OneTech Portal Blog

Effective this morning (Friday, June 13) INB users are allowed to have multiple concurrent sessions in OneTech. This change has been made to allow for ease of use when switching between INB and SSB. In order to take advantage of this feature you must use two different internet browsers. We recommend Internet Explorer (Already installed in Windows) and Firefox. The idea is that you would access INB through the 'My Banner' Channel in OneTech in one browser and access SSB and other things from the other browser. If you've never used the 'My Banner' Channel, instructions on setting it up can be found Here. This method should alleviate any timeout issues pertaining to Banner.

There's a new Channel available in the OneTech Portal. Institutional Research has recently asked me to create a channel with a link to the Argos Reporting Tool which is an online reporting tool to extract information from Banner. Any Faculty or Staff member can add this channel to OneTech, but you must contact Intuitional Research to gain access to the system.

To add the channel click 'Content/Layout' in the top left of screen. Select the tab you would like to put the channel on. Click an 'Add Channel' button where you would like to place the channel. Select 'Applications' in the drop down menu and click 'go'.  Select 'Argos Reporting Tool' in the next list and click 'Add Channel.' Then click 'Back to Welcome tab' in the top left.

The Arkansas Banner Users Group (ABUG) annual conference was today at the University of Central Arkansas. My wonderful counter part (your DBA) decided to volunteer us to present on something having to do with Luminis (OneTech). So after some discussion, we (collectively) decided to do a presentation on how we are going to handle the upcoming password policy within Luminis and Banner. So after 5 weeks of preparation and many, many, many hours of attempting to reverse engineer Luminis code attempting to find a solution, we presented on our topic today. Attached is the slide deck of our presentation "Password Issues with Luminis and Banner" or as our DBA likes to call it "Luminis, Banner, and Passwords, Oh My!"

*Edit* I've fixed the issue with the web server and have attached the correct file.

The Luminis Content Management System (LCMS) team announced the release of the upgrade version 3.3 on Monday, April 7, 2008. The LCMS team posted the following:

 

Luminis CMS 3.3 represents the second phase of our delivery on user experience, performance, and quality improvements. Better user experiences and better performance at both the client and server levels are included with this release. Luminis CMS 3.3 is also the most thoroughly tested of our releases to date - a product of our continuing commitment to incremental increases in testing rigor. Testing for Luminis CMS 3.3 also included early release activities with several clients, to whom we give special thanks.

 

What this means for you

1. Simplified site navigation creation, styling, and management
2. Easy changing of page layouts
3. Direct publishing for faster workflow review or live site updates
4. Improved in-context editing and user feedback
5. Multiple item selection
6. User choices around expired/expiring content display
7. Mac Safari 3 browser support
8. Performance improvements
9. Defect corrections

 

We have tentatively scheduled the upgrade to occur the weekend of May 16.

A user asked why the faculty email addresses had not been updated in the online directory. Here's why.

When the email changeover took place on December 22nd, 2006 we aliased all the old email addresses for faculty, staff, and students who already had an existing email account. For faculty and staff this was their old firstname.lastname ID. For students this was the old stu12345 ID. So if you had an old ID, whether it was a faculty/staff ID or a student ID, it was aliased in the new email system. This means that you can still get email that is addressed to your old account automatically delivered to your new account. This is only the case for those faculty, staff, and students who had an ID under the old system and not for new students who never had an old email account before the changeover. So, when looking for an email address in the online directory feel free to email the address that is listed for your instructor even if its in the firstname.lastname format. It'll get there.

There's one catch to this, however. If someone is trying to send you an email to your old account and is putting "mail.atu.edu" after the @ instead of just "atu.edu" then the mail will be returned to the sender as undeliverable. That's because we have phased out the mail.atu.edu domain and are now using the atu.edu domain exclusively.

So, for example, if your old ID is stu12345, then...

stu12345@atu.edu <-will work
stu12345@mail.atu.edu <-will NOT work

If you feel that your old account may not be aliased correctly then please call the Campus Support Center at 479-968-0646.

A new channel has been added to the Students tab called "My Account." This channel gives you the total amount of money that you owe for a given term. To view a more detailed summary of your charges for each term, click on the term link. This will take you into Self-Service to see a summary of your account charges as well as a link to pay your bill online.

