NO UPDATES SCHEDULED - Preventing Phishing over the Holiday

ITS will NOT be performing updates over the Holiday break.  

ITS will NOT ASK for you to update your password or other personal information.

As we approach the Christmas Holiday break, ITS would like to remind campus users that we will NOT be performing updates and will NOT ASK for information from you.  Phishing attacks are on the rise and we are taking steps to prevent these attacks from affecting Manhattan College.

If you receive an email or other communication requesting personal information or asking you to update your password - DO NOT RESPOND.  These messages should be reported to ITS or the sending office for validation.

Below are some additional resources that were previously provided to the campus community:

Holiday Scams and Malware Campaigns

Phishing Infographics

Half of all Phishing Sites Now Have the Padlock

Unscheduled Microsoft Internet Explorer Patch Released

Typically Microsoft schedules patches to be released on either the second or fourth Tuesday of the month. Today, Microsoft released a patch due to an actively exploited security hole in Internet Explorer. Update your Windows computers, please.

For Windows 10, Windows Update is found within Settings.

For Windows 7 & 8, open Control Panel and select Windows Update.

Temporary Electrical Shutdown Leo Hall 12/20 at 530am

ITS has been made aware by Physical Plant of a short partial electrical shutdown in Leo Hall on Thursday, December 20, 2018 from 530am to 730am.

Leo 3rd and 4th floors will be impacted. This electrical shutdown may cause the network, both wired and wireless, to be down on these floors as well. Other parts of the building should not be affected.

Although Physical Plant does expect to be completed before 07:30, occupants should not plan on being in the building on floors 3 and 4 before 07:30. As a precaution, we suggest that computers, printers, and sensitive electrical equipment that can be shut off be turned off in advance of the shutdown. Physical Plant and ITS are aware that there are intersession classes in the building, however, Physical Plant does not expect to have any issue having power restored in advance of those classes.

If you have any questions, please contact ITS at extension x-7973 or via email its@manhattan.edu. Thank you  and we apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.

Windows 8.1 End of Life Schedule

Every Windows product has a life cycle. The life cycle begins when a product is released and ends when it's no longer supported. Knowing key dates in this life cycle helps you make informed decisions about when to update, upgrade or make other changes to your software. 

Windows 8.1 Mainstream support will end January 9, 2018
Windows 8.1 Extended support will end January 10, 2023

Microsoft Support Reference to determine: Which Windows operating system am I running?

Solution

Manhattan College ITS loads Windows 10 on all ITS supported compatible devices.

Next Steps

If you happen to have a computer with Windows 8.1 please upgrade your computer to Windows 10 before January 9, 2018.  You can contact ITS for assistance.

• Email: its@manhattan.edu
• Call: 718-862-7973

Further details:  Microsoft Support Windows LifeCycle Fact Sheet.

Windows 8.1 End of Life Schedule KBA.

Get Started with Bots!

Hangouts Chat makes it easy for teams to be able to get their work done in one place. From direct messages to group conversations, Chat helps teams collaborate easily and efficiently. With dedicated, virtual rooms to house projects over time — plus threaded conversations — Chat makes it simple to track progress and follow up tasks.

Google's Bots are special accounts you can chat with, just as you would with people. Bots provide a conversational way for you to connect to services in Hangouts Chat, such as looking up information, scheduling meetings, performing tasks and so on.

From your Google Chat Dashboard, Navigate to the: Find Person, room, or bot section in the top left corner, then select: Message a Bot. That will show a number of popular bots where you can search through. 

Bots are created by software developers and added to Hangouts Chat by Google. Every Hangouts Chat user can use bots, including the @meet bot.

Google Hangouts Chat isn't just for talking to people - it's also a great place to chat with your bots, too. They can help you book meetings, find flights, poll your team, check your calendar and much more - they are very interactive and powerful.

In Hangouts Chat, you can add bots to a specific room, or you can chat with them directly on your own. There are bots already built for Hangouts Chat today, including Meet, Drive, Giphy and more. 
The Drive bot will update you about new comments, access request, files share with you and your storage. The Giphy bot will insert GIF's directly into your chat room.
The Summarize bot can extract the most important information, keywords and key phrases from:
• weblinks and documents - just share your link with the bot or copy-paste your text • audio files • images with text.

