Category: Announcements

Announcements/Updates to the BMC community

RESOLVED: Some Bryn Mawr College Services Unavailable

Update, 9:15am: Community members are now able to log in to all services as usual. Please report any lingering issues to the Help Desk.

Starting this morning, community members are unable to login to some Bryn Mawr services, including EZBorrow, eMarket, Interfolio, Domain of One’s Own, and Parchment. LITS is working to diagnose and resolve these issues as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Please contact the Help Desk with any questions or concerns: help@brynmawr.edu, 610-526-7440.

Office 365 (Email, Calendar, OneDrive) Issues Today, 6/5

Starting this morning, community members began having trouble using Office 365 services, including email, calendar, and OneDrive. This is a Microsoft wide issue and we don’t currently have an estimated time for resolution. We will provide an update as soon as we have one from Microsoft.

If you have any questions, please contact the Help Desk: 610-526-7440 or help@brynmawr.edu.

RESOLVED: MiCollab Unavailable, Tuesday 5/30

Update (5/31/2023, @8am EST): Service has been restored to College softphones and the MiCollab application. Unfortunately, as part of this restoration, changes made to your voicemail after March 7th, 2023 have been reversed. Here’s what that means for you:

  • Any voicemail messages received after March 7th are gone and irrecoverable.
  • Any voicemail messages deleted after March 7th will reappear. These messages can be safely deleted.
  • If you requested a voicemail PIN reset after March 7th, please submit a new ticket if you’re unable to access your voicemail.
  • Any new community members that started after March 7th may need to re-set up their voicemail. If you have an assigned extension, but cannot set up your voicemail, please contact the Help Desk.
  • Any changes to your voicemail greeting after March 7th may have been reverted.

Please direct any questions to the Help Desk at help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.

Update (5/30/2023 @11am EST): Community members are still able to access their voicemails from their physical desk phones, but may not be able to when calling in.

Starting late last week, community members began experiencing issues logging in to and accessing their College softphone, icluding making and receiving calls and checking voicemail, via MiCollab. Anyone who was logged in to the service has been logged out and anyone attempting to log in gets an “invalid password” error message.

LITS is currently working with the vendor to resolve the issue. We apologize in advance of any inconvenience this causes.

Please contact the Help Desk with any questions: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440

New Phishing Attempt 5/24

Please be aware of a recent attempt to gather login, password, and other secure personal or College data from Bryn Mawr College community members.

  • Be on the lookout for messages that share an attached Word document, particularly if you were not expecting it. This is a scam.
  • Also watch for emails directing you to contact a non-BMC email account for an employment opportunity. This is a scam, too.

Do not open attachments, click on links, or respond in any way. Delete the message or report it as Phishing in Outlook. If you believe you’ve given your information to a phisher, immediately change your password and contact the Help Desk: help@brynmawr.edu, 610-526-7440.

Email scams come in many forms. While we work to keep you informed, attacks are increasingly diverse and sophisticated. It’s not possible for us to warn you of every message before you see it. Be cautious and suspicious. If you ever have a question or suspicion, don’t hesitate to contact the Help Desk.

Moodle 4.1 Coming this Fall

Before the start of the fall 2023 term, LITS needs to upgrade Moodle from its current version (3.11.11) to version 4.1.

This upgrade will require significant downtime for Moodle, but we are developing an upgrade process that we hope will be minimally disruptive as possible:

  • Moodle will be completely unavailable on August 14, 2023 while we perform the final part of this upgrade.
    • We have worked with departments hosting summer programs and orientations to identify this as the least disruptive date.
    • Departments should plan for full-day outage, but we will try to shorten that if possible.
  • Unlike in past major upgrades, we will not need to have two sites running simultaneously. This means:
    • The Moodle URL (moodle.brynmawr.edu) will not change.
    • We will not need to copy content from one site to another. Everything that is on Moodle on Aug 13 (including fall 2023 academic courses) will still be there on August 15.
  • Access to Moodle Archive (https://moodlearchive.brynmawr.edu/) will end on August 14.

Most changes to Moodle 4.1 are interface changes designed to make the site easier to use or incorporate add-on features (such as the collapsible topics course format) into the core software. We will post additional details in the coming months and provide advance demos and faculty and staff support options in August-September to make the transition as smooth as possible.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us via the Help Desk (help@brynmawr.edu, 610-526-7440) or schedule a meeting with a member of the Moodle support team.