If you have a checking account this post is for you. No, I'm not asking for donations (although the thought has crossed my mind!). Instead I wanted to put some information out there on something that really hasn't been talked about very much lately. Phishing scams. If you're not familiar with the term "phishing", it refers to a particular type of email scam. As with fishing, "phishing" involves bait that entices you to "bite." If you've ever received an email from your bank or some other bank or online retailer asking you to confirm your account information then you have seen a phishing email. Phishing scams are mass emails that look like a legitimate email from a bank or online retailer asking you to confirm your account information. They usually try to scare you into providing this information by saying that your account has been compromised or there is some sort of problem with your account. Phishing scams have become very successful because the emails look like they come from your bank. The images are the same, the message sounds sincere and professional, and you would want your bank to contact you if they thought there was something going on with your account right? That's right! The only problem is there is not a bank in the country who uses email as a means of collecting your account information. Why?

A new "Student Grades" channel has been added to the Student tab to allow for easy viewing of grades when they are posted. Midterm and Final grades can both be viewed within the new channel.

A new channel has been added to the default layout by the name of "My Calendar Events." This is an updated channel for the calendar application that gives you more information about your calendar(s) without having to open up the calendar application itself. There are links that take you directly into whichever view you want (day, week, month) as well as a summary of the events and tasks that you have set up. There are some preferences that you can change to customize the way this channel works for you as well. You can change the calendar that is displayed, the number of days to show events for, how to display tasks, and whether or not to display small icons that let you know what type of event is being shown. Want to have quick access to more than one calendar? Simply add an additional "My Calendar Events" channel to you layout and modify the preferences to display another calendar. It's that easy! The "My Calendar Events" channel can be found in the "Applications" category.

Don't worry. As advanced as computer technology is these days, computers won't be taking over the world anytime soon. They do, however have one main limitation (other than learning how to use them). Electricity. No matter how new and powerful or old and slow a computer is it cannot function without electricity. If the power goes out, you've got yourself an expensive paper weight. That's why its important to save your work often so you don't lose any data in the event of a power outage. This is an important and often overlooked task that you should get in the habit of doing even if what you're working on isn't that important. If you've been working with computers for very long then you probably know what it feels like to have to retype 15 pages of a term paper or to start a project over from scratch because you forgot to save your work. With the recent power problems at Tech I thought I would post a few pointers to help you avoid the headache of losing your work.

1. Save! Save! Save! When working on a Tech computer, ALWAYS save your files and work in your U drive and be sure to save your work often. Your U drive is a network drive so the files in it are actually stored on a server that has a battery backup. If the power goes out when you're working, then the files will still be there when the computer boots up again.

2. Avoid saving files to a "floppy" disk. Let's face it, floppy disks are known for being very unreliable because their magnetic surface wears out over time; and they are fast becoming a storage medium of the past. If I had a dollar for every term paper lost on a floppy disk I would be giving out financial advice instead of computer advice.

3. When working on something important, ALWAYS save MORE THAN ONE COPY of the file in MORE THAN ONE LOCATION. For example, if you want to use a floppy disk, thats fine, but you should also save a copy of the file in your U drive as well. That way if the floppy disk fails, you will have a recent copy of the file in your U drive.

4. Invest in a better technology for saving your files. Thumb drives, USB keys, whatever you want to call them are the portable storage device of choice. This is the same technology that's used in the iPod, the Zune, digital cameras and camcorders, and many other small portable electronic devices. They are called thumb drives because they are about the same size as your thumb, very small and easy to carry around. They are also inexpensive and can hold the equivalent of hundreds of floppies worth of data for about $10.00 or less! They are also very durable. I've heard several stories of thumb drives being run over, dropped, sat on, washed, and put through all sorts of abuse and still working just fine. I do not recommend trying any of the above, though, just in case.

5. Last, but not least, if you want to go "hard-core" when it comes to power failures you should purchase a battery backup for your computer. They are the most expensive option but you can guarantee that your computer will not turn off as soon as the power fails. Battery backup units come in all sizes and shapes. Most of them come with software that will even control your computer and tell it what to do in the event of a power failure. How cool is that?!

Remember that power failures can happen at any time and without warning (storms, heavy power consumption on a single power grid, squirrels getting roasted by a transformer, etc.). Forming good habits about saving your work will help you avoid those stressful nights of having to start your project from scratch.