As part of our ongoing commitment to security, the Unix Infrastructure will be conducting its quarterly patching of systems. While many of the systems will be patched without any service disruption, there are several systems which require the downtime of key services. The schedule below outlines which key services will be offline and for how long.
Friday August 22nd, 6pm to 12am
Access to Cyrus and UMBC Webmail (accounts not migrated to UMBC Gmail)
All mail will be queued up and delivered after the server is patched
Expected to be unreachable from 6pm to 8pm
myUMBC lite page will be up resulting in reduced myUMBC functionality
The sites (wordpress) web hosting environment will be unreachable
The new web hosting environment will be down (pages will be available but any database calls will not work)
All HFS (user) servers will be offline
Student mySQL databases will be offline
RT will be down (expected to be down 6pm to 8pm)
Userpages will be unavailable
Wiki will be unavailable
License5 will be down (autodesk, cadence, idl, schrodinger, xilinx, mathematica)
Student mySQL databases will be offline
Perseus will be unavailable
There will be no data loss during the outage and no user action is required prior to the downtime. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Technology Support Center at x53838.
The DoIT Technology Support Center is looking to hire additional consultants to work during the Fall semester. Please see our job description below and visit our job posting on UMBCworks to apply.
Technology Support Center (TSC) student consultants are the first points of technical contact for the UMBC community and those who do well often go on to work in other areas of the Division of Information Technology (DoIT). Minimally, consultants are expected to provide initial triage and support for a wide-range of information technologies including accounts, hardware, instructional technologies, networking, software, telecommunications, and basic web development.
Responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following:
Provide technical assistance to users by phone, online and in person;
Answer TSC phones in a professional and courteous manner;
Create, update and resolve tickets in the Request Tracker (RT) ticketing system;
Create, update, suggest and recommend relevant FAQ articles to users (www.umbc.edu/faq);
Provide direct assistance to users on technical issues they cannot easily resolve on their own;
Complete in-person or online training about quality support as defined inumbc.edu/go/ticketrubric;
Respond to all work related communications in a timely manner;
Escalate urgent problems to the Full-Time staff, as appropriate.
Required Skills and Experience
Demonstrated ability to effectively communicate by phone or in person.
Demonstrated writing ability.
Demonstrated ability to achieve successful outcomes in handling difficult situations and customers.
Demonstrated analytical and troubleshooting skills.
Ability & willingness to learn coupled with clear understanding of one’s technical abilities, so as to triage and escalate an issue that leads to an effective solution for the user.
Please note that these are not formal Blackboard training classes. Additional dates and times may be added as demand warrants.
]]>It is with great pleasure and excitement that I introduce and welcome both Holly Bielak and Mariann Hawken to DoIT's Instructional Technology & New Media (ITNM) group. Mariann and Holly join Tom Penniston as Instructional Technology Specialists in our office.
Holly (pictured at left) comes to us from Coppin State University where she served as an Instructional Technologist and Trainer and provided assistance and support to faculty, staff and students regarding the use of technology in the classroom and workplace. She also brings experience in the classroom as an adjunct instructor in Information Technology and Education as well as both Blackboard administration and training experience. Holly earned her Bachelor of Arts in American Studies here at UMBC, her Master of Education in Instructional Technology at the University of Maryland University College, and is currently pursuing her Doctor of Philosophy in Instructional Design for Online Learning at Capella University.
Mariann brings with her from Bowie State University over 14 years of experience working with both graduate and undergraduate faculty to effectively integrate technology into the curriculum and the classroom. She has supported traditional, hybrid, and fully online course design and development and has been selected as a Blackboard MVP by the company for her expertise, experience, and use of best practices with the learning management system. Mariann has also served as an adjunct instructor in English and Communications and has two master’s degrees from the University of Maryland University College: a Master of Education in Instructional Technology and a Master of Distance Education in Teaching & Training.
Please join me in welcoming both Holly and Mariann to the UMBC family.
Sincerely,
Sherri Braxton-Lieber
Director of Instructional Technology
UMBC Division of Information Technology (DoIT)
On Thursday, June 19th at 7am, DoIT will be performing an upgrade of the campus webmail environment for our dedicated Cyrus mail servers. The current webmail environment is out of date on both the hardware and software. There will be a brief outage to transition to the new server and no data will be lost during this upgrade. Anyone logged into webmail prior to 7am will need to restart their browser and login again once the upgrade is completed. Users of Cyrus webmail will notice a more refined interface with new colors as well as some icons that have shifted location.
Anyone wishing to try out the new Cyrus webmail environment is encouraged to login at https://webmail-dev.core.umbc.edu. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Technology Support Center at x53838.
Note: This campus webmail upgrade will not impact users who have migrated their email to Google.
]]>