The ResponsiBLUE application has been updated and expanded for the winter 2021 semester. U-M first launched ResponsiBLUE during the fall 2020 semester to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, aid in circulating public health knowledge, and ensure student safety. University Information and Technology Services developed ResponsiBLUE in partnership with the university leadership and the Office of Research. The app, which… Read More »
For the 2021 winter term, Tech Shop offers at-the-door pickup service at both campus locations—Michigan Union and Pierpont Commons. Pickup service is available by appointment only; both stores continue to be temporarily closed to in-person shopping at this time. Service at the Pierpont Commons location launched on January 19 and is available on Tuesday and Friday each week.… Read More »
ITS has begun testing DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) for use at U-M. If this testing does not present any significant issues, ITS will begin validating signatures at the end of January.
Dell Technologies has been selected as U-M’s new strategic supplier for computer hardware, which includes laptops, PCs, monitors, keyboards and other equipment. The new contract goes into effect Jan. 18 and replaces the current HP contract. Dell was selected by a cross-functional team composed of representatives from the Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses as well as Michigan… Read More »
The University of Michigan, as a public research institution, houses an incredible amount of data. One of the struggles that leaders and analysts face is how to easily pull together data from the vast number of sources currently available to help gain insights on many topics and improve decision making. That work just got a bit easier. In… Read More »
Beginning this month, Michigan Medicine will launch a speech recognition technology called Fluency Direct. Michigan Medicine is retiring Dragon services effective Feb. 3 and Phone Transcription services effective Feb. 15. “Michigan Medicine has seen a steady decline in phone transcription users, but still incurs substantial per-line transcription costs and fixed vendor costs,” said Jeff Terrell, professor of otolaryngology.… Read More »
U-M Zoom has been approved for PHI (HIPAA data). As a result, Zoom for Health at U-M will be consolidated into regular U-M Zoom January 2–3, 2021. New features Thanks to collaborative efforts of U-M and Zoom, users will be able to use expanded features, such as: Cloud recording Live transcription Viewing identifying information in reports Ability to… Read More »
Researchers across campus can now directly query, via SQL server, a de-identified version of the Research Data Warehouse, which includes all 4 million unique Michigan Medicine patients. Learn how to leverage this resource and more Precision Health resources through our updated documentation site (accessible with a Level 1 UMICH login) and video demos and how-to’s. Precision Health has expanded its offerings… Read More »
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 »