On Tuesday, April 4, you should have received an email from either F&ES Dean Indy Burke inviting you to participate in the 2017 FES-IT Technology Survey or from Yale Chief Information Officer John Barden inviting you to participate in the 2017 Yale Technology Survey.  You should have received an email from one of these individuals, but not both.  Results from both surveys will be used to prioritize both the short- and long-term technology service improvements at FES and at Yale.

These surveys will be open until April 30th and will take anywhere from 5 minutes to 15 minutes to complete.  All responses will be confidential and reported only in aggregate.  The only exception to this rule will be if you indicate in the survey that you are open to hearing back from us about your feedback.  If you have already completed the survey, thank you, if not, we look forward to hearing from you.  Individual reminders are being sent weekly to complete the survey, so please look for these in your inbox if you haven’t had a chance to complete the survey.

Derek Law, Product Manager from Esri, makers of ArcGIS software, will be on campus to deliver a seminar and workshop on April 20.

GIS Seminar – Everything You Need to Know about ArcGIS Platform and Web GIS

The seminar, designed to complement the workshop, will give you an overview of the ArcGIS product portfolio and will be presented in context of the overall platform.  For more information and to register (required), please see the event page.

GIS Workshop – Crowdsourcing Spatial Data with Seri Mobile Field Apps

The workshop, designed to complement the seminar, will give you an overview of Seri’s mobile field apps strategy.  This workshop is hands-on and will focus on leveraging ArcGIS Online, Survey 123, Collector for ArcGIS.  After performing data collection in the field, participants will be shown options on how to present your data results using the configurable application templates and Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS. For more information and to register (required), please see the event page.

FES is moving to Dropbox for administrative file sharing. So far, the following departments have been transitioned: Dean’s Office, Communications, Development, CDO, E360, ELTI, FoRE, GISF, Registrar, Research, Web, YPCCC.  We are currently working with departments one-by-one to move all their shared files from the server (formerly known as Wotan) to their own Dropbox repositories. People have found this to be a very easy and user-friendly process, and we appreciate the patience of everybody with whom we have worked.  By the way, other Yale units are also making this move, including the Law School.

There are three main advantages Dropbox has over the old system:  increased security, increased file availability, and decreased cost of file hosting.

Security is increased by:

• Unlimited document backup and version control (a system that records changes to a file so that you can recall specific versions later)
• Remote wipe of Dropbox data in case of a lost or stolen machine
• Data is protected by Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
• Logging of all activity in an easy-to-search format

File availability is increased by:

• No need to use VPN for access to files when off-campus
• Ability to share files or folders without asking FES-IT
• Device independence - access your files from your favorite mobile devices like iPads, iPhones or Android devices
• Share files with people outside of Yale without needing a NetID
• On-boarding and off-boarding of employees is streamlined, insuring that new employees have access to the same files that previous employees had

File hosting costs are decreased by:

• Moving administrative files to Dropbox frees up existing FES servers for research data, saving approximately $25,000 this year.  We will realize more savings in additional budget years.
• Switching to a managed group account helps save an additional $2,000 yearly in individual Dropbox expenses that FES has been paying.

FES-IT hopes to have faculty and staff moved by the end of June.  PhD students are in process.  Masters students will be invited onto Dropbox in August at the start of the new academic year.  
If you have any questions about the move to Dropbox or would like to go ahead and get started and join FES Dropbox, please contact the FES-IT Helpdesk.

In June of 2016, FES-IT began a pilot project with the Zoom video conferencing application, which we have found to be among the simplest web conferencing applications currently on the market.
Zoom has enabled us to easily bring together remote participants for classes and conferences; for example:   

• Students in Singapore and New Haven in Angel Hsu’s China Energy and Environmental Sustainability course, are linked together via Zoom for real-time class sessions.
• During a recent snowstorm, Brad Gentry was able to use Zoom to bring in a remote presenter along with several students who were unable to make it to campus for his class.  The Zoom contingency plan was put together in minutes and was tremendously successful!

FES-IT maintains a set of “floating” pro licenses that can be reserved by contacting the FES-IT Helpdesk. Requests for permanent pro accounts will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis as our pool of licenses is limited.

Zoom does have a free account option that anyone can sign up for independently but those accounts have some restrictions. While 1-on-1 meetings are unlimited, multiple participant meetings are cut off at the 40-minute mark. There are also some features that are restricted to pro accounts as well.  

