ImageNow, the University's comprehensive imaging and document management system, will be upgraded later this summer to take advantage of new features and bug fixes. The dates of the upgrade have not yet been confirmed, but we are planning for July 21-24. Users should be aware that ImageNow will be unavailable during the upgrade. We will confirm the dates of upgrade as soon as they are approved by the OIT Change Approval Board. In the meantime, please share this information with the ImageNow users and technical support staff in your areas.

New desktop Client

Deploying the new client

The new desktop client will be available for download on the Document Imaging website. In addition, the new client will be distributed among the University Computer Management community so that AD administrators can deploy the new client if they so choose.

Because the new client is not compatible with the current version of ImageNow, we recommend that you do not install the new client until closer to the upgrade. The new client will be available for download at least one week before the upgrade is underway.

If you have any questions, contact the Imaging & Archiving Team at oia-imaging@lists.umn.edu.

Posted 3:46 PM | Permalink

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) announces the selection of a new IT Service Management (ITSM) tool to replace HP Service Center, ServiceNow. The selection is the result of rigorous planning, investigation, testing, and negotiation in collaboration with the University of Minnesota IT community.

Like HP Service Center, ServiceNow enables ticketing, however its capabilities are expanded as it more thoroughly supports Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes. ITIL is the most widely adopted approach for IT Service Management in the world. OIT is adopting ITIL methodologies to create efficiencies and improve service. OIT intends to leverage ServiceNow to support key ITIL processes described below.

• Service Level Management (Monitor and review of the arrangements set with internal IT support providers and vendors)


• Catalog and Request Management (Provide consistent and current information about available services including their operational status, interfaces, and dependencies)


• Change Management (Add, modify, or remove anything with impact on IT)


• Knowledge Management (Ensure the right information is delivered to the right people)


• Incident Management (Be accountable for Incidents, or unplanned interruptions to service, from beginning to end)


• Problem Management (Diagnose the root cause of Incidents)


• Configuration Management (Discover University IT assets and how they support business processes)

Rationale

Roll-out

Posted 12:34 PM | Permalink

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) reminds you that all faculty and staff accounts, except accounts affiliated with the Academic Health Center (AHC) and Health Care Component (HCC)-related accounts, are eligible for University of Minnesota Google accounts.

OIT will complete the transition of all University accounts (except AHC and HCC accounts) to Google Apps this summer, and all users who have not yet signed up on their own, with the exception of those affiliated with the Academic Health Center and Health Care Components, will be moved to a Google account automatically.

To make the the transition go as smoothly and quickly as possible, users are strongly encouraged to transition their account on their before their automatic transition is scheduled. Sign up is available on the University's Google Apps website.

Automatic transitions for faculty and staff will begin July 12 on the Duluth campus, with other campuses to be scheduled later in the summer. Users will receive notification via email prior to their automatic transition, once it has been scheduled.

You should expect the following to happen on the day your account is scheduled for its automatic transition:

• The first time you visit mail.umn.edu that day, and attempt to log in to your University email account, you will be directed to another page requiring you to move your account to Google for the University.
• You will be asked to agree to the Google Apps terms of service.
• You will not have access to email until you initiate the migration.
• Those who use a desktop email client such as Thunderbird, Outlook or Apple Mail, will receive the error message "invalid user name or password," and will be directed to log into mail.umn.edu and follow the instructions to proceed. You also may go to www.umn.edu/myaccount and choose Google Account Options.

Alumni and retirees that were eligible BEFORE they became an alumni or retiree, also are eligible.

Google Apps are web-based, state-of-the-art collaboration tools providing increased productivity opportunities available to you 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A U of M Google account offers:

• Gmail for University email
• Google Calendar
• Google Docs (Word Processing, Spreadsheets and Presentations Document Sharing)
• Google Chat and Google Talk (Instant Messaging)
• Google Sites (Website Publishing Tools)

For more information or questions, as well as links to training opportunities, visit the Google Apps support site, or contact help@umn.edu.

