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UPDATE: Library Wi-Fi (performance increase)

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We have been working over the break to improve the Wi-Fi service in the Library.  We discovered that there were multiple issues affecting performance, specifically to do with radio interference, and we have resolved the major problems in time for the start of term.  We will be continuing to work hard to get the other minor issues worked out.  As a result of our work, the Wi-Fi experience in the library appears to be much better and more stable, even at peak times (tested with 1k users around).

This means that the internet speed in the Library is almost back up to where it should be.  However, we ask that people using the Library refrain from using their mobile devices as a Wi-Fi hotspot as this was found to be another cause of reduced performance.  We understand that when the Library Wi-Fi was underperforming you may have been inclined to use your mobile device as a hotspot but now that the Library internet speed has increased, we ask that you use the Wi-Fi rather than your own hotspots.  It makes the Wi-Fi experience much better for everyone else in the Library and saves you data and battery life on your devices.

We will be providing regular updates on this issue in the future.  Check back here Monday or on our twitter for a further update on how we are improving the Wi-Fi experience at the University of Reading.


Introducing: “The Cloud” Wi-Fi service

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A new public Wi-Fi service has been launched in many places across the UoR intended for general use by guests around the campus. “The Cloud” service is now available in the following locations:

  • Palmer Building
  • Sports Park
  • Whiteknights Library
  • Cedars Hotel
  • Eat at the Square
  • Meadow Suite
  • Henley Business School (Whiteknights)
  • Henley Business School (Greenlands)
  • ICMA Centre
  • Agriculture
  • Great Hall
  • Eat at London Road
  • Students’ Union
  • URE Museum
  • Cole Museum
  • Museum of English Rural Life
  • The Oracle
  • Campus pubs and shops

Temporary public events such as open days and welcome week will also carry “The Cloud”.

PLEASE NOTE:

The service is available for free to all people using the campus facilities for up to 180 minutes per 24 hour period, after which users can decide to pay for more internet time.

Please be aware that this service is not intended for use by students or staff; who should continue to use the Eduroam service.  Eduroam is already free for staff and students and provides a more secure way to access the Internet.  If students or staff are using the internet for university work then they should always be using Eduroam.

Some users are reporting that their internet enabled devices are automatically connecting to the cloud rather than Eduroam.  If you experience this issue then please go to your connectivity settings on your device and “forget” the new cloud Wi-Fi service.  This will make sure your device is still using the Eduroam service. You may have to do this each time your device comes into contact with TheCloud. If you have any doubts or want further advice then please contact the IT Service Desk on 0118 378 6262.

Urgent Unavoidable Works: Potential Network Outage

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Please be advised that there is a need for urgent unavoidable works to be carried out in connection with the district heating installation over two nights on Monday 27th July and Tuesday 28th July between 1800 hrs and 0500hrs.   It concerns the data network only and will not interfere with power supplies.

This work may affect all users of the data network.  Everyone should ensure that all of their work has been backed up and should turn off their machines overnight.

There is a risk  that certain buildings  will have no network  connectivity at the start of the working day on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.  Should this be the case, then be assured that engineers will already be working to re-establish the network as soon as possible and further updates will be issued as soon as any disruption is identified.


This work on Mon night could potentially affect the network connections to the following buildings:

  • Miller
  • Blandford lodge
  • Archaeology
  • Wager
  • SSE (though this also has a resilient connection to Earley Gate)
  • Engineering
  • Harborne

There is no risk to data centres in IT, London Rd or Greenlands so will not affect access to corporate systems (as long as the user is in a building with a network connection!).

If you experience any issues then please contact our Service Desk on  0118 378 6262 or extension 6262.

A small update to your work PC (SNOW)

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IT is working on a Licence and Software Management project to create, manage and maintain an asset register of software licensed by the University and installed on various University owned devices. This will enable the University to better manage its software licences, contracts and agreements.

This project also aims to streamline processes for procuring software licences and managing renewal of contracts and agreements across schools in the University. To do this IT needs to capture information on software products that are currently installed on devices on the University network for which licences are required.

As a result, IT will be deploying Snow client to all PCs and servers in active directory. This will be an automatic deployment and will run at the background to capture the required information. It will have no impact on the performance of your PC.

For more information on the project please contact IT service desk on ITS-Help@reading.ac.uk  or 6262“.

Windows 10 Policy

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Windows 10, the latest Microsoft operating system for PC, was released this month.

The University of Reading will not be officially supporting Windows 10 just yet.  We need time to test that all the University applications and services work smoothly on the new system.

For further information, follow this link.

The dangers of using ‘Cotap’

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IT has recently been aware that members of the University have been using a texting tool called Cotap. Cotap is marketed as a secure texting service for Business.

