Computer Recommendations

ITS often fields questions about which computer we would recommend for purchase:

Should I buy a Mac or a PC?     Should I buy a laptop or a desktop?  If I want to bring an older computer will it be good enough?  What features should I get on my computer?

 Attached find 2 Knowledge Base Articles which address the following:

ITS Computer Recommendations for Employees
These are the standard ITS recommended computers for college purchases.

ITS Personal PC Recommendations

Please forward these links to any interested clients.

ITS Reports for Service Quality and Classroom Issues

In our continued efforts toward exceptional customer service and transparency, we have prepared the following reports.  These reports will be displayed on ITS Blog, the ITS Website, and on inside.manhattan.edu Quick Links.

Rooms Currently Experiencing Issues

This report displays all rooms currently experiencing issues, with brief descriptions of issue and current status (Ticket Summary).  Knowing ahead of time of classroom issues can help you mitigate how to handle your classes.

ITS Service Reports

This is a series of links to reports generated by our ticketing and project management system. It includes data with regard to our service delivery statistics but also contains information with regard to rooms that are currently facing technology issues.

For more details  please review the ITS Service Catalog and ITS Knowledge Base. 

Free Install of Office 365

Are you still running a really old version of Microsoft Office on your personal device? Have you been avoiding an upgrade to avoid having to pay for it? Well now you no longer have an excuse for not upgrading.

We've worked with our Microsoft representatives to make Office 365 available to you for free on up to 5 personal devices.

This Knowledge Base Article walks you through the process of creating an account on Microsoft's portal. The entire process takes about 5 minutes. It's simple and quick. Once you've created an account, you can install Office 365 on up to 5 personal devices for free.

Free install of Microsoft Office 365 on up to 5 personal devices

Enjoy!

Banner Self-Service Outage Resolved

The issue with Banner Self-Service has been resolved as of 9:37AM Monday August 27, 2018.

Banner Self-Service Outage

ITS has identified an issue with Banner Self-Service.  We are currently investigating the issue and will provide an update when the issue is resolved.

Welcome Back

We would like to welcome everyone back to campus and trust everyone had a relaxing and restorative summer break.

ITS Summer Updates

Client Services and Operations had a busy and very productive summer and would like to share some of our updates and accomplishments as we strive to be a strategic partner and provide exceptional customer service to the entire Manhattan College Community:

Upgraded Computer Labs in O’Malley Library:

Faculty and students will return to campus to find significant improvements in each lab of the library:

O’Malley 206: 38 new computers and monitors
O’Malley 410: 31 new computers and monitors
O’Malley 506: 28 new computers and monitors
Fifth floor Kiosks: 6 new monitors and desktop computers
The first floor library lab was updated with 9 computers

The new computers are small form factor, they will be placed on top of the tables behind the monitors, the new set up allows for more leg room and the computers will be easier to turn on.

Classroom Renovations include a joint effort with the Facilities Project Management team:

Converting the Research and Learning Center 205 Conference Room into a latest generation classroom with a computer and a new Kramer VIA GO wireless presentation system.

Leo 259 was converted to a latest generation classroom with a computer, laser projector and AirPlay Version 2 powered by Kramer VIA GO wireless presentation system.

Leo 3rd Floor Lab received 6 new computers.

Reynolds Room: Renovations consisting of 35 new computers, monitors and a Kramer Wireless presentation system are in progress and scheduled to be completed by the end of September. This timeline may change.

Wireless Presentation Upgrades:

ITS has upgraded the wireless presentation systems in 15 classrooms, to a new system called the Kramer VIA GO and we are using this opportunity to move to a hardware design which allows more devices to connect:
Our goal of improving classroom presentation technology has led us to an improved wireless presentation system in our classrooms: AirPlay Version 2 (Powered by Kramer VIA GO) will allow instructors and students to connect and present to a main display via any laptop or mobile device and edit documents and stream video.
In order to make the transition to this new system more seamless, we decided to stick with the AirPlay branding that the Manhattan College community has become familiar with over the past few years to be synonymous with our wireless presentation system.

The Kramer VIA GO is set up in the following classrooms:

De LaSalle 307 & 312
Hayden 201 & 202,
Miguel 304, 305, 306, 307, 308 & 314
Leo 102, 242, 259, 330 & 333
Research and Learning Center 205

Conference Room updates:

The Jamboard in the Charter Room has been replaced with a 65” inch HD TV on a stand and the Kramer VIA GO wireless presentation system.
In addition, Chromebox for Meetings has been installed in the Charter Room.

