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New tool: IT Status

This article is a reposting of an email message.

From: Mike Dewey, Director of OIT Campus Services

Sent: September 7, 2018

Subject: OIT-Alerts being replaced with a new tool – IT Status

 

Dear Colleagues,

OIT has been piloting a new tool, IT Status, to keep the campus informed of unexpected incidents and planned maintenance outages on IT systems. During
this pilot, we have been simultaneously sending alerts via the new IT Status service as well as the old OIT-Alerts mailing list. On September 14, 2018, OIT will be discontinuing the old OIT-Alerts and fully migrate to the new IT Status alerting system. As a result, current members of the OIT-Alerts mailing list will be automatically migrated to the new system on September
14.

To quickly outline some the IT Status service capabilities:

  • IT Status shows a quick systems update in the upper right corner of the OIT Home Page (https://oit.rice.edu). The dot next to IT Status
    indicates the overall health of campus IT systems and you can see if there are scheduled items or current issues. You can see more details by clicking
    on the links.
  • You can check current or planned outages any time without waiting for an email message by going to the web page, https://status.rice.edu.
  • The tool also permits you to subscribe and unsubscribe to specific services. For example, you may be interested in knowing what is going on
    with Canvas but not interested in seeing is what is happening with Edgar (or vice versa)
  • You can receive updates in your areas of choice via email, text messages, or Atom or RSS feeds. Use the “Subscribe to Updates” button in
    upper right corner to set this up. Initially, as an OIT-Alerts member, you will receive updates to all services but, as stated previously, you can
    unsubscribe to items that don’t interest you.

In the past, many staff served as their department’s or group’s contact for OIT-Alerts and relayed messages as appropriate. Now that individuals can
control the topics for which they receive alerts, OIT recommends everyone managing their own preferences using IT Status.

To learn more about IT Status, read this article in the OIT Knowledgebase. If you have questions about how to
use this new tool, contact the OIT Help Desk at 713-348-HELP (4357) or at helpdesk@rice.edu.

Sincerely,

Mike Dewey

Director – Campus Services

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