Reposting of e-newsletter sent to faculty, staff, and graduate students on 11-16-17.
Highlighting services and resources each semester
Campus Technology News
Fall 2017
The Gardiner Symonds Digital Teaching Center 2 in Duncan Hall (above) was renovated this summer and technology upgrades were also completed in Herzstein amphitheater, McMurtry Auditorium in Duncan Hall, Rayzor Hall, and 76 classroom touch panels were replaced. The Office of the Registrar handles the scheduling requests of all these teaching facilities. For customized assistance with classrooms, email oit-learn@rice.edu.
Software
Rice has site licensed a variety of software programs for use on university-owned computers and in some cases individually-owned computers. Of particular note, a new agreement with MathWorks, Matlab is now available to faculty, staff, and students for use on personally-owned machines. Also, Adobe Creative Cloud can be installed on university-owned computers. For a complete list, see Software Available for Faculty and Staff or Software Available for Students.
Grant Projections Reporting
Over the past year, OIT collaborated with the Research Administration Advisory Group (RAAG), Principal Investigators (PIs) and several research administrators across multiple divisions in developing a monthly Grant Projection Report. Starting July 2017, after a brief pilot period, reports are being distributed to PIs campus wide providing a monthly financial status of their sponsored projects. These reports are designed to provide PIs and their administrators a view of actual expenditures and the ability to project future expenditure activity on their projects.
After month end close, individual PIs will receive a single PDF, via email, containing all of their R-fund reports. In addition, an introductory/assumptions page detailing the functions of the report, and a short fund/personnel summary page is included at the beginning of the report. A link is provided for PIs to download an editable Excel version of their reports via Rice Box; the Excel version of the reports contains formulas, so PIs/administrators will have the ability to enter their own “what ifs” for a more in-depth report. PIs can request that administrators with appropriate fund and org privileges be granted access to the Rice Box reports by contacting helpdesk@rice.edu.
Mudd Plotters and Color Printer
OIT has made some changes to the Mudd Lab Operation Center hours this semester. New hours are:
• Monday – Friday: 8:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
• Saturday and Sunday: 7:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
The plotters and the color laser printer in Mudd Lab are located in the Operations Center. These printers are attended by OIT staff, who place printouts outside the Operations Center window in the Mudd Lab lobby when they are on duty. You can access the lobby anytime to pick up your printouts although you will need to use your Rice ID after the building is locked. Please note that there is no access to new printouts when the Operations Center is closed.
The Architecture charrettes will continue to be staffed as they have in the past with extended hours. Your comments to helpdesk@rice.edu will help us evaluate these schedule changes.
CrashPlan: Backing Up Your Rice Computer
If you store data or files locally on your computer (laptop or desktop), it is highly recommended that you back up those files to protect against hardware malfunctions, accidental deletions/overwrites, or any other mishap. CrashPlan is an automatic, tamper-proof backup solution designed to back up laptop and desktop data and allows you to restore files from different points in time and from any networked computer. CrashPlan is simple to use, highly efficient, and very secure. Many faculty and staff find the automatic back ups CrashPlan offers more convenient and effective than having to manually duplicate files to campus storage solutions. The annual cost of the service is around $80 per year and is payable with a Rice fund and org code. CrashPlan works with Windows, Apple, and Linux operating systems but can only be installed on Rice-owned computers. Mobile devices can’t be backed up but they can be used to restore files or to manage your backups. To learn more, you can search for “crashplan” on https://kb.rice.edu. Contact the OIT Help Desk (713-348-HELP, helpdesk@rice.edu) to purchase CrashPlan or ask questions.
New Telephone System
As previously announced, the campus telephone system migration has begun. Occupants of the new Cambridge Office Building are the most recent campus users to move to the new Cisco VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) system. While the Cambridge Office Building is not the first campus building to migrate to the new system (OIT’s Mudd Building migrated two months ago, followed by extensive testing), the users in the new Cambridge Office Building are the first ‘non-OIT’ users to migrate to the new telephone system. The Cisco VoIP system is being initially rolled out as a ‘like for like’ replacement to the Nortel system, with additional features and functionalities to be added in the future. Migrations to the new system will continue every month, building by building, to completion in late 2018. If there are any questions, contact the OIT Help Desk at helpdesk@rice.edu.
Canvas Update
Starting this semester, all academic courses are on Canvas. Materials migrated from Owl-Space to Canvas were only course materials, no student data was moved over. Owl-Space will continue to be available for archival access to old student data (either directly or by request). Owl-Space project and collaboration sites are not affected at this time. Their migration off Owl-Space to other solutions will be in phrase 2 of the project.
If instructors are interested in learning more about Canvas, workshops and individual support sessions are available throughout the semester, check out Canvas Workshops.
OIT Annual Report
Learn more about OIT’s projects and initiatives by reading the 2016-2017 OIT Annual Report.
Need Technology Help?
Contact the Office of Information Technology’s Help Desk by calling 713-348-HELP (4357) or emailing helpdesk@rice.edu.
Online Information
To learn more about OIT services, go to the OIT web site, https://oit.rice.edu. For an easy-to-search source of instructions about services and tools, use the OIT KnowledgeBase at https://kb.rice.edu.
Amazon Web Services Resources
Learn more about Amazon’s program to provides students and educators with resources to accelerate cloud-related learning.
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