Category Archives: Projects & Services

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Michigan App released for public beta

The Michigan App has been available for limited beta for a little over two months. The development team took that feedback from testers and has now launched the public beta to all U-M staff, faculty, and students. The new app features a completely redesigned interface that helps streamline daily activities and supports success towards academic and personal goals for… Read More »

New research computing package for Michigan Medicine

Research labs and teams sometimes spend a large amount of sponsored grant funding on data storage and computing resources. Researchers often have to choose between data safety and saving money, resulting in decreased productivity, and time wasted on data recovery. Beginning March 5, 2018, Health Information Technology & Services (HITS), in partnership with Advanced Research Computing – Technology Services (ARC-TS),… Read More »

ITS retires its oldest legacy system, the Uniqname Service

In early February, ITS retired its oldest running production system—the Uniqname Service (UNS). Implemented in 1992, UNS was running on outdated hardware with an old homegrown “UMCE Linux” operating system. Due to high risk, the system had not been shut down or upgraded since 2012. “We were concerned about the fragility and technical debt associated with the homegrown… Read More »

ITS offers new features & discounts for AWS

In the last few months Information & Technology Services (ITS) has announced several enhancements to its cloud offerings to the U-M campus. One of these enhancements was the execution of a new Enterprise Agreement and Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with Amazon for AWS at U-M. With this agreement, faculty, researchers, and staff at all U-M campuses can now… Read More »

WiFi update

The project hit an important milestone last month, as we went over the 12 million square foot mark of building space upgraded. Work continues on buildings that play an important role in supporting operations for the U-M campus. Check out our current progress. Recently completed: Wolverine Tower, 305 W. Liberty, Weidenbach Hall Currently under construction: Varsity Drive Building,… Read More »

UM-Flint wireless and network upgrades

By | February 20, 2018

This past year, UM-Flint ITS began a push to overhaul and upgrade the wireless network on the Flint campus. The wireless infrastructure upgrade entered phase one as the equipment purchased in 2010 has finally reached the end of life and end of support stage. Phase one of the project included all university-owned buildings south of the Flint River,… Read More »

Patients respond enthusiastically to MyUofMHealth updates

By | February 19, 2018

MyUofMHealth, also known as the U-M patient portal, empowers patients to take an active role in their care by providing access to key components of their medical record, while also allowing them to communicate with their care team(s). The feedback from patients on the efficacy of this tool has been wholly positive. A U-M heart transplant patient praised… Read More »

Flint completes first phase of password sync project

By | February 15, 2018

After over a year in development and testing in collaboration with the UM-Ann Arbor ITS Identity and Access Management team, UM-Flint ITS completed a project designed to synchronize employees’ UMICH passwords to their Flint LAN accounts. This project has reduced the number of passwords UM-Flint employees need to remember and increased the time between password changes to one… Read More »

Units can deploy Passwordstate under U-M license

You can deploy Passwordstate in your unit under a U-M license that covers use by U-M faculty, staff, and students on all U-M campuses. Passwordstate allows teams of people to access and share sensitive password resources and is typically used for managing elevated and administrative passwords, as well as passwords for smaller proprietary systems, such as research databases.… Read More »

March 1 change to InCommon SSL certificate service

By | February 7, 2018

The CA/Browser Forum is a group of SSL certificate authorities and web-browser developers who work to set standards for SSL encryption. A new CABforum rule going into effect March 1, 2018 will shorten the maximum lifetime of SSL certificates from all commercial certificate authorities. After that time, certificates obtained via the ITS “Web Application Sign-up Page” can have… Read More »

You could be using UM.Lessons and not know it

Does your department website contain a quiz or survey tool to collect data? If so, there’s a good chance that quiz was created with UM.Lessons and will need to be moved to another platform over the next several months. Here’s a quick way to check: search your HTML code and URLs for keywords=lessons.ummu.umich.edu. UM.Lessons is an online quizzing tool… Read More »

U-M leads development of Unizin Data Platform

Among the 25 leading research institutions that make up the Unizin consortium, the University of Michigan is recognized as a leader in the field of learning analytics research and development. This distinction contributed to U-M being asked by Unizin to lead the design and development of the Unizin Data Platform (UDP), a cloud-based infrastructure for delivering learning analytics… Read More »

ITS extends funding of U-M SignNow

ITS is extending its funding of U-M SignNow through FY19. What this means for users is that ITS will cover per document transaction fees and support costs through June 2019. Department shortcode charges for using U-M SignNow will not begin until FY20. ITS Infrastructure made the decision to extend funding based on two factors: a later than anticipated… Read More »

One year of EIAM: Empowering collaboration, simplifying access, uniting U-M

With one calendar year under its belt, the Enterprise Identity Access Management (EIAM) program reflects on its 2017 accomplishments. Launched in January 2017, the program coordinates and unites IAM efforts for all U-M campuses—Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Flint, and Michigan Medicine—to improve the technology and administrative processes that allow authorized individuals to access U-M resources. Below is a partial… Read More »

Web Platforms service town hall March 7

A town hall and interactive session will be held to discuss the new Web Platforms service being developed by ITS for the university community. This event will take place on Wednesday, March 7 at 2:00 p.m. in the Great Lakes Central Room, Palmer Commons. Members of the university web developer community and those who have an interest in… Read More »

DNS Re-address Project nears completion

In an effort to further secure and reduce the complexity of U-M networks, ITS Infrastructure has worked for the past year with unit IT representatives to change the IP addresses of U-M’s domain name system (DNS) resolver servers from public to private. The goals of the project were to: Improve security by reducing internet threats that exploit DNS resolvers.… Read More »