their higher ed clients and have the following update: 

From our Banner partner Ellucian:
"Java 8 for all products is currently under testing and our intention is to have the Java 8 JRE supported on or before Oracle’s current projected End of Public Updates (April 2015) with as few exceptions as possible."

Please be on the lookout for updates on this issue as we approach April....

This blog post updates information communicated in October 2014:

Monday, March 2, 2015

Drive: a more featureful file-storage solution

With unlimited* storage, fine-grained permissions, and increased accessibility, Drive represents a significant upgrade to your Home-Server account.  Access Drive from the Gmail launcher or by navigating to http://drive.manhattan.edu

The video below highlights some of the new features associated with Drive:


A Comparison of Drive vs Home-Server


Manhattan College has begun the transition of accounts from the Home Server to Drive.  Information about the campus Drive initiative can be found here: