IT Insider: Box to OneDrive Migration

IT@UC is partnering with the Department of Public Safety to launch Alertus, a Mass Notification System. Alertus will work in conjunction with the university’s current notification system, Rave, to advance the technologies used for unified mass notification and crisis communication across campus. Alertus will allow Public Safety to communicate critical messages to the community using desktop alerts, digital signage, arena scoreboards, College Cable notifications and outdoor beacons.  

Initial testing of the Alertus system has been successful and the project is ready to expand testing of the desktop notifications to pilot groups, including IT@UC. Additional information regarding the tests will be distributed via email as teams are added to the pilot group.

OneDrive is now approved for the storage of Restricted and Controlled data, beginning July 1. Please read the Data Classification Policy for more details on what is considered restricted and controlled data.

Faculty and staff who are interested in using OneDrive right away may move content from Box to OneDrive or Teams at their convenience.

For those who wish to wait, automatic migration of Box files will occur between summer and fall semesters. Any files and folders remaining in your Box account will be copied into a folder in your OneDrive named “Imported from Box.” Folder structure and shared document settings will be preserved, except for external (non-UC) collaborators, who will need to be re-added manually. 

Box will remain activated until the end of fall semester, but all content will be locked in “read only” mode.  Editing, saving, deleting and uploading new documents will be restricted.  However, you will be able to download or view your Box content.

Current active Box users will be notified of these changes via targeted email announcements in the next week. The Staff Success Center is currently offering online and in-person educational opportunities, available through SuccessFactors Learning. Visit Microsoft’s OneDrive Help Center for additional details on OneDrive. Look for supporting KB articles in the IT@UC Knowledge Base coming soon.

Duo two-factor authentication was activated for Catalyst and Office 365 on June 1 for faculty, staff, and student workers. There is now an opt-in period for other users, mainly students. 

Other applications, like Pace, Canvas, Slate, etc., will also be unveiled in coming months. Later this year, DUO will be integrated into student applications.

For more information about two-factor authentication, including how to self-enroll, please visit the Two-Factor Authentication webpage.

On July 26, IT@UC will be reducing the amount of floor space used to house servers in the State of Ohio Computing Center (SOCC) in Columbus. This comes after decisions by the facility to start charging for the unused allocated floor space. The reduction from 900 square feet to 480 square feet will save the university over $43,000 annually.

The server racks will be consolidated into a smaller space, during which they will be turned off and physically rolled or moved across the room. Catalyst Reporting will be impacted by this one-off scheduled downtime. Users will be notified via email and informed in advance of the July 26 event.

Due to a recent change in licensing terms, GitHub Education service will be discontinued Oct. 4, 2019. Email announcements will be sent to all GitHub Education users notifying them of the change.

Students and faculty who wish to use GitHub for academic or instructional purposes after October 4 can switch to the GitHub Student Developer Pack, which is free to use and has all the same features as the current service.

NOTE: This only affects the GitHub Education service.

The GitHub Enterprise service will continue to be offered, as the contract terms for that product have not changed. Please note, however, that the Enterprise service requires paid licenses for each account and should only be used for non-academic work. Please email Jon Adams with any questions or concerns about GitHub Enterprise.

Due to declining software sales in the UC Bookstore and the move to make purchasing more efficient, on July 1, 2019 the software available for personal use by UC students, faculty and staff will transition from being sold through the Follett Bookstores to ResNet. Mathematica will also move from being sold through OntheHub to ResNet. 

To ensure a smooth transition, and allow more time for the release of TouchNet online ordering, both the Follett Bookstore and OntheHub will continue sales during the month of July.

For more details, please read the UC News article Personal software sales transition to IT@UC ResNet.

This Fall, when the College of Allied Health Sciences moves into the Health Sciences Building (HSB) and the Lindner College of Business (LCOB) moves into their new home, faculty and staff will see new Cisco phones at their desks and in their common areas. HSB will have 150 new phones installed and LCOB will have 330 new phones, for a total of 480 new phones between the two.

 Additionally, in June, the One Stop migrated 35 telephones in their call center over to the Cisco Unified Contact Center Express (UCCX) system.

Stetson and Kowalewski Hall completed the telephone refresh this past spring while CCM and University Hall will see work start over the summer.

For more information about the Network and Telephone refresh, please visit the IT Next webpage.

The UCFileSpace service is nearing retirement, and replacement solutions for file storage and web hosting are currently being developed. Over the summer, file storage and sharing will move to Office 365 OneDrive, and personal website hosting (homepages.uc.edu) will be relaunched as a standalone service. More information about these services, including migration instructions where applicable, will be distributed as they become available.

In order to facilitate the change, a successful round-table discussion was recently held to develop solutions for individual use case scenarios. If you work within UCFileSpace and missed the meeting, or have additional UCFileSpace needs that have not been discussed, please contact your local IT Manager. IT@UC teams will work closely with UCFileSpace users and IT Managers to keep them updated on all solutions developed.

 Thanks for your support and feedback through this process in order to transition to an updated storage solution. Any questions about this process can be emailed to Russ Langford.

Several popular operating systems will reach End of Service (EOS) in the near future, including SQL Server 2008 (7/9/19), Windows 7 (1/14/20) and Windows Server 2008 (1/14/20). View a complete list of Applications and Operating Systems Reaching End of Service in 2019 and 2020. 

Please start appropriate planning to upgrade or decommission systems prior to these dates. 

University policy requires that information systems be maintained to protect against vulnerabilities. Systems that reach End of Service (EOS) will not receive security or non-security updates from the vendor, typically resulting in catastrophic vulnerabilities within a short period of time.

Please email the UC Office of Information Security with any questions or concerns.

Microsoft Office trainings are currently being offered to UC faculty, staff, and student employees. In person training sessions are currently available for OneDrive, Outlook, and Teams.

To view and sign-up for face-to-face Microsoft Trainings offered by the Staff Success Center, select one of the following links and sign-in to SuccessFactors Learning. (NOTE: The recommended browser for SuccessFactors is Mozilla Firefox.)

• OneDrive

• Outlook              

• Teams

For questions about Microsoft Office 365 training email the Staff Success Center.

UC Digital Inclusion Day, organized by the Accessibility Network at UC and held at UC Blue Ash, welcomed participants from the University of Cincinnati as well as all over Ohio. It was a day to learn new accessibility techniques, network with colleagues, and incorporate eAccessibility into university culture.

Read about the speakers and events in the UC News article Accessibility Network at UC presents inaugural Digital Inclusion Day.

Headings make text stand out and help individuals scan your document, but heading styles can do a lot more!

Try Adding Headings into your Word document.

Headings will help you:

• Use consistent font settings
• Easily navigate through your entire document 
• Quickly move sections around during editing
• Add an instant table of contents
• Include accessibility for individuals using screen readers

For more information about this useful technique, visit the Add a heading Microsoft online help article and video.

That's it for this month. Thanks for reading!