Kelly Commons 5th floor control units were updated to a new and easier to use interface.

Summer Training Initiatives include:

Faculty and staff were able to dive deeper into Google Apps by participating in an 8 week Google Collaboration Challenge (#GSuite Collab). Participants who rose to the challenge not only improved their Google skills in Google Drive, Docs, Calendar and Forms but were awarded a Credly Digital Badge. The training materials are in an online Moodle Course: Google Summer Collaboration Challenge, for those wishing to improve their Google Skills this semester!


ITS Service Report link takes you to a series of links to reports generated by our ticketing and project management system. It includes data with regard to our service delivery statistics but also contains information with regard to rooms that are currently facing technology issues.

Not sure if a classroom issue has been resolved? Click here for an up to date Room Issues report: Complete with details on current status of each room that has an issue.

ITS STARS Update:

A Student Technology And Resource Specialist (STARS) is a Manhattan College student who exemplifies Lasallian values by utilizing their unique skill set to assist members of the Manhattan College community. A STAR has a combination of excellent interpersonal communication skills and technology knowledge. STARS show compassion when working with members of the community who are having technical difficulties. STARS will be going through ongoing training this Fall and upgrading their technical skills in order to offer even stronger support to the Manhattan College community. Managers are organizing training and a student management hierarchy with the continued goal of a 90% student run Client Services department in the upcoming Fall 2018 semester.
Reminders

Have a question? Check out our Knowledge Base first.

The best way to get in touch with a Client Services representative is an email to its@manhattan.edu or a phone call to x7973 (718-862-7973). Note that email and voicemail for this line go to our ticketing system so we encourage you to leave a message

Please follow these instructions to update your personal email address:

How to Update Your Personal Email.

Remember that we will never ask you for your password.

We encourage you all to please reset your computer password and provide the temporary password to ITS prior to dropping it off at Client Services. If you do not do this prior, please allocate an extra 5 minutes to work with a Client Services representative so that we can assist you in changing your password when working with us. Upon completion of work on your computer, please allocate another 5 minutes so that a Client Services representative can assist you in changing your password back to its original state. This is necessary in order to safeguard your password. Remember that you should never give your password out to anyone under any circumstances. Note that the same procedure holds true when you are requesting assistance with one of your Manhattan College accounts. For more details about best practices for keeping your information secure at Manhattan College click this Cyber Safety link found on the ITS website.

Client Services can NOT lend out equipment to students. If a student needs equipment for a project, they must have a Manhattan College employee sign out equipment on their behalf. Note that the Manhattan College employee is responsible for that equipment.

Client Services can provide short-term loaner equipment such as laptops and projectors by reservation. Note that if equipment is needed long term, it should be purchased via your department.

In lieu of loaning certain cables and remotes, Client Services has installed commonly used VGA and Audio cables as well as projector remotes in all yet-to-be-renovated classrooms. Network cables will be provided to faculty upon request. Faculty requiring other specialty cables or adapters (such as Apple VGA adapters) should contact Client Services for assistance purchasing this equipment as they are not stocked or provided by Client Services.

The Client Services office does not work on personal computers. We will train employees and students and instruct them on how to fix their computers, but personal computers cannot be dropped off for service. No personal items should ever be left in any of the Client Services offices.

Please remember to plan event setups in advance. We work with limited resources so we cannot always complete last minute requests.

Client Services currently has 3 convenient locations: Jasper Basement, O’Malley Library Circulation Desk, & RLC 103C. Please stop by the location closest to you. We encourage you to call first to be sure that someone is available as we are constantly assisting the Manhattan College community.

Client Services Hours of Operations can be found here.

Computer Lab Hours can be found here.

Campus-owned computers are purchased with hardware support provided by the manufacturer. ITS will diagnose and determine whether manufacturer hardware support is needed. For the fastest service, clients are also able to contact the manufacturer directly to access hardware support and replacement.

Your feedback helps us improve our service and should be sent to: Tell ITS

Don't forget to add us to your Google+ circles +ITS and follow us on Twitter @MC_ITS

Check out our Manhattan College ITS Blog.



