Archive for the ‘Announce’ Category

Data Destruction Day 2

September 9th, 2013 by dshettle

Information Technology Services and Physical Plant’s Environmental Services are pleased to announce our second “Data Destruction Day.” On October 3rd, in front of O’Kane on Linden Lane, the College’s shredding partner, ProShred, will be stationed with their paper and hard drive shredding trucks from 9am to 11am. Once again, bring in any paper items, old hard drives, floppy drives, thumb drives, CDs, DVDs, zip drives, audio tapes, and ProShred will physically destroy them onsite.  This year, Physical Plant’s Environmental Services is sponsoring a container to recycle your computer and computer peripherals as well.

Last year we trimmed College storage rooms and filing cabinets of roughly 4,000 pounds of paper, and 150 pounds of electronic storage media. Let’s try to beat those numbers this year. Those dot matrix reports that haven’t been a tree since 1976? That CD with your parent’s tax return from 1998 in the milk crate under your desk? Bring them. Even bring things from home, with the caveat that the College isn’t responsible for its security (though you’ll get to watch it be destroyed, so don’t let the disclaimer spook you).

All materials destroyed are recycled where possible by ProShred.  All computers and peripherals will also be recycled by Environmental Services.

As with last year, some ground rules:

  • This event is open only to Holy Cross Faculty, Students and Staff. Bring your HC ID.
  • As aforementioned, bring material from home if you’d like, but the College isn’t responsible if you lose it or it otherwise vanishes prior to destruction.
  • Electronic media is limited to hard drives, flash/thumb drives, CD’s, DVD’s, floppy disks, tapes, and zip drives. If you have an old computer, we can help you remove the hard drive that day and Environmental Services will recycle the shell and your computer peripherals.
  • Environmental Services will only take and recycle your old computer and its peripherals (keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc.)  Strict limit of 1 monitor per computer.  They will not take your 1980’s living room entertainment center, or the storage unit full of old microwaves! No T.V.s, VCRs, etc.
  • Get the necessary approvals before bringing stuff. Emptying that filing cabinet may seem like a good idea, but make sure none of it is needed any longer. If in doubt, ask.
  • Don’t leave anything you bring to the event unattended on the way.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

Data Destruction Day – October 4th

September 26th, 2012 by dshettle

Human Resources and Information Technology Services are pleased to invite you to “Data Destruction Day.” On October 4th, in front of O’Kane on Linden Lane, the College’s shredding partner, ProShred, will be stationed with their paper and hard drive shredding trucks from 9am to 11am. Bring in any paper items, old hard drives, floppy drives, thumb drives, CDs, DVDs, zip drives, and ProShred will physically destroy them onsite.

Faculty & Staff, this is a great opportunity to put those filing cabinets on a weight loss program. Those bankers boxes sitting in the storage room? Those ancient zip disks hiding in the deep dark recesses of your desk? Those mysterious tapes that you don’t even have a computer that could read the format (remember the floppies?)! Bring them. Even bring things from home, with the caveat that the College isn’t responsible for its security (though you’ll get to watch it be destroyed, so don’t let the disclaimer spook you).

All materials destroyed are recycled where possible by ProShred.

Some ground rules:

  • This event is open only to Holy Cross Faculty, Students and Staff. Bring your HC ID.
  • As aforementioned, bring material from home if you’d like, but the College isn’t responsible if you lose it or it otherwise vanishes prior to destruction.
  • Electronic media is limited to hard drives, flash/thumb drives, CD’s, DVD’s, floppy disks, tapes, and zip drives. If you have an old computer, we can help you remove the hard drive that day if you bring in just the system unit (not the monitor, keyboard, etc.).
  • Get the necessary approvals before bringing stuff. Emptying that filing cabinet may seem like a good idea, but make sure none of it is needed any longer. If in doubt, ask.
  • Don’t leave anything you bring to the event unattended.
  • This is NOT an electronics recycling event, so do NOT bring T.V.s, VCRs, monitors, etc.

If you have any questions about the event, don’t hesitate to ask.

Ellen Keohane and David Shettler
Information Technology Services
508-793-2477

Holy Cross Faculty and Staff to Go Google!

May 3rd, 2012 by ekeohane

Dear Colleagues,
The IT Steering Committee (comprised of the President, the VPs, and myself) on Monday approved the move of faculty and staff from GroupWise to Google Apps for Education. This comes after a two-year process of information gathering, peer institution comparisons, and the successful move of students to Google Apps. Thank you to all who gave feedback to us.