Posted 11:50 AM | Permalink

The Office of Information Technology offers a number of technology training courses. Please visit the Technology Training website for a complete listing of courses.

UMConnect 7: Web Conferencing for Meetings
Jul 11, 1:00 PM-4:00 PM
Walter Library 210
Windows

SAS Programming II- Data Manipulation Techniques
Jul 12, 14, 19, 21, 1:00 PM-4:30 PM
Humphrey Center 50a
Windows

Netfiles 7 - Learning Byte
Jul 13, 9:30 AM-9:50 AM
Jul 13, 10:00 AM-10:20 AM
Jul 13, 10:30 AM-10:50 AM
Jul 13, 11:00 AM-11:20 AM
Tech Stop, 1st Floor Coffman Memorial Union
Seminar

Excel 2007: Spreadsheet Basics
Jul 13, 15, 1:00 PM-4:30 PM
Humphrey Center 50a
Windows

Web Accessibility Issues and Techniques
Jul 13, 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
Walter Library 210
Seminar

Moodle 1.9: Creating Basic Course Websites
Jul 15, 8:30 AM-12:00 PM
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows

Gmail and Google Calendar Overview
Jul 18, 1:30 PM-2:30 PM
Walter Library 210
Seminar

Visio 2010: Creating Process Maps
Jul 19, 1:00 PM-4:30 PM
Walter Library 210
Windows

Excel 2007: Managing and Analyzing Data
Jul 20, 22, 8:30 AM-12:00 PM
Walter Library 210
Windows

Moodle 1.9: Assignments and Quizzes
Jul 20, 1:00 PM-4:30 PM
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows

Web Development: Essentials - Cascading Style Sheets
Jul 20, 1:00 PM-4:30 PM
Humphrey Center 50a
Macintosh/Windows

Web Development: Dreamweaver CS5 Basics
Jul 25, 1:00 PM-4:30 PM
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows

Google Docs Overview
Jul 26, 10:00 AM-11:00 AM
Walter Library 210
Seminar

Moodle 1.9: Creating Basic Course Websites
Jul 26, 1:00 PM-4:30 PM
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows

Excel 2007: Spreadsheet Basics
Jul 27, 28, 1:00 PM-4:30 PM
Walter Library 210
Windows

Moodle 1.9: Grades
Jul 28, 9:00 AM-12:00 PM
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Windows

UMContent: Contributor Basics
Jul 28, 9:30 AM-12:00 PM
Humphrey Center 50a
Macintosh/Windows

Gmail: Effectively Managing your Email
Jul 29, 9:30 AM-12:00 PM
Walter Library 210
Macintosh/Window

Posted 9:18 AM | Permalink

NetFiles has been fully restored and is now back online and available to use.

Posted 3:47 PM | Permalink

We were able to recover the archive log files needed to restore the database up until point of the last backup, which occurred at 2:03 a.m. Sunday, June 26.

We're currently in the process of verifying and testing the application's post-recovery functionality, and expect to have NetFiles back online before the end of business today. Our next update will be sent once the application is back up and running, and available to use.

Posted 2:14 PM | Permalink

Work on the NetFiles outage progresses, and a backup has been recovered. The database restoration process is in progress, and we expect the process will be completed within a few hours.

In addition, we have escalated the severity of the service call with Oracle to it's highest level making it a critical "production down" issue.

We expect to have more information available soon, and will continue to provide updates here and on the system status page as soon as any new information and/or details become available.

Posted 11:43 AM | Permalink

NetFiles remains unavailable, and administrators continue to work to recover and restore the databases and bring the application back online. More information will be available here and on the system status page as it becomes available.

