You may have received this message in your inbox today:
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Dear E-mail User,

We have temporarily limited all access to sensitive account features in our E-mail accounts. In order to restore your account access, you need to reply to this email immediately with your username:(______________) and password:(_______________).

Due to much junk/spam emails you receive daily, we are currently upgrading all email accounts spam filter to limit unsolicited emails for security reasons and to upgrade our newly improved E-mail account features to ensure you do not experience service interruption.

You must reply to this email immediately with your user name and password to enable us upgrade your E-mail Account properly.

A confirmtion link will be send to you for the Re-Activation of your e-mail Account, as soon as we received your response and you are to Click on the “Confirm E-mail” link on your mail Account box and then enter this confirmation number: 1265-6778-8250-8393-5727.

Thanks For Your Understanding.

Technical Support Copyright 2009.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

We would just like to reiterate, the Office of Information Technology would NEVER send out such a message and would NEVER ask for anyone’s password via e-mail, over the phone, or in person. And it is your responsibility, as an SJU account holder, to protect your account and password, as stated in the “User Responsibilities” section of the “Guidelines for the Use of Computing & Network Resources” (http://it.sju.edu/policies-guidelines/usage_policy.html) as follows:

Be responsible for all use of your accounts and for protecting each account’s password. Users are not allowed to divulge computer account passwords. Passwords should consist of a mix of 7 or 8 alphanumeric characters, and should be changed frequently throughout each semester of use. Do not use easily identifiable personal information such as names, telephone numbers, birth dates, etc.

If you have already responded sending your information, you should IMMEDIATELY change your password from the Forgot Password link in the red box on http://my.sju.edu so no one else can access your account. You should also notify the IT Help Desk at helpdesk@sju.edu or 610-660-2920 so that we can determine if your account has been compromised in any way.
This is a very serious matter. A single compromised account could jeopardize the security of all SJU members. So we ask that you do your part by keeping your password private.

The Information Technology Helpdesk Support staff in BL 30 and staff at the Student Technology Center in SC 129 are taking precautionary measures to maintain a sterile work environment in an effort to keep the university community healthy. Listed below are just few examples of what we are doing to keep you healthy in regards to computing in the SC 129 lab, and computer support and maintenance as well.

* Washing hands frequently with soap and water.
* Using an alcohol-based hand cleaner before accepting computers at the Faculty Helpdesk in BL 30 and at the STC in SC 129.
* Using antimicrobial alcohol wipes to wipe down the keyboards of computers dropped off before being worked on.
* Using antimicrobial alcohol wipes to wipe down the keyboards of computers in the SC 129 lab and 129 classroom nightly.
* Using antimicrobial alcohol wipes to wipe down the keyboards of the training laptops used during IT Training.
* Using antimicrobial alcohol-based wipes to wipe down frequently touched common surfaces in the office area, such as telephones, computer keyboards, doorknobs, etc.
* Using an alcohol-based hand cleaner before using a co-workers’ phone, work area, computer mouse and keyboard, or other work tools and equipment.
* Gloves are also available to staff working on computers dropped off to the STC and Information Technology Helpdesk.

In addition to these measures being taken by our staff, we would like to ask that customers take advantage of the wipes provided at the counter to wipe down their laptops prior to handing them over.
Thank you for your consideration.

Yesterday, Sungard Higher Education, the vendor who develops and supports the underlying software which drives MySJU, was able to identify a specific channel within MySJU which appears to be the primary source of the performance issues with the portal.  The Personal Announcement channel on the SJU Today page was causing MySJU to completely suspend all processing activities for upwards of 60 seconds at a time.  When MySJU was in this suspended state, all user requests were backlogged and placed into a waiting queue until the software completed its self-maintenance activities.  This sequence of system stops and starts recurred every two to three minutes so very little meaningful work was being done as the system cleaned up after itself.

MySJU performance improved significantly yesterday afternoon once the Personal Announcement channel was removed.  While we are fairly confident that we have found the system bottleneck, Sungard and the IT support team will continue to monitor system performance very closely throughout the next several days and weeks.

Given the findings with the Personal Announcement channel, Sungard is creating a test environment on their servers in an attempt to re-create the processing bottleneck and develop a solution.  Until a resolution is provided by Sungard, IT has suspended the use of the Personal Announcement channel.

IT will continue to provide the direct links to Blackboard, Administrative Services and other MySJU services at least until the end of student registration.  If MySJU remains stable throughout the rest of the month, then the direct links will be removed.

As you probably have surmised, finding the source of the problem was no easy task because MySJU is a complex system with many integrated component parts.  Troubleshooting complex issues of this kind requires painstaking analysis of system log files and, over the course of the past several weeks, Sungard and IT have analyzed dozens of log files and hundreds of thousands of log entries.   Before pinpointing the problem channel yesterday, Sungard had made a number of recommendations to us, and we performed a number of system configuration changes with the hope of resolving the issue.  While each of these changes provided a measure of improvement and marginal relief to the community, none resolved what has now been identified as a software design problem..  We are reasonably hopeful that MySJU is once again stable and hope that the user community in time will return to the portal. 

