Information Technology Services at Albany Law School
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Get more info on the Win32/FakeAV Family virus here.
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Since our last post, the Portal Advisory Team has made significant progress towards the upcoming soft-launch of the Albany Law Campus Portal.
Branding
'myAlbanyLaw' campus portal branding sample.
In November and December of 2010, the Communications department worked closely with Datatel to customize the branding of the Albany Law Campus Portal. Focus was placed on making sure that the look and feel of the portal fell within Albany Law’s established style guidelines. Communications recognizes that the campus portal will be a tool used throughout the day by the Albany Law community, and was sure to customize to allow for greatest ease of use. Particular consideration was given to the following design aspects:
Communications was also tasked with naming the Albany Law Campus Portal, now named myAlbanyLaw.
Technical Implementation
ITS has completed the technical implementation of Datatel ActiveCampus Portal solution in our environment. We’ve successfully integrated the portal solution with existing Webadvisor and Colleague environments, ensuring single sign-on access to some of the most commonly accessed academic and business processes at Albany Law.
Governance and Taxonomy Design
With the completion of Technical Implementation and Branding, the next phase of the implementation began in January. Governance and Taxonomy design and building are a vital part of a successful campus portal. Building a proper Taxonomy, along with policies and procedures to back it up will help ensure full adoption of a campus-wide portal solution. The Portal Advisory Team, a well-balanced representation of all areas of the law school community, is now working to develop these policies and guidelines, and decides how the governance team will function on an ongoing basis. The team guides the development and configuration of the portal, makes decisions on how access and content will be managed. The Advisory Team will exploit their breadth of Albany Law experience to develop thorough governance policies.
From Chris Casey, ITS Director and Campus Portal Project Manager.
I want to take this opportunity to share the recent exciting developments in the school’s Campus Portal Initiative. Since IT Services’ last communication, the Portal Technical Team has captured the student, faculty, and staff requirements and identified what the team can accomplish in the initial portal rollout. The team reviewed several potential vendors and determined that Datatel and their Datatel Portal were the best fit for the institution. Albany Law School has implemented other Datatel products including WebAdvisor and Colleague. These products and services provide the backbone for the administrative and business processes, on which the law school community regularly relies. By adopting the robust Datatel Portal solution, the team builds on this relationship by seamlessly integrating these products and services into a single point of access for all portal users.
The Portal Technical Team is now working closely with Datatel on implementing their portal technology within the law school’s environment. Beginning in November, the portal team will again reach out to the law school constituents as it further focuses on how best to present targeted content to portal users. In the following months, the portal team will be focused on customizing the portal features to best meet the captured requirements.
Over the coming weeks, you can expect to hear more from the portal team on what features and benefits the Campus Portal will provide, along with regular updates on the status of the Portal’s implementation. I recommend you subscribe to our blog (http://albanylawits.wordpress.com) or follow our twitter @AlbanyLawITS for the most immediate updates.
Your feedback is always welcome. Please feel free to contact the portal team with your questions or comments at portalteam@albanylaw.edu.
For the next 2 months, the ITS office space will be renovated and reconfigured. Improvements will include better access to in-person helpdesk support services and a larger, more efficient server-room within the ITS office space.
The first phase of that renovation, demolition, will begin soon. Since dust and technology aren’t exactly compatible, ITS will be located in temporary offices for the bulk of the summer. All email addresses and phone numbers will remain the same during this time, so you can still reach us by email at helpdesk@albanylaw.edu, and by phone at 472-5837. No IT services will be effected by the move, and any cut-over’s needed for server room relocation will be accompanied by advanced notice by email.
Our temporary physical locations are as follows:
E115 -
Ben Schwartz
Darlene Cardillo
Bob Eaton
Kevin Sullivan
David Schroeder
E117 -
Chris Casey
Gerry Lasher
Mark Bryan
Audrey Bell
Sam Sullivan
ITS has received multiple reports of unsolicited emails similar to the following (typos and all) being received at Albany Law email accounts:
Dear Customer,
This email was send by albanylaw.edu to notify you that we have temporanly prevented access to your account.
We have reasons to believe that your account may have been accessed by someoen else.
Please click on the following link (or copy & paste it into your web browser):
link removed
(C) albanylaw.edu
Any email sent by ITS regarding account status changes will include a method of contact. If you ever question the authenticity of an email you receive claiming to be from ITS, we encourage you to call the helpdesk at 472-5837 or stop by our office.