Posted 11:41 AM | Permalink

Issue
Starting at 9:35 p.m. Friday, May 20, 2011, email services were unavailable to some University email users as a result of problems experienced by the SAN storage frame located in one of OIT's main data centers. The problems with the storage frame caused three email servers in that location to cease functioning. This issue affected approximately 28,000 out of the University's 146,000 email accounts. Affected users may have experienced long delays or no response when attempting to access their email, and they were unable to send and receive email.

Email services were fully restored to most customers the next morning, Saturday, May 21, 2011, when two of the three email servers were brought back online. Email services could not be restored on the third server, and approximately 7,000 users could still not send, receive, or view email on Monday, May 23, 2011, prompting the initiation of the disaster recovery plan. Email engineers set up new accounts for affected users enabling them to send and receive email while their historical email was being restored. This was completed on Tuesday, May 24 for faculty and staff accounts, and Wednesday, May 25 for students. Historical email was restored from backups to customer accounts on Sunday, May 29, 2011, at which point customers were able to access their historical email.

Cause
On the evening of Friday, May 20, a vendor was attempting to troubleshoot an ongoing issue with a failed drive on the SAN storage frame, which was caused by an unexpected power outage a few weeks prior. During a scan, the drive went "Not Ready" (i.e. failed) which caused the three email servers to crash.

Resolution
The problem with the storage frame was resolved when the vendor replaced a bad physical disk on Saturday morning. This allowed two of the three email servers to be put back into service. The third email server's file system was damaged beyond repair. Services could only be restored through a full file system recovery to a spare server, which, because of the high volume of accounts on that server, took over 50 hours to complete. During the recovery process, new email accounts for customers were set up temporarily on other email servers and the queued mail that had accumulated was delivered. After the full file system recovery was completed, the affected accounts were all moved to this "spare" server, and historical email was restored under a hierarchy named "mail/restored_email," allowing users and/or technical support staff to merge their folders back into their original locations.

Next Steps
It is extremely expensive to support email at the scale that is necessary for the University of Minnesota, and the legacy email infrastructure is no longer designed to meet the University's business needs. The University is therefore in the process of migrating its email support to Google, which offers a more reliable platform than our current one and is designed to provide a higher level of service delivery. Our goal is to migrate all users away from and then decommission the aging, expensive email system that we have, without investing more money in it.

If your account is eligible for migration to Google, please migrate as soon as possible. All student (undergraduate and graduate), faculty and staff accounts--except accounts affiliated with the Academic Health Center (AHC)--are eligible for University of Minnesota Google accounts. Alumni and retirees that were eligible before they became an alumni or retiree, also are eligible. Learn more about Google Apps for the University of Minnesota.

Posted 2:49 PM | Permalink

On June 14 and 22, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) will be making software changes to convert Identity Management middleware services from the old x.500 directory service to LDAP. We are moving Central Authentication Hub (CAH) services off of old directory servers so that we can retire the old servers. By retiring the old servers, we simplify our updating processes and better position ourselves for future Identity Management upgrades and projects.

There is no planned downtime to make these changes, and we expect no service interruption. The work will be performed in the morning outside of business hours. We chose to not make these changes during scheduled maintenance hours to ensure that standard problem reporting channels (e.g., 1-HELP) are available within a short time after the changes are made.OIT staff will be monitoring the change and will be prepared to revert the changes in the event that problems occur.

If service interruptions occur, the impact will be minimal. Service interruptions would only last a few minutes and would only affect a small number of users. Services that have the possibility of disruption are any services that require central authentication.

If you have any questions about the upcoming changes, please email the authentication services team at idm@umn.edu.

Posted 9:31 AM | Permalink

The University of Minnesota has launched its newly redesigned home page. The new home page delivers a customized experience by allowing individuals to self-select an "audience view." The University will be a leader in the field of higher education by meeting the growing expectations of website visitors to identify the type of information they want.

University Relations is asking for feedback about the new design. There is a "Tell us What You Think" link in the lower right corner of the page. Please take a moment to share your feedback.

Posted 9:15 AM | Permalink