This service is not one offered or recommended by IT.  We simply do not know who has access to the data, where it is stored, and if it is made available to 3rd parties.

The University is currently piloting “Skype for Business” as a unified communications (instant messaging, video conferencing and screen sharing) application and is scoping a SMS crisis communication text tool. Members of the University should not use Cotap.

If you are interested in the pilot of Skype for Business or the crisis comms tool please contact the IT Service Desk on 0118 378 6262

King Wong (IT Business Partner)

Staff email problems on Saturday 29 August

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There were problems with the staff email service on Saturday 29 August which resulted in the service being very slow and, for many, effectively unavailable via some connection methods (e.g. Outlook).

This was due to electrical supply work that was planned over the weekend, which meant that the power was switched off in one of our data centres.  We knew this was happening and moved all services to our main data centre.  This meant that our systems were “at risk” and we advertised that via our status page.

Also, on Saturday there were problems with some of the staff Exchange email servers resulting in slowness and connection problems.  As we had staff on standby for the power work they worked on these incidents during the day on Saturday.  The Exchange mail service was intermittent and slow during the afternoon but was back by about 7pm.  There was a problem with the Global Address Book service which was not restored until Tues 1 Sept.

Please check the IT homepage for more detailed breakdown and warnings on similar incidents from this point on.  We apologise for these outages and we will review how we manage planned shutdowns relating to essential power maintenance

Our communications for future incidents

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The IT department wants to keep students and staff in the loop when it comes to incidents that may effect service around the campus.  Due to this we are now committing to regular updates on this blog where people can find out, ahead of time, the details on these incidents.  Check back here regularly, or keep an eye on the IT homepage, for a running news feed of our communications.


Workstation assessment message – NOT spam

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Dear Colleague,

You many have received an email titled “Workstation safety training & assessment”. This has been sent out in error to all staff, and I apologise for any confusion caused.

The email is associated with a legitimate on-line system that has been purchased by the University and will be rolled out in due course to all staff. However the system is still at the development stage and the email you received is an early draft. I can assure you that it is not spam. However please ignore it for the time being and when the system is officially launched for your department/School, you will receive enrolment instructions from Health & Safety Services.

For those of you who have followed the instructions and completed the on-line training and assessment already, thank you for taking the time, and do please follow the self-help instructions for any issues associated with your workstation.

Again, I am sorry for any inconvenience.

Moira Simpson

Health and Safety Services, Director

Temporary problem with tickets

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We are currently having issues with tickets on TOPDesk, where some users are unable to see the tickets they’ve raised. We are working with our supplier to resolve this issue as soon as possible.

IT Team

Issue with inboxes not updating has been resolved

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We are aware there may have been some email delivery issues and queued mail on Sunday for which we apologise. This had an impact on a low number of staff mailboxes.

We had some issues with one of the mailbox databases running out of space over the weekend. Our alerting system picked this up and we were able to remedy it on Sunday evening.

IT

 

UPDATED: Issues with website (resolved) and phones (resolved)

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UPDATE:

All issues with the phone lines and website have now been resolved.  All functionality is back to normal.  

IT staff are meeting to discuss lessons learned and ways to improve for future incidents.

(Information below is now out of date but will be kept for future reference)

Website

Last night we encountered some infrastructure issues that affected the UoR websites which have now been resolved.  This was isolated to mainly the staff and student portals.  We have now resolved the issue and the websites are back up and running.

A side effect of this infrastructure issue was that email was running slowly.  Now that the issue is resolved email should be back to working normally, however some users may find their in-boxes running slowly as the backlog of email is cleared

Phones

A separate external issue has meant that the phone lines in the UoR are not working. External to internal AND internal to external calls are currently not working.  Internal to internal phone calls are still working correctly (using extensions).  The issues is being worked on currently.

Check here and the UoR twitter feed (@UniRdg_ITS) for current updates.

 

 

Malicious Email Outbreak

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Over the past week there has been an increase in malicious emails being sent to UoR in-boxes.  The malicious emails are disguised as payment notification emails, and have titles such as “Invoice”. The emails are designed to appear similar to emails one may receive at work.  They contain an attachment, normally an Excel Spreadsheet, which infects your computer with a very severe virus that would require your machine to be totally wiped and rebuilt.

To reduce the likelihood of being infected:

  • Remain vigilant when looking at an email.  Do you recognise the sender? Should you be receiving an email around this subject? If no, then you should not open the attachment.
  • If you receive one of these emails then you should delete it. If you have any concerns then you should contact IT on ex 6262 or at it@reading.ac.uk
  • Make sure macros are disabled in Excel. If you need to use macros for a spreadsheet then enable it manually after you know for sure the document you are opening is legitimate.