You can ask the Meet bot to check your calendar or book a meeting with someone else on your team or in your organization.

Review Use @meet bot for instructions on how to use a bot to set up a meeting.

For help in getting started with Hangouts Chat please contact: ITS@manhattan.edu or TEL: 718-862-7973

Google for Education Roadshow on campus Dec 8

Representatives from Google’s Higher Ed team were in Kelly Commons on Saturday, Dec 8 and presented to adjunct faculty about the best use of Google Apps for:

Workflow Optimization:  Google Calendar, Classroom & Course Kit

Communication:  Gmail, Google Chat & Google Meet

Collaboration & Teamwork:  Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive & Jamboard

Immersive Learning:  Tour Creator (allows you to make your own Virtual Reality tours)

Google representatives taught the group tips and techniques which enable us to use Google more efficiently. This event was sponsored by the Faculty Technology Committee whose focus is on adjunct technology support. 15 adjuncts attended along with Graduate students. It was a productive and informative workshop, specifically targeting higher education instructors. Attendees left with a variety of ideas of how they can use technology more productively and how to enhance their current teaching methods by blending technology into their current content.

Special thanks to Dr Adam Koehler, Chair of the Faculty Development Committee and Dr Shawna BuShell, Chair of the Faculty Technology Committee for co-sponsoring this event and bringing Google to Manhattan College.

Please contact its@manhattan.edu for additional resources on blending more technology into your courses using Google Apps.

Drive Plug-in for Microsoft Office

The Drive plug-in for Microsoft Office allows users working in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook to open documents directly from Google Drive, and save to Google Drive, without leaving their Office programs.
To use the Drive plug-in it must be installed on your computer. Download the Google Drive plug-in.

The following versions of Microsoft Office are supported:

Office 2010, 2013, and 2016 for Windows.
The following Microsoft Office programs are supported:
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. 
Google will not support Office for Mac:
Mac and Windows clients can also access or save their Office files through Google Drive File Stream. Please visit the previous link for further details on how to download. 

For more details please review:  Install the Drive Plug-in for Microsoft Office.

Mail Merges Made Easy

formMule is an add-on for Google Sheets that allows you to easily and quickly send mail merges. Mail merging makes emailing many recipients easier by utilizing tags, which takes data from a spreadsheet and uses that to organize and send personalized emails to multiple recipients. 

formMule sends targeted, personalized emails from a Google Sheet. Run as either a manual email merge or -- more powerfully -- as a triggered merge that runs automatically on form submit or on a timer. 

A great way to use formMule is when you are gathering responses in a Google Form, and later on, you want to email everyone who signed up using your form. Create a spreadsheet from the responses. Make sure to collect their email addresses!

For more instructions, including a video tutorial please refer to Mail Merging using formMule.

COMPLETE: Campus Wireless Maintenance - 12/4 at 6am

UPDATE: As of 6:15am, this maintenance was completed successfully.

ITS will be conducting necessary maintenance on part of the wireless network on campus on Tuesday, Dec 4th, 2018 at 6:00am. This maintenance is required to ensure the scalability and reliability of our wireless network throughout campus.

This maintenance will not affect the wired networks throughout campus nor will it affect the wireless networks in the following locations:

• Horan Hall
• Lee Hall
• Chrysostom Hall
• Miguel Hall
• Memorial Hall
• DLS
• Kelly Commons
• Draddy Gymnasium
• O'Malley Library

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

Kramer & Multihead Installation Project

ITS tested out two new products during the Fall '18 semester. One is a new wireless presentation device called Kramer VIA Go and the other is a Crestron Multihead cable. We installed them in (15) classrooms and (1) conference room.

Due to positive survey feedback and general success with the products we have decided to move forward and replace all currently installed Apple TVs on campus with the Kramer VIA Go wireless presentation device. It has much more functionality than the Apple TV such as supporting all platforms (Android, Chrome OS, iOS, Mac and Windows) as well as being more reliable and other benefits. We have also decided to install the Crestron Multihead cable in all rooms with a Crestron control unit.

The installations are scheduled to begin this coming Winter Intersession '18-'19. We will be providing updates via the blog so be sure to keep an eye on upcoming posts.

Kramer Via GO Home Screen

Crestron Multihead Cable