Albany Law ITS

Virus Alert From IT Services

ITS — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 20:09:37 +0000

There is a new virus release that presents itself as anti-virus software. The virus, called Win32/FakeAV Family, displays a window that states your computer has been infected and asks you to click a button to scan for viruses. This application is a virus that is attached to a group of legitimate websites. If this window pops up on your computer, DO NOT run the scan.

Get more info on the Win32/FakeAV Family virus here.

Some guidelines to protect yourself from viruses can be found here.

myAlbanyLaw (A Campus Portal Initiative Update)

ITS — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:01:19 +0000

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:

developing a color scheme
webpart customization
customizing headers and footers

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.

Campus Portal Initiative Update

ITS — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 19:32:19 +0000

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.

ITS Office Space Renovation Has Begun

ITS — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:45:28 +0000

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

NOTICE: Email Phishing Scam

ssull — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:01:02 +0000

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.

Tell Us How a Portal Would Work for You

ssull — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:29:03 +0000

With all of the great input we’ve gotten from our meetings about communicating at Albany Law, we want to be sure we don’t leave anyone out of the process. So we are taking this opportunity to open the floor to any thoughts or ideas you have on how you can see a portal being an effective tool for communication here at ALS.

By answering the following questions you can help us get a more complete image of how the ALS community as a whole uses technology to interact with each other.

What tools and processes do you use for communication both in and out of the classroom?
With whom do you regularly communicate using these tools?
From where do you use these tools?
What calendars do you use to keep track of law school events, and to manage your own schedule?
If you’ve used a portal in another academic setting, what were your likes and dislikes?
How do you utilize the external website for communication?
What questions do you have for ITS about the Web Portal Project?

As always, we encourage you to leave a comment, or email me (Sam) at ssull@albanylaw.edu.

Announcing the Web Portal Project

ssull — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:50:17 +0000

ITS is thrilled to announce the Web Portal Project.

A direct result of the Technology Strategy Project, the goal of the Web Portal Project is to enhance the efficiency of communication with targeted user groups, simplify access to personal productivity tools, deliver vital institutional information and calendars, improve access to key business performance indicators and streamline web content management processes to decrease opportunities for creating redundant data.

These goals will be met with the implementation of an institution-wide portal. This portal will give students, faculty and staff access to many of the most important tools you use to communicate at Albany Law through one point of access. That means one username and password to access a bulk of the applications you use at Albany Law on a daily basis.

The first phase in the Web Portal Project began in January with requirement elicitation. This phase includes extensive discussions with a diverse representation of the Albany Law community to help identify and confirm current processes for communication and productivity. We’ve also been seeking additional insights into how these processes can be improved upon.

Some of the more prevalent topics raised in these discussions have been:

increased access to resources via handheld devices
a more centralized events calendar
a reduction in the number of emails with duplicate info
web-based access to productivity tools
a more centralized events calendar
web-based access to network drives
improved document collaboration tools
did we mention a more centralized event calendar?

…and many more features we are actively investigating.

The next milestones in the Web Portal Project are as follows:

March 2010 – Complete requirements elicitation
May 2010 – Define project scope
July 2010 – Implementation kick-off

We encourage you to add our blog to your favorites, or subscribing to our RSS feed to keep up-to-date on the progress of this project. You can also follow us on Twitter @AlbanyLawITS