We are very excited about the possibilities offered by Zoom and look forward to working with you to show how Zoom can enhance your next class or event.
 
For more information on Zoom or any of our classroom technologies, please email the FES-IT Helpdesk.

To make way for upcoming changes in Yale’s Central Campus telephone infrastructure, upgrades to certain phones (Nortel type) have recently been completed in all F&ES buildings. The new Cisco Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phones bring a host of new features including the capability to plug the phones into any active data jack to move the phone; there is no longer a need to schedule a Yale Telecom service visit to move a phone.  (Older phones will still require a visit, and charge, from Yale Telecom.)  Accompanying this upgrade comes new voicemail for all F&ES phones.  These upgrades were provided at no additional cost to F&ES.

Yale recently opened newly renovated space for the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) in Sterling Memorial Library (SML).  The CTL supports students and faculty across the campus. The space in SML is designed to create a unified and collaborative environment for students, faculty, and postdocs as they work with the Center’s staff on teaching, tutoring, writing, and technology initiatives. The CTL now occupies 24,000 square feet of the Library, including a new corridor that connects the recently opened 301 York Street entrance to the SML Nave. To find out more about the CTL, visit their web page. 

Workday Finance will be going live on July 1 and to help you with the transition, FES Business Office staff members Darlene Jones, Associate Director of Finance & Administration, and Erin Murphy, Accountant II, have received training on the use of the Bomgar remote screen-sharing tool.  Many of you have had a Bomgar session with FES-IT, and now you may get a Bomgar session for help when Workday Finance goes live.  This will allow Darlene and Erin, who will be specially trained in the new Workday Finance system, to provide users real-time visual help by remoting in to your screen to see exactly what you are seeing without having to leave their offices.

Are you looking to find out the latest information about your help request to FES-IT?  Then please bookmark this link (https://yale.service-now.com/home.do) to follow up on your submitted tickets or add additional information.  The link above (which can also be navigated to by going to MyFES, then Computing, then IT, then click on “View Your Open IT Tickets”), will allow you to see all your ServiceNow tickets.  On this page, not only can you view but you can also submit changes to any currently open tickets as well as submit changes or respond to comments to FES-IT.

EliScholar is a digital platform for scholarly publishing provided by the Yale University Library.  Research and scholarly output featured on EliScholar has been selected and deposited by individual university departments and centers on campus to promote discovery and access to scholarly works of faculty, students, and staff by providing the option of universal open access to Yale scholarship.  EliScholar continues to grow as new content is added daily.  If you are planning a conference or research symposium with a poster session or you plan to have your conference sessions recorded, this content is perfect for EliScholar.  EliScholar is also the perfect place to upload faculty research.  For more information about EliScholar, please contact Carla Heister or Scott Rumage.

Please note the following policy regarding faculty computers (this can also be found online).

• Unless a specific arrangement is outlined in the faculty appointment letter, new faculty members are expected to use their own computers (laptops) and an FES-provided Dropbox account for all FES-related file storage.
• All faculty members are responsible for funding the cost of replacement computers and peripherals from their faculty discretionary allotments. Faculty members determine their own computer replacement or upgrade schedule.

Please don’t forget the FES suggestion box in the Computer Lab on the 3rd Floor of Sage. We welcome all suggestions for improving our services and we’d love to follow up with you about it as well. If you choose to remain anonymous that’s ok too, we’d just be happy to have your input!

FES-IT has several suggestions for response/polling/voting apps that are easy and, in most cases, free to use and work with smartphones, laptops, and most mobile devices.  These apps turn any smart phone into a “classroom clicker” for instant voting during a presentation or class.  If you would like help using any of these suggested apps, please contact the FES-IT Helpdesk.

• PollEverywhere
• TodaysMeet
• oVote

Central ITS has retired the Data Self Scan software that has been used to scan for sensitive data on computers.  Thanks to this change, faculty and staff should no longer see the requirement to run Identity Finder ("Data Self Scan") in their Training Requirements on Yale's Training and Certification (TMS) website.

A new, automated scanning utility will be replacing Identity Finder soon.  FES-IT will keep you updated as we receive more information.  If you have any questions, please contact the FES-IT Helpdesk.