I hope you all had a wonderful winter break as we start to welcome back our amazing and resilient students and employees. As we pivot to a dynamic spring term, your UIS team is here for you no matter what learning, teaching, or working environment you find yourself in. Over the winter break, with the help of our friends in University Advancement, we were able to migrate our critical Recruit CRM system to the cloud to make it faster and more reliable. We continue to strive for increasing additional cloud-enabled services such as Etrieve and would be happy to talk with you about our initiatives and UIS Strategic Plan. As always, your UIS team is just a phone, email, or Zoom connection away!
Thank you and go Boxers!
Brandon Gatke
CIO/CISO
New Features in the BoxerOnline in February
A new wave of features for students and faculty will be released prior to the spring registration period. Pacific continues to transition BoxerOnline into the new self-service interface and expand the Student Planning options available. Watch for more details to come from the Registrar and Advising offices. Also, 1098 and 1099 tax documents for 2021 will be released by the Business Office before the end of January.
Don't Forget To Check Your Spam Folder
Many in the Pacific community have experienced spam false positives (emails that aren't spam but that Google thinks are). We recommend that you regularly check your Spam folder in the BoxerMail web interface and mark anything that you really do want with the "Report Not Spam" button (on the top of the page while viewing the message). This helps train Google on what messages you want (along with marking unwanted and unsolicited messages in your Inbox as Spam). To learn more, or to inquire about a suspicious email, see our service catalog entry for Spam and Phishing Protection.
Reporting Missing Request Types and Ticket Types on the Services Portal
We're continuing to add new service offerings to the Services Portal so that you can find a form custom made for your question or request. These custom forms help us gather needed information and deliver the help ticket directly to the team that can help. If something is missing from our list of services, please let us know. You can use the "I need help but don't see what I need..." service (or click "Get Help Now" on the main page) to submit your help request and let us know what request type we should add.
Continuing Improvements to Boxer Wireless
UIS understands that students and employees have greater demands than ever of the campus WiFi network. Zoom sessions and an increasing number of wireless Internet of Things devices connected can put a strain on the wireless infrastructure.
To address this, UIS has continued to upgrade and expand wireless coverage across all campus and office locations. In addition to upgrading 180 access points in the 2020-21 academic year, UIS has applied for and received grant funding for an additional $133,500 in WiFi equipment upgrades in the past 18 months. Global supply chain problems have delayed delivery of some equipment by over eight months, but we hope to receive the last order of 130 access points and start deployment of these upgrades this spring.
The campus wired and wireless network was expanded to cover new construction work in Jefferson Hall and the ITF East offices and several outdoor access points were added as part of our COVID 19 response. Additional access points have been installed to backfill some problem locations as resources are available. UIS will continue to enhance the wireless network and seek additional grant funding to help whenever possible. We also maintain thousands of wired Ethernet ports and encourage using these whenever possible to ensure the most reliable connection.
Dealing With the Log4j Vulnerability
Recently, a vulnerability called Log4j has come to light. UIS is working to patch and secure core systems, services and protected data against the vulnerability, which affects a wide variety of systems. UIS will begin to contact departments soon to make subject matter experts for affected systems aware of this issue and ensure that systems are secured. For the rest of the university community, be sure to apply patches to your computer when you see prompts, because that is the best way to prevent widespread vulnerabilities like this.
Reaching Out for Missed Computer Updates
Last week, the Helpdesk reached out to about 200 employees who have computers that are missing updates that are vital for keeping your computer secure. Our client management software is usually capable of making these updates happen, but sometimes this can fail. Most all of the problems we are seeing can be fixed via a quick Zoom call to the Helpdesk. If you haven't received an email, your computer(s) are up to date.