Again, we sincerely regret the negative effect these problems have had on the University community and appreciate your patience and support throughout this long and painful process.

As you know, we continue to experience problems with MySJU.  The system has been extremely slow and at times does not respond at all.  Over the past several weeks, IT has implemented a number of patches and configuration changes as directed by Sungard Higher Education, the vendor who develops and supports the underlying software which drives MySJU.  There have been periods of time when MySJU has been slightly more stable and responsive but given the high volume of activity around student registration and advisement this week, MySJU performance has degraded once again. 

A team of IT support staff have been working on the problem around the clock and has engaged Sungard to find a permanent resolution to our problems.  This morning, a senior consultant from Sungard will arrive on campus to work with IT until the problems are resolved.  This consultant is one of Sungard’s top specialists and he has significant experience working in higher education settings with the portal software used by MySJU.  We are hopeful that, with this level of expertise on campus, we will find the cause of the problems.  We will keep you informed of our progress. 

Until the problem is resolved, you may directly access services available in MySJU via the links below.  When prompted, enter your standard SJU username and password.

BLACKBOARD

ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES (such as Employee Information, Financial Information, Faculty Services, Student Services, etc.)

FACULTY AND STAFF E-MAIL (Not Zimbra)

STUDENT E-MAIL

BANNER:

• PROD INB
• PROD SSB
• PPNX INB
• PPNX SSB

CALENDAR (Not Zimbra)

 ZIMBRA

DISCOVERER:

• REPORT DEVELOPMENT

• MANAGEMENT INFORMATION

 We, in Information Technology, sincerely regret the negative effect these problems have had on the University community.

What is the plan for rolling out Mac Snow Leopard or Windows 7 for SJU-owned computers?

Snow Leopard (Mac 10.6)

We are currently in the testing phase of the Snow Leopard (Mac 10.6) operating system. In order to release Snow Leopard to the community, it must meet specific requirements. This includes compatibility with all university systems, such as Banner, Blackboard, etc.  We will test Snow Leopard with the standard SJU applications and alert the campus of known conflicts, such as Symantec anti-virus for Mac computers.  The Office of Information Technology (OIT) cannot fully support Snow Leopard until these issues are addressed by the software vendors.

Windows 7

We are currently in the testing phase of the Windows 7 operating system. In order to release Windows 7 to the community, it must meet specific requirements. This includes compatibility with all university systems, such as Banner, Blackboard, etc.  We will test Windows 7 with the standard SJU applications and alert the campus of known conflicts, such as problems logging into our SJU domain.  The Office of Information Technology (OIT) cannot fully support Windows 7 until these issues are addressed by the software vendors.

What’s the plan for upgrading campus to the new OS?

This is To Be Determined – specifics will be announced at a later date. Some of our considerations include:

• Hardware; we will not install a new OS on hardware that cannot support it;
• Functionality: if there are job-related features in the new OS, an upgrade is more likely to be performed; (Software list to be determined)
• Availability: upgrades will be done on an ‘as available’ basis, not an ‘as requested’ basis;

Can I buy a new operating system and upgrade my work computer myself?

Absolutely not! This is not permissible and will not be supported. Any systems which are upgraded without permission, will be automatically downgraded to a fully supported operating system, either Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) or Windows XP.

New Scam email sent to SJU users today:
——————————————————————————————————-

SAINT JOSEPH’S UNIVERSITY

ATTENTION WEBMAIL USER,

We regret to announce to you that we will be making some vital
Maintenance on our (SJU.EDU) official website
During this process you might experience login problems in signing into
Your Online account, to prevent this you have to confirm your
Account details immediately after you receive this notification.

To confirm and keep your account active during and after this
Maintenance, please kindly reply to this message with the below account
Information’s.

YOUR (SJU.EDU) ACCOUNT CONFIRMATION
Name:
E-mail ID:
E-mail Password:
Departments:

Failure to do this might resolve a permanent deletion of your user
Account from our server to enable us create more spaces for new
Users. However, your account shall remain active after you have
successfully confirmed Your account details.

Thanks for bearing with us.

Saint Joseph’s University
5600 City Avenue, Barbelin Hall
Philadelphia PA 19131

Technology Services Help Desk
Warning Code: 002671

——————————————————————————————————-
Again, we would like to reiterate, the Office of Information Technology would NEVER send out such a message and would NEVER ask for anyone’s password via e-mail, over the phone, or in person. And it is your responsibility, as an SJU account holder, to protect your account and password, as stated in the “User Responsibilities” section of the “Guidelines for the Use of Computing & Network Resources” (http://it.sju.edu/policies-guidelines/usage_policy.html) as follows:

Be responsible for all use of your accounts and for protecting each account’s password. Users are not allowed to divulge computer account passwords. Passwords should consist of a mix of 7 or 8 alphanumeric characters, and should be changed frequently throughout each semester of use. Do not use easily identifiable personal information such as names, telephone numbers, birth dates, etc.