If you are working with sensitive and confidential documents then you must take extra care when screening emails.  The university has a comprehensive spam filter that blocks hundreds of thousands of spam emails a week but we are still seeing a few cases of these emails coming in.

If you want further information regarding this issue then please contact it@reading.ac.uk

 

 

FOLLOW UP: Problems with the phone system

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On the 20th of November we experienced some problems with our telephone system which have now been resolved.

Calls to numbers starting 0118 378 were not getting through.  The switch board was still able to take calls and were able to transfer calls as necessary.

These issues have now been resolved, but for future reference; please contact the switchboard on +44 (0) 118 987 5123 for help and further information.  If you want to check if there is a problem with the phone system online then please refer to the IT status page.

IT

 

iOS Apps infection

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We have been getting reports of people unknowingly using infected iOS apps on the university network.  We are taking action to the block the malicious traffic within our network, but the apps remain compromised and users are at risk when using any other network.

An effective way to resolve this issue is for people to look at the list of compromised apps and follow the instructions on how to fix them.

If you have any further concerns or queries then please contact the Service Desk on 0118 378 6262.

IT


UPDATED: Manage Print Service Incident (Resolved)

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UPDATE: The Managed Print Service is now back up and running as usual.  

Managed Print Service – slowness and timeouts

IT is aware that some users of the new managed print service have been experiencing inconsistent and slow performance when logging on to the multifunction devices and retrieving print jobs and that the performance was particularly bad this morning.

IT has just increased the system resources allocated to this service and has brought forward a plan to bring additional servers online to improve the operation.

Users should notice significant improvement and consistency in the responsiveness  of the printer/copiers in forthcoming days. Your patience and feedback during these early days of the system rollout across the three campuses has been appreciated.

IT

Issues with Staff email (RESOLVED)

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UPDATE:

The e-mail service was restored to the affected mailboxes at 10.15am this morning

We have been working with suppliers to put in place a work around while we continue to investigate the root cause.

We are continuing to monitor this closely.


Staff email (including Outlook Web Access – OWA Mail) is unavailable for some users.

IT are currently looking into this as their top priority. Check the IT status page for more information If you have any further questions then please contact the Service Desk on 0118 378 6262 or extension 6262.

IT

Issues with Staff email (02/12/15) (RESOLVED)

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UPDATE: This issue is now resolved and email is working as expected.


 

We are still experiencing issues with staff email.  After the workaround was put in place yesterday we found that some users were experiencing slow delivery of email.  This slowdown has effected roughly 20% of accounts.

Therefore, staff email (including Outlook Web Access – OWA Mail) is running slowly for some users. This is different to the email issues on Monday where email was not being delivered at all to some users.  We have had a few reports of emails bouncing today but most users will just experience slow delivery.  This issue should resolve itself as the email ques are cleared

IT are currently looking into this as their top priority. Check the IT status page for more information If you have any further questions then please contact the Service Desk on 0118 378 6262 or extension 6262.

IT

Office 365 Student Email (OWA ONLY) Unavailable (RESOLVED)

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UPDATE: This issue has been resolved by Microsoft and service should be back to normal.


 

There is a reported issue with the Microsoft Student email login process. University of Reading students logging into Office 365 Email via the web may receive long wait times and the page may not load at all.

This global Microsoft login fault is effecting all institutions across the UK on Office 365. Microsoft are investigating and we currently have an open case with them.

Initial investigations show Outlook client access and mobile device access is not effected when accessing email. Its purely down to the online access provided by Microsoft. We will update when we have more information.

Check the IT status page or this blog for updates as they emerge.

IT

UPDATED External internet connection issues (affecting some external websites, CRM & Blackboard)

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UPDATE:

This morning we experienced connection issues with our internet reliant services due to a national network outage by our internet service provider, Janet (the internet service provider for many universities across the UK). This resulted in users not being able to connect to CRM, Blackboard and some external webpages.

We have been in close communication with Janet to get as much information on this issue as possible.  Janet have advised us that they have put in a temporary fix that has seen service return to normal.  However, we have been advised that their systems are ‘still at risk’ and therefore there is the possibility that internet service could be affected in the near future.

We will continue to monitor this issue vigilantly and work with Janet to provide a permanent solution as soon as possible.  Check the IT status page or this blog for further updates regarding the matter as and when we receive them.


 

We are currently experiencing external connection issues with some websites but more importantly users are unable to connect to externally hosted resources such as CRM and Blackboard.  Users are reporting some external websites will fail to load properly or at all and are unable to connect to CRM and blackboard.

These external connection issues we are experiencing are due to our service provider, Janet, having national issues. These are down to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack and their engineers are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible.

We will send an update out as soon as we have more information. Please check the IT Status page or back here for further information.

IT

 

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