Spring/Summer 2006
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Spring/Summer 2006 |
Welcome
Shawn Beattie, ITS, editor
Welcome
to Augie Techknowledge
from ITS, an e-newsletter to share "what's new" in ITS and provide
useful tips
and articles on Information Technology and Educational Technology at
Augustana.
We hope you like it and find it useful. The newsletter will
be archived on
the ITS web site at
http://its.augustana.edu/techknowledge.
Enjoy!
In this issue:
Username conversion
Faculty Profiles
How to Personalize a Mass E-mailing
Update: Augustana's Network
Speed
Moodle Update
Username conversion
Shawn Beattie,
ITS
As part of the benefit of the transition to Datatel and AIMS, the college is
making a number of enhancements to the overall user experience.
One vestige of the past is Augustana's cryptic username
convention for employees, which stemmed from earlier limitations on
username lengths. VAX systems in early days and the early
'90s Novell and DOS incarnation of "AugieNet" placed limitations on our choice of usernames. For example:
ABOTS = Administration, Business
Office, Tammy Sullivan
ALICT = Administration
(or is it Augustana?) Library, Carla Tracy
SOSOTTOS = Sociology,
Jean Sottos
As the years went on, some users decided
they'd prefer not deal with a cryptic username. The
transition to from Novell to Windows NT in the late 1990s made it
easier to be more flexible with usernames. Around that time,
ITS (formerly "CC" for Computer Center) moved to FirstnameLastname.
At about the same time, students went to firstname-lastname.
This made it easier for students...but faculty or staff with
hyphenated names, it made them look like student accounts.
Clear as mud?
This summer, a controlled transition to a more standardized and
user-friendly format, in the format of FirstnameLastname
Here
are some answers to your anticipated questions:
When
will this happen?
Over the summer. Stay tuned for a schedule.
What
about e-mail?
E-mail sent
to your current address will continue to be delivered to
your inbox indefinitely. Mail from old friends, former
students, and listservs will not be bounced. However, your
primary e-mail address will become FirstnameLastname@augustana.edu.
At your convenience, you can transition to your new e-mail
address. New accounts (ie, new faculty and staff joining the
college) will only follow the new format.
Will
I lose any old e-mail?
No. E-mail from
before the change and e-mail from after the change will be delivered to
the same Outlook Inbox.
Will
someone need to change the settings on my computer?
This should not be necessary.
Changes will be made on the campus servers.
Will anything else change?
Not for most users. Your H drive folder on the
network will be switched to your new username, and any known location
where your account is referenced (databases, Moodle, Campus e-mail
directory, etc) will automatically be updated without your intervention.
How
will I log in?
The same way you do now, except
you will use "FirstnameLastname@augustana.edu" wherever you used your
former login name.
Whom
should I contact with questions?
As always, contact the ITS
Helpdesk at helpdesk@augustana.edu or x7293.
Faculty
Profiles
Gil
Koenigsaecker, ITS
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Incoming students and parents alike visit the Augustana website to get an idea of who will be teaching classes in the fall. Even current students might like to know more about their instructors -- research interests, hobbies, travel photos, or even their favorite quote. A good way to get this information out is via a personal webpage. If you take a look at the faculty directory on our website you will see that there is a profile tab and a homepage tab. If you would like to add or update information in your profile tab, contact Leslie Dupree. If you would like to build a personal homepage you have several options. In the Olin Building all the computers are loaded with webpage authoring tools such as FrontPage. If you would like to work on your webpage at home this summer there is a free webpage authoring tool called NVU. You can download a copy from http://www.nvu.com If you save all your pictures and web pages in a folder on your computer you can copy that to a portable storage device, such as the pictured USB drive. Then bring it in to Olin and we can help you post that on our servers. There are a number of websites that offer tutorials as well. |
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How to
Personalize a Mass Emailing
Beth Weber, ITS
Do you wish that you could personalize an emailing to each individual
student in your classes? Or would you like to send a personalized email
to an alumni but need to send the same basic letter to more than one
person? If you wanted to send them a letter you might use
Microsoft Word’s Mail Merge feature and insert their name,
grades or donation amount from an Excel or Access file in a template
letter. You can do the same thing in Outlook and send your
message through an email and save on paper! This also helps
with your emails not getting tagged as SPAM. Some email
servers will tag a message as SPAM if it sees it’s being sent
to a large amount of people. If you would like to see how to
do a Mail Merge for an e-mail, visit ITS’s documentation page
on the web at: http://campus/offices/its/documentation/office2007/word/pdf/MailMerge_Email.pdf.
If you have any questions please contact Beth Weber, at 7476 or email
at bethweber@augustana.edu.
Update: Augustana's Network Speed
During the Spring term, ITS added two more
T1 lines, which increased our internet access speed by approximately
40%. Our connection is now 10 megabits per second, or the equivalent
capacity
to
about 300 dialup modems. Of course, we continue to look for
ways to upgrade our capacity and make your experience using the network
even better.
If you would like to use Moodle and have any questions, contact Shawn Beattie or Gil Koenigsaecker
Have a great summer!!Visit
us at http://its.augustana.edu