Thanks and wishing everyone a productive semester on behalf of the ITS team!

Prioritized Support 8/27 - 9/7

Client Services will be providing priority support to classroom and network support requests from Monday, 8/27 - Friday, 9/7. Response times for all other requests will be slower than normal.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

Digital Accessibility Challenge Week 1

What is Digital Accessibility?

Digital Accessibility is the practice of insuring that all people, including those with disabilities, can access and use our electronic resources and communications. Digital accessibility is very important, because not only is it the law, it promotes a more inclusive experience for all people using the web.
Digital Accessibility can be promoted for common elements such as:

• Websites
• Software
• Computer hardware and software
• Videos
• Documents
• Presentations
• Mobile Devices

Utilizing practice that promote digital accessibility helps those with hearing difficulties, visual difficulties, cognitive & neurological disabilities, and physical disabilities.



Although we tend to center our discussion of accessibility on people with physical impairments, we can all relate to the experience of using an interface that is not accessible to us for other reasons.  Have you ever had a problem using a desktop site on a mobile phone, or seen the message "This content is not available in your area," or been unable to find a familiar menu on a tablet? Those are all accessibility issues.

As you learn more, you will find that addressing accessibility issues in this broader, more general sense almost alway improves the experience for everyone. Let's look at an example:

This form has several accessibility issues:

• The text is low contrast, which is hard for people with low-vision to read.
• Having labels on the left and fields on the right makes it hard for many people to associate them, and almost impossible for someone who needs to zoom in to use the page. Imagine looking at this on a phone and having to pan around to figure out what goes with what.
• The "Remember details?" label isn't associated with the checkbox, so you have to tap or click only on the tiny square rather than just clicking on the label; also, someone using a screen reader would have trouble figuring out the association.

Now let's wave our accessibility wand and see the form with those issues fixed. We are going to make the text darker, modify the design so the labels are close to the things they are labeling, and fix the label to be associated with the checkbox so you can toggle it by clicking the label as well.


Which would you rather use? If you said "the accessible version," you are on your way to understanding a main premise of this guide. Often, something that's a complete blocker for a few people is also a pain point for many others, so by fixing the accessibility issue you improve the experience for everyone.
This video describes the importance of  Digital Accessibility and the important role we all must play when creating documents:

Introduction to Web Accessibility

Why is it important to make sure that online content is Digitally Accessible?
What are some of the electronic resources that have to be accessible?

Please note, for planning purposes, it will take approximately 30 minutes each week to review the material and take a questionnaire based on the content.
Participants who complete all 5 weeks of content and weekly questionnaires will be awarded a Credly Digital Badge.

Once you complete reviewing the materials from the first week of the Digital Accessibility Challenge take a few minutes to answer these questions:
Week 1 Accessibility Questionnaire

Making a Course Visible in the new Moodle 3.5 version

Moodle's Course visibility setting determines whether the course appears in the list of courses and whether students can access it. If set to Hide, then access is restricted to users with the capability to view hidden courses (such as teachers).
This is useful for when you want to hide a course before the semester starts or after the semester ends.
 Often times this might be set to Hide without you even knowing, leading to confusion about a student's access to a course.
To check or modify your course visibility, please follow these steps.

To make your course visible:

• Login to Moodle.
• Click into the course that you wish to make visible to your students.
• On the right side of the screen, there is a gear icon that you must select. 

• Under the drop down menu that appears, you will select Edit settings.
• Once the Edit course settings menu appears, you will see the General settings. There you will find the Course visibility option. 

• Set the Course visibility to Show. This will now make your course visible to students.

For further details, please refer to this Making a Moodle Course Visible KBA.

Moodle 3.5 Dashboard Information

Fall semester classes will display in the "In progress" tab.
Current courses will be listed on the default "In progress" tab.

Courses that have ended are listed on the Moodle Dashboard in the "Past" courses tab.

Hint: If your class is not showing check "Past"

COMPLETE: Horan Hall - Brief Network Outage 8/24 at 10am

UPDATE2: As of 11:30am, this generator test and brief network outage has been completed.

UPDATE: This generator test has been moved to Friday, August 24th at 10am.

Physical Plant will be conducting a generator test in Horan Hall on Thursday, August 23rd at 10am. These tests are conducted throughout the year to ensure the generators function correctly in case Horan Hall loses power for any reason.

