This past fall, Information and Technology Services announced that U-M will retire BlueJeans effective May 1, 2021 due to a significant drop in usage that began with the launch of Zoom last March. For example, in November there were just under 3,000 BlueJeans users across all campuses compared to 16,000 during peak usage in April. “ITS is committed… Read More »
Information and Technology Services (ITS) has been overseeing the technical aspects of U-M’s recent effort to implement the guest version of ResponsiBLUE, the health-screening tool developed to help keep the university healthy and reduce the spread of COVID-19. The State of Michigan now requires all visitors, contractors and vendors through April 14, 2021, to complete a preliminary health… Read More »
This year, Information and Technology Services has been implementing Deque Comply – a best-in-market, cloud-based enterprise accessibility scanner. The product, which is switching its name to Axe Monitor, is designed to help schools, colleges and units have a clearer understanding of the accessibility effectiveness of their websites, and to be able to assess how they are doing. The… Read More »
On-the-go access to the Virtual Sites software catalog has been improved with faster loading times, more storage, better graphics capability, and more virtual machines. Virtual Sites, powered by Information and Technology Services (ITS), offers remote access to a broad range of software that is also available at Campus Computing Sites like the “Fishbowl.” Virtual Sites has been enhanced… Read More »
If you purchased extended support for university machines running Windows 7 or Server 2008 in January 2020, be aware that the support is about to expire. You will need to update the machines to a supported version of Windows or Windows Server, purchase another year of extended support, decommission the machines, or isolate them on a protected network.
In October we reported that, along with other security tools like Virtru at U-M, CrowdStrike Falcon was being rolled out across the university on UM-owned machines. Falcon provides antivirus, anti-malware, and threat detection and mitigation capabilities, all of which offer stronger protection against ransomware and other malicious attacks than previous tools. Deployment update CrowdStrike Falcon has been deployed… Read More »
In May of this year, ITS released the TeamDynamix (TDX) service management system. TDX was selected for many reasons, including ease of use, accessibility, and flexibility. TDX also arrived with significant cost savings. The benefits of TDX U-M’s TeamDynamix licensing agreement provides unlimited enterprise licensing and multi-tenant capabilities, allowing for multiple ticketing applications within the U-M Private Cloud… Read More »
A significant challenge facing a wide variety of disciplines is the ability to reproduce research results. Researchers across U-M are working together to develop best practices that promote reproducible data science, and Michigan IT staff play an important role in this effort. “Many IT staff members don’t normally get involved directly in specific research projects, so the reproducibility… Read More »
To support academic discovery, ARC-TS will offer Great Lakes High-Performance Computing Cluster for classroom use for the 2020-2021 academic year. Each course can have $100 per student for HPC, GPU, Jupyter, and RStudio resources. Great Lakes is the university’s flagship, open-science, high-performance computing cluster. Just one second of computing on the Great Lakes network is the same as… Read More »
Michigan Medicine is upgrading its existing Microsoft SharePoint 2016 environment to SharePoint Online, a cloud-based service that will provide new opportunities for teams to share and manage content, knowledge, and applications. Pilots and testing are happening now, and HITS plans to introduce SharePoint Online across all of Michigan Medicine beginning in early 2021. In addition to significantly improving the… Read More »
Support for Sophos Antivirus installed on U-M machines will end on December 31, 2020. Enhanced Endpoint Protection powered by CrowdStrike replaces Sophos. The Sophos product will continue to work, but will not be updated, and quickly will become deprecated. If you are responsible for managing university Macs, please ensure that you transition them to CrowdStrike Falcon for endpoint… Read More »
Health Information Technology & Services (HITS) is excited to announce changes and improvements to two of its WiFi networks across Michigan Medicine in November. Michigan Medicine began offering eduroam on November 9 across all of its buildings, including NCRC, the medical school, hospitals and clinics. The eduroam service is a dual band network that allows visitors from other… Read More »
A researcher in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA) is pioneering two separate, ongoing efforts for measuring and forecasting COVID-19: pandemic modeling and a risk tracking site. The projects are led by Sabrina Corsetti, a senior undergraduate student pursuing dual degrees in honors physics and mathematical sciences, and supervised by Thomas Schwarz, associate professor of… Read More »
All technical support staff from campus units are invited to receive Microsoft support services at reduced rates by partnering with ITS in its Microsoft Premier Support contract. By joining the pay2play program, campus units using Microsoft (MS) systems and applications can receive MS Premier Support services, such as unlimited 24-hour access to MS specialists, at highly discounted rates.… Read More »
Hospital patients produce a tremendous amount of data. Throughout Michigan Medicine, MCIRCC’s PICTURE analytic is reading the stories within this data to help clinicians act on potential emergencies chapters in advance. In the summer of 2020, the Michigan Center for Integrative Research in Critical Care (MCIRCC) detailed its predictive analytic “PICTURE,” which crunches an array of patient data—including… Read More »
The current enterprise viewer used for diagnostic images (WebPACS) that launches from MiChart will be replaced next year. Health Information Technology & Services (HITS) plans to deploy the new viewer, Mach7, initially with McKesson in the summer of 2021 and then with the new Sectra PACS in the fall of 2021. “Michigan Medicine has outgrown the capabilities of… Read More »
As our work and education continue to move online, it is important to become acquainted with each videoconferencing service the university offers. Moreover, with the announcement of the retirement of BlueJeans in May 2021, consider an option for day-to-day meetings that’s already available at your fingertips: Google Meet. Google Meet is a G Suite for Education videoconferencing core… Read More »
A new Duo option makes it easier to reactivate the Duo Mobile app when you get a new device. Prior to October 23, 2020, if you got a new smartphone or tablet and wanted to reactivate the Duo Mobile app on it, you needed to use an alternate method of Duo two-factor (such as a phone call) or… Read More »
Last month, ITS announced that the university will retire BlueJeans effective May 1, 2021. To prepare for this change, ITS has begun work on the steps needed to replace BlueJeans with Zoom in ITS-supported applications, including Canvas. As part of this process, BlueJeans integrations in Canvas will no longer be available starting Tuesday, January 12, 2021. Users will… Read More »
MRequest (FootPrints) is a web-based service that allows central tracking and management of customer support and other issues. It is slated to retire on December 17, 2021. More than 20 U-M schools, colleges, and major administrative units use the service. While primarily used by campus IT departments, campus units have discovered other uses for MRequest (FootPrints) as well. For… Read More »