Upcoming ITDS changes

New Services:

Network space for employees

As a part of the upgrade in services, we will be offering 150M of network space for employees to store work related/personal documents on. This space will be backed up nightly (files will be kept for at least X number of days in backup, along with an archive each month). You will find this space on your u:\ drive My Computer.

Improved Web Email interface

Our current email system has a web interface, but the newest version of Exchange comes with a great new web interface, spell check, an interface for rules, all kinds of stuff included. The new email system will also offer enhanced junk email filtering abilities.

Spam Software

ITDS is aggressively investigating spam software to cut down on the number of unsolicited email arriving on campus. We do realize this is a problem that affects most email users on campus, and are taking steps to solve the problem.

Internet Native Banner

This will allow users to access the Banner application without installing a desktop application. It also gives Apple/Mac users a way to use the Banner application.

Web space for all Employees

Web space has always been available for employees on campus, but it usually required additional assistance from ITDS for user to get their homepage setup. Previously, the employee’s homepage was only available through the department where a user worked (http://www.english.eku.edu/staff/bobsmith) and therefore was difficult for a student to find if he didn’t know where his instructor worked. When an instructor moved to a different department, his webpage did not come with him unless he requested assistance. We aim to change all that by implementing a single area for all employee personal sites at EKU. After the conversion to Active Directory, all employee web pages will be located in a central location under http://people.eku.edu. For example, John Smith’s webpage would be located at http://people.eku.edu/smithj. This will allow John to move to different jobs at EKU and never have to move his webpage. Students have one place to go and look for their instructor’s webpage.

Organization change (structure matches university)

In previous years, network accounts, servers, and files have been designed around building structures. This led to problems maintaining accounts as we didn’t know when people moved jobs, buildings, or responsibilities. Also, it’s difficult to determine what level of access someone should have based on the old structure. Our new design will follow the organizational structure of the University. There are the five colleges (Arts and Sciences, Health Sciences, Justice and Safety, Business and Technology, Education), and an Administrative area that contains all departments that are not inside a college.

This new structure will allow us to easily determine what level of access a person needs to network resources, and allows us to better meet the needs of our users.

Managed Antivirus software

In the past few months, a number of employees have been affected by virus outbreaks. We have virus protection software, but have been relying on users who are already to busy with their jobs to worry about keeping their virus files updated. Symantec has a solution that allows us to assist in keeping virus definition files up to date on all campus workstations. This is one way for us to defend against virus outbreaks.

Security updates locally provided

The other way to defend against virus outbreaks is to make it easier for users to keep their windows software up to date. Microsoft releases security updates on a regular basis for Windows ME, 2000, and XP. These security updates help prevent viruses from taking advantage of a problem with Windows that would allow them to spread.

Further step towards Single Sign On

One aim of ITDS is that users have both more security and an easier time using the resources we have made available. Currently, users must remember at least four different user account/password combinations to function at EKU.

• Banner Account (access to enter grades, run reports, update information)
• Email Account (email access)
• Novell Account (file access . . . Q drive, W: drive)
• Voicemail Account (access to check voicemail)

These accounts share little in common, and are problematic in that they all have different purposes and expiration of passwords. Our conversion to Active Directory means that users have one less account to remember. After the conversion, the Novell account will no longer be needed. Users will login to their pc’s using their email account and will gain access to network resources based on that account.

PC login will now be same as email login

Currently, users login to their PC’s using their Novell account. This Novell account is only used to access files on the network. After converting to Active Directory, that account will allow access to files on the network as well as email.

Backup software upgrade allows for longer storage

Our previous backup software and methods only allowed us to keep a single month of backups for any file server. This was due to space constraints and limitations of the software. Our new backup system will allow us to keep data with more flexibility and for a longer period of time. There has been  a need for this additional time as people have deleted documents one semester only to determine that they need them when that semester rolls around again (all backups for that data have expired).

We won’t be able to get all colleges during the summer period, but the College of Business and Technology have committed to be the first college converted to the new system. Details of the conversion process and the Active Directory project can be found at http://netinfo.eku.edu