This test will last for approximately 15-30 minutes and will affect both the wired and wireless networks in Horan Hall. During this test the network will go down twice, once when switching to the generator and a second time when switching back to building power.

We apologize for this inconvenience. If you have any questions, please contact ITS at x-7973 or its@manhattan.edu

COMPLETE: Moodle Scheduled Maintenance Monday 8/20 5AM-11AM

The Moodle scheduled maintenance has been completed.  Moodle is now AVAILABLE.  For more information about the updates in version 3.5, see the following resources and training sessions:

New features in Moodle 3.5 (moodle.org)

Moodle 3.5 New Feature Playlist (YouTube)

To assist new and existing Moodle users, Instructional Design will be offering the following Moodle training sessions in the coming weeks. All sessions will take place in O'Malley 410.

Moodle 3.5 Update Overview For Faculty

These 45 minute sessions are intended for existing Moodle users and will focus on acclimating users with the new interface and features found in Moodle 3.5.

• Monday, August 20th: 11:00am-11:45am
• Wednesday, August 22nd: 1:00pm-1:45pm
• Tuesday, August 28th: 2:30pm-3:15pm

Beginner Moodle Training For Faculty

These sessions are intended for new Moodle users or those that would like to receive a refresher on the basics of Moodle.

• Monday, August 20th: 2:00pm-3:30pm
• Wednesday, August 22nd: 10:00am-11:30am 
• Thursday, August 23rd: 5:00pm-6:00pm (part of New Adjunct Orientation)
• Tuesday, August 28th: 1:00pm-2:30pm

ITS to Launch 5 Week Digital Accessibility Challenge

Starting Aug  27, ITS will be releasing a series of weekly tips aimed at spreading awareness and improving Digital Accessibility skills within the Manhattan College Community.  Each week, a variety of infographics, videos and examples will be available for 5 weeks beginning with the start of the 2018-2019 academic year. The Digital Accessibility challenge will also be posted in the ITS blog each week.

The objective of the challenge is to give participants the tools you need to apply what you learned in actual situations. Whether you are on campus or at home - student or employee - anyone can participate!

The 5-week Digital Accessibility Challenge will include an overview and best practices to promote Digital Accessibility. Participants will have the opportunity to complete each phase of the 5-week challenge at their own pace - all at once, or as topics are released. Track your progress by completing a short questionnaire at the end of each challenge and earn the 5 -week Web Accessibility  badge at the end of the program!  
Please note, for planning purposes, it will take approximately 30 minutes each week to review the material and take a questionnaire based on the content.

 A digital badge is a way to communicate and track achievement, they make your credentials portable and your skills more visible. You can put the Digital Badge on your resume or link to your LinkedIn account.  These badges or digital certificates, are issued by Manhattan College and they do not expire.

RESOLVED: Draddy Network Outage

UPDATE: There was a power issue that services the networking equipment in Draddy Gymnasium. This caused the network to be down for both Draddy and Alumni Hall. This issue has been resolved and the network has been restored in both buildings. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused.

ITS has been made aware of a network outage affecting both Draddy Gymnasium and Alumni Hall. We are currently investigating the issue and will update the College community as soon as we can.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Manhattan College Moodle Course Server Code and Theme Update for Fall 2018

A New Moodle with New Look and Features!

Come Monday, 8/20, Manhattan College's Moodle Course Server will have a new look, and with it some nice new features!

The upgrade of the Moodle course management system (from Moodle 3.1 to Moodle 3.5)  comes with a cleaner and more modern appearance, thanks to a new core theme upon which Manhattan College's customization is now built.

The new theme has been designed to improve the overall user experience of Moodle across desktop and mobile devices and it comes with a new navigation system, course layout and convenient editing options.

A few things for you to note is that you will now have a left slidable navigation drawer that can be opened and closed using the Hamburger Icon (button with 3 small horizontal lines).  This will allow you to have more screen real estate on your computer, tablet or phone when viewing your Moodle content and to quickly move between your classes.

With the new theme, Moodle is aiming towards a unified (harmonised) experience with the Moodle Mobile app (to be rolled out here at Manhattan College at some point in the future).

