posted Dec 4, 2014, 10:25 AM by Admin Account
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updated Dec 4, 2014, 10:26 AM
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[Sent to Faculty & Staff:]
With the end of a semester, IT has a few reminders to share: - We ask that PCs be shut down overnight, for both the power savings as well as updates and other procedures that require system restarts.
(We are also exploring policies that might reduce power consumption through sleep/hibernation methods. However, those are not the same as a reboot, which should be done regularly anyway.
For remote access users, RDS does NOT require your computer to be running on campus to access a remote desktop session.)
- With the holiday seasons come an increase in phishing scams and malware attacks. Please be careful when dealing with suspicious mail.
(eg: shipping notices or invoices you don't expect.)
We also have a few updates: - Wireless Expansion will continue in the dorms throughout December and January, improving stability and performance. Our internet service will also be receiving a substantial upgrade in both hardware and capacity.
We ask that you keep internet use (especially streaming) work related, as our costs are substantial and employee traffic is prioritized during business hours, impacting student (and to a lesser extent classroom) performance.
(Over the last five years we will have increased our wireless network access points five fold, and our internet capacity from 3 to 100Mbps, to handle a tripling of student and employee devices, and the associated traffic.)
- IT has a new Portal site for training and support resources: http://IT.Hesston.edu
(Helpdesk is still the place for support requests / ticketing, but this new portal will let us post many more resources for you. We're still adding to it - let us know what you'd find helpful there.)
- We have deployed Office 2013 to all student-facing lab and classroom computers on campus (and offered it for self-deployment to many administrative staff,) with the wider campus now invited to update. We are also working with Marketing & Communications to deploy a library of templates for Word and Powerpoint for easy starting points within the style guide.
Office 2013
HC IT is pleased to introduce user-initiated software deployment (you select your installation / update from a menu when it suites you to run the update.)
The first solution we are deploying this way to the whole campus is Microsoft Office 2013. Some of you have already upgraded and may disregard these instructions, but many of you have not or this is your first invitation.
The Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 (MSOffice Professional Plus 2013) upgrade is now available on all HC computers. It could take 30 minutes or more to complete this install. It reboots automatically following the installation, so you should start that upgrade when you're ready to restart your computer and have nothing else running, such as during lunch or the end of the day (when you should otherwise be shutting your PC's off anyway.)
To select your software to install, open START>All Programs>Microsoft System Center 2012>Configuration Manager>Software Center.
Allow it a few minutes to update your software list and present a menu of available installations (you can do other things while it remains open in the background.) Once the available software shows up in the Software Center window, highlight the desired program and click Install in the lower right corner of the window.
As always, please contact helpdesk (reply to this email) if you have questions or trouble, with this email or your Office 2013 installation.
Russ Neufeld IT Director, Hesston College |
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