The main drivers behind the decision are:

  1. The continued viability of GroupWise is in doubt, both in terms of support by the vendor and future capabilities.
  2. The general consensus within Higher Education (and in industry) is that running your own e-mail and calendar system on site is no longer a best practice when comparable external alternatives exist.
  3. The advantages of Google Apps over GroupWise are many, such as:
  • Significantly more space (25gb vs. 250mb)
  • Much better integration with mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones
  • Highly effective SPAM filtering
  • Better compatibility between Windows and Macintosh usage
  • New feature releases far exceeding GroupWise
  • Other “Apps” for image storing, document sharing, web sites, and chat

Information on the transition will be sent regularly from ITS. Here are a few important points:

  1. Faculty and staff email addresses are not changing. We will still be [username]@holycross.edu. Students will continue to have the “g.” in their addresses.
  2. We will move all of your email and calendar items over from GroupWise to Google for you.
  3. The Holy Cross Google/Gmail account is separate from any personal gmail.com account you may already have (though they will work much the same).

What is the expected time frame?
No one will move prior to Commencement. We expect to move ITS and one or two pilot departments some time in June to solidify the transfer process. In July and early August we hope to begin with volunteer “early adopters” who use the basic features of GroupWise (e.g. just email and not shared calendars or proxy accounts). After the busy start of the semester settles down, we anticipate doing a department-by-department transition over the fall (Oct-Dec). When your department moves will be largely up to you and what works best for your department. We hope to have most people moved by the end of the winter break.

What should you do now?
There is nothing that needs to be done on your part now. It would be helpful overall if people cleaned up their email prior to moving. Feel free to do some of that. Detailed instructions will follow as the time approaches for your move to explain such things as getting email out of archives if you have them, saving personal address books if you use those, etc..

Will there be training on the new Apps?
Yes, ITS and our partners across the College will be offering training in a number of ways… through training classes, tip sheets posted on a web site, email, and in-person assistance. Our focus during the transition months will be on assisting with using the new email and calendar apps. If you find use for the additional apps that come with Google Apps for Education, such as for document sharing, image storing, chat, or web sites, these will be available to you. ITS will offer training and assistance with those after getting everyone up and running on email and calendar.

Many people have told me they are eager for this move. I am excited about it. While changes as big as this can and will be disruptive, we are hearing very positive feedback from the many other institutions that have gone Google. We will do our best to make it a smooth transition for Holy Cross.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or any member of my staff with comments or suggestions at any time.
Take care–
–Ellen.

————————————————-
Dr. Ellen J. Keohane
Director, Information Technology Services
College of the Holy Cross
1 College Street
Worcester, MA 01610-2395
ph: 508.793.2652 fax: 508.793.2711

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

“Festina Lente” (Hasten Slowly)

STAR Outage: Tuesday, December 7th 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

December 7th, 2010 by jnoonan

Faculty, Staff, and Students,

The STAR system will be unavailable this evening from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. while a required system upgrade is completed.

Systems Maintenance: Monday, October 11th

October 10th, 2010 by jnoonan

ITS staff will be performing required system maintenance on the Columbus Day holiday. Part of this work is to hopefully prevent a recurrence of the outages we experienced last month.
The following is the schedule of outages on Monday, October 11, 2010:
6:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.
Moodle, Drupal websites, wikis, blogs, several web applications (Cross Listings, combo lock program, Admissions checklist,  balanced scorecard, SEWS, Admissions BB), thin clients, kiosks, Alumni/Dev Advance, and the Help Desk ticket system.
9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
All systems that require login except Mail, Moodle, and the Math server.
If you have any questions about this work, please let me know. To report problems after Monday afternoon, please call the ITS Help Desk, x-3548, or e-mail helpdesk@holycross.edu

Admin PO – Status Update

August 1st, 2010 by rchicker

The migration is nearly finished.  We estimate being finished in the next hour or two. Another update will be posted at that time.

GroupWise migration status

July 18th, 2010 by rchicker

Oxford post office (faculty) migrated successfully. However, due to time constraints we are unable to do the clinton post office (admin) migration at this time.  Change control will reschedule.

Faculty post office update

July 17th, 2010 by rchicker

Faculty post office is completed and up and running. Queued mail is now processing.

Faculty post office update

July 17th, 2010 by rchicker

The migration for the faculty email server is still running.  It is approximately 95% done.

Printing Services Restored

February 27th, 2008 by bhenry

The efforts to restore printing services are complete. Some folks have already noticed printing related messages popping up on their screens. It is advised that everyone reboot their computers; this is the most effective method to assure that the system sets its printers up properly.

If you receive a message regarding changes to your printer, select OK in the window. The computer will go through a brief configuration, and then you will need to click OK again. It will do this for each printer to which you can print.

If, after a reboot, you find that you still not print, please contact the Helpdesk (x 3548).