Moodle Scheduled Maintenance Monday 8/20 5AM-11AM

The Manhattan College Moodle system will be OFFLINE for system maintenance starting at 5AM on Monday 8/20.  During this time, important system updates will be applied in preparation for the 2018-2019 academic year.  We anticipate that the maintenance will be completed between 5AM - 11AM during which time the Moodle system will be UNAVAILABLE. 

After the scheduled maintenance, Moodle users will notice an updated Moodle theme as well as other enhancements.  Be sure to check Announcements and ITSblog for more information

RESOLVED: Planned Maintenance - Database/Banner

Dear Manhattan College Community,

Please be advised that this Friday night, (08/17/2018) Information Technology Services will need to take Banner Production offline between 9:00pm - 12:00 Midnight to apply a database patch recommended by Oracle.  

Thank you in advance.

Information Technology Services

Outages Resolved Airplay 2, Papercut, Turing

All outages reported this morning have been or will soon be resolved.

AirPlay 2 Kramer VSM should be up shortly.
Papercut and Turing are back up.

Papercut outage

ITS is currently experiencing an outage on our Papercut servers. Printing is momentarily down until further notice.

Turing Outage

We are currently experiencing an outage of the Turing system.  We are investigating.

Airplay 2 Powered by Kramer Via Go Server Down

ITS discovered that the Kramer Via Site Manager (VSM) Server is down as of 8:15AM.  Our team is investigating.  In the meantime, you should be able to connect to Airplay in these rooms and also via the Alternative Method outlined in documentation.

25Live Mobile Home Page Issue Resolved August 8 2PM

I am happy to report that the 25Live Mobile Homepage issue reported earlier this week was resolved by Collegenet yesterday at 2PM.

Updates to JasperNet Account Self-Help Tool (start.manhattan.edu) Coming Soon

Updates to the college's JasperNet Account self-help tool: start.manhattan.edu will be released this week.

The 24/7 start.manhattan account tool allows one to activate a new account, reactivate an old account, and manage account access credentials.

The update better aligns the design with the college's current online web presence. As part of the update, we have also committed to following the practice of accessible web design to insure that the web pages are usable by everyone.

Besides the visual facelift, the tool update includes:

• a front-page reorganization, with a more prominent Account Management section for existing users to provide or update an account recovery email address and change password, as needed
• more and better confirmation emails at numerous steps of the account activation and management process, with emphasis on new user onboarding
• a new Captcha solution, which replaces the challenge of deciphering characters or audio with a simple action to be taken by the person using the site. This functions to ensure that internet users filling out forms are indeed humans, thwarting the amount of spam produced by bots 

We encourage you to take a look at the new tool, and perhaps take the opportunity to update and/or provide a recovery (personal) email address for your account.  This will allow you to recover your account in the future without the involvement of ITS.  We also encourage you to change your password.

Additional workflow enhancements to streamline the employee onboarding process will be added in the coming weeks.

start.manhattan.edu self-help JasperNet account tool

COMPLETE: Planned Network Maintenance Leo Hall 8/17 at 8am

UPDATE: As of 11am on Friday, August 17th, this network maintenance was completed successfully.

ITS will be conducting planned network maintenance on Friday, August 17th from 8am-11am, which will cause some localized network disruptions. 

In order to replace some old and outdated equipment, ITS will be conducting some network maintenance in Leo Hall 3rd floor. These upgrades will cause disruption to both the wired and wireless networks on the 3rd floor of Leo Hall. This maintenance will not affect the rest of the building nor will it affect the rest of campus.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause. If you have any questions, please reach out to ITS at 718-862-7973 or e-mail us at its@manhattan.edu.

25Live Mobile Home Page Issue

There is a known issue affecting the 25Live Mobile page.  25Live is actively working on a fix to this issue and there is no ETA on resolution.

The workaround is to select the desired screen from the menu:

You can also use the Desktop site.

We will send an update when the issue reaches a resolution.

RESOLVED: JasperNet Authentication Issue

The issue affecting JasperNet Authentication (SSO login) has been resolved.

JasperNet Authentication Issue

ITS has identified an issue affecting JasperNet Authentication (SSO login on secure.manhattan.edu).  As a result, users attempting to sign-in to JasperNet services are being issued an "Authentication Failed.  Try Again" error.  We are aware of the issue and working to resolve. 

Updates will be provided on http://itsblog.manhattan.edu