 

Unscheduled Moodle Maintenance: Monday, May 15

LITS will be performing emergency maintenance on Moodle at  8:00 AM on Monday, May 15, 2023. The upgrade will address security vulnerabilities and should last approximately 10 minutes. People who are already logged in should experience minimal disruption during the maintenance window.

Please contact the Help Desk with any questions or concerns: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.

Starting Tuesday, May 9th: Automated Antivirus Migration

Good morning!

Automated antivirus migration begins at 9am TOMORROW (Tuesday, May 9th). The migration can start as early as 9am or happen later in the day or week (or even later if you are not on campus regularly) – it’ll all depend when and how your device connects to the College network.

Since Macs will require a restart, LITS highly recommends manually migrating to CrowdStrike Falcon [https://askathena.brynmawr.edu/help/antivirus-migration] before Tuesday (5/9) if you would like restart to happen at a specific time.

 

For more information, see the LITS blog [https://lits.blogs.brynmawr.edu/11462]. As always, please reach out to the Help Desk at 610-526-7440 or help@brynmawr.edu if you have any questions!

Thank you,

Bonnie

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Happy almost-the-last-week of the semester! Please be aware that the automated antivirus migrationbegins on Tuesday, May 9th. The specific time of the migration depends on when and how your device connects to the College network. This means the migration can start as early as 9am on Tuesday (5/9) but could also happen later in the day or week (or even later if you are not on campus regularly).

Your device will NOT be affected if you have manually migrated to CrowdStrike Falcon[https://askathena.brynmawr.edu/help/antivirus-migration] before Tuesday (5/9). You can confirm that CrowdStrike Falcon is installed by searching for the app on your computer[https://askathena.brynmawr.edu/help/crowdstrike-falcon-antivirus-overview#finding-crowdstrike-falcon].

Since Macs will require a restart, LITS highly recommends manually migrating, so the restart happens at a specific time of your choosing.

 

As always, please reach out to the Help Desk at 610-526-7440 or help@brynmawr.edu if you have any questions!

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Today is the day! You will be able to migrate to CrowdStrike Falcon [https://askathena.brynmawr.edu/help/antivirus-migration] starting at 9am today.

We highly recommend completing the migration process at your earliest convenience to avoid getting caught in the automated migration that begins on Tuesday, May 9th.

If you need to wait for the automated migration, please be aware that College Macs will require a restart that you will not be able to defer. For questions and assistance, contact the Help Desk at help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440!

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We have less than a week before the migration from Sophos to CrowdStrike Falcon becomes available in Software Center for you to download! We, truly, are very excited about CrowdStrike Falcon’s detection capabilities and low rate of false positives that will mean everyone at the College can spend a little less time worrying about malware.

Starting at 9am on Tuesday, April 25th, you will be able to use the antivirus migration instructions over at Ask Athena to migrate to CrowdStrike Falcon [https://askathena.brynmawr.edu/help/antivirus-migration]. We highly recommend completing the migration process at your earliest convenience  to avoid getting caught in the automated migration that begins on Tuesday, May 9th.

If you need to wait for the automated migration, please be aware that College Macs will require a restart that you will not be able to defer. More details to come! The Help Desk is reachable at help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440 if you have any questions or need assistance.

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LITS is proud to announce our new and improved antivirus solution, CrowdStrike Falcon! It will be available for download starting Tuesday, April 25th. If you already have or are receiving a new College computer this month (April 2023), CrowdStrike Falcon will already be installed.

We’re very excited to be migrating to CrowdStrike Falcon as its features will help the College better detect malware and other fraudulent activity while reducing false positives! For more information and to get a preview of how the new antivirus will work, please visit our overview [https://askathena.brynmawr.edu/help/crowdstrike-falcon-antivirus-overview] posted on Ask Athena.

As always, don’t hesitate to let the Help Desk (help@brynmawr.edu; 610-526-7440) know if you have any questions!

Warning: New Phishing Attempt 4/26/23

Please be aware of a recent attempt to gather login, password, and other secure personal or College data from Bryn Mawr College community members.

Be on the lookout for messages that offer a free piano, or other friendly-seeming giveaways.

Do not open attachments, click on links, or respond in any way. Delete the message or report it as Phishing in Outlook. If you believe you’ve given your information to a phisher, immediately change your password and contact the Help Desk: help@brynmawr.edu, 610-526-7440.

Contact the Help Desk with questions: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.