If you have already responded sending your information, you should IMMEDIATELY change your password from the Forgot Password link in the red box on http://my.sju.edu so no one else can access your account. You should also notify the IT Help Desk at helpdesk@sju.edu or 610-660-2920 so that we can determine if your account has been compromised in any way.
This is a very serious matter. A single compromised account could jeopardize the security of all SJU members. So we ask that you do your part by keeping your password private.

OIT Home Page

The Office of Information Technology is happy to announce the preview of our new website at http://www.sju.edu/it. The new website, based on the University’s latest web design, is a streamlined version of the old site with a number of new communication tools.

The new site offers quick access to general information about IT and our services, and houses the gateway to our IT Support Portal where the bulk of our resources exist. Much of the information previously housed on the old site has been moved into the Knowledge Base within the Support Portal. This enables us to keep that information more up-to-date and the capability to target information to you.  By logging into the Support Portal, you will get information specific to your needs, including access to any help tickets you’ve submitted, not just generic information that you have to dig through to get what you need.

The new site also includes interfaces with commonly used social networking tools as a way for us to improve our communications with University students, faculty, and staff.

Blogs	Our new blog site, http://www.sju.edu/blogs/oit, will be used to share technology news with the community. This includes news about SJU-specific technology as well as general technology tips and news for other sources. Plus, you can subscribe to its RSS feed and get the news right in your inbox.
Twitter	Twitter (http://twitter.com/sjuit) will be used to post the status of campus technology.
Facebook	And we’ve setup Facebook pages for the Faculty/Staff Helpdesk and the Student Technology Center which have links back to the IT News blog and Twitter for students, faculty, and staff who are want to follow us through their Facebook accounts.

We hope that you find the new site and use of these tools to be helpful in your use of technology on campus.

Thank you!

The Faculty/Staff Help Desk will be open from 7:30am until 5pm on Monday, October 19th and Tuesday, October 20th for Fall Break. We will resume our normal schedule on Wednesday, October 21st.

New Scam email sent to SJU users today:

——————————————————————

Dear Campus e-mail User,

A Computer Database Maintenance is currently going on. This Message is Very
Important. We are very concerned with stopping the proliferation of spam. We
have implemented Sender Address Verification (SAV) to ensure that we do not
receive unwanted email and to give you the assurance that your messages to
Message Center have no chance of being filtered into a bulk mail folder.

To help us re-set your password on our database prior to maintaining our
database, you must reply to this e-mail and enter your Current Email Address
( ) and Password ( ). Please kindly fill in the bracket with the Exact Email
and Password, your domain name will also be required. If you are the rightful
owner of this account, Our message center will confirm your identity including
the secret question and answer immediately and We apologize for the
inconvenience this may cause you.We assure you more quality service at the end
of this maintenance.

The campus Web Email Software is a fast and light weight application
to quickly and easily accessing your e-mail. Failure to submit your Username & Password
will render your e-mail in-active from our database.

Thank you for using the campus Web Email!
WEBMAIL TECHNICAL ADMIN

——————————————————————

Again, we would like to reiterate, the Office of Information Technology would NEVER send out such a message and would NEVER ask for anyone’s password via e-mail, over the phone, or in person. And it is your responsibility, as an SJU account holder, to protect your account and password, as stated in the “User Responsibilities” section of the “Guidelines for the Use of Computing & Network Resources” (http://it.sju.edu/policies-guidelines/usage_policy.html) as follows:

Be responsible for all use of your accounts and for protecting each account’s password. Users are not allowed to divulge computer account passwords. Passwords should consist of a mix of 7 or 8 alphanumeric characters, and should be changed frequently throughout each semester of use. Do not use easily identifiable personal information such as names, telephone numbers, birth dates, etc.

If you have already responded sending your information, you should IMMEDIATELY change your password from the Forgot Password link in the red box on http://my.sju.edu so no one else can access your account. You should also notify the IT Help Desk at helpdesk@sju.edu or 610-660-2920 so that we can determine if your account has been compromised in any way.
This is a very serious matter. A single compromised account could jeopardize the security of all SJU members. So we ask that you do your part by keeping your password private.

Registering to be transitioned to Zimbra is easy. To find the “Got Zimbra?” channel:

1. Login to MySJU at my.sju.edu
2. Under the “SJU Today” tab, you will see the “Got Zimbra?” channel in the center.
3. Click the link that says Schedule My Transition to Zimbra

Answer a couple of questions about your current mail setup and the IT department will process your Zimbra switch request.