Category Archives: Projects & Services

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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 »

WiFi update

It may be cold outside, but WiFi upgrade work still continues on buildings across the Ann Arbor campus.  Many of the buildings currently under construction or design play an important role in supporting operations for the U-M campus. Check out our current progress. Recently completed: Arbor Lakes Bldgs. 1, 2, 3, Central Power Plant, Marie Dorothy Hartwig Administrative… Read More »

New social login service supports guest access

A new Identity and Access Management (IAM) service is a gamechanger in helping the Alumni Association fulfill its mission to connect alumni with services that nurture an ongoing relationship with the university. “Using social login allows the Alumni Association to overcome the single biggest barrier for providing alumni access to our online services and alumni benefits,” says Andre… Read More »

CTools project sites reminder

ITS recently completed an initial round of communications to all faculty and staff CTools project site owners. Since communications started last September, site owners have downloaded 650 sites and deleted over 1,400 sites. The target date for transitioning all active project sites from CTools is August 31, 2018; however, individual units may choose an earlier date. All historical… Read More »

Improvements to MCommunity

ITS recently completed critical enhancements to MCommunity, which had been experiencing significant backlogs during peak data periods. Additions, changes, and removals for individuals and groups were taking days to process, which caused provisioning and communication issues for campus. In the fall of 2016, ITS set a priority to improve the reliability and performance of MCommunity as well as… Read More »

ITS offers new cloud vendor choices

For several years, Information and Technology Services (ITS) offered Amazon Web Services (AWS) at U-M as its sole cloud computing IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) offering. That is changing. U-M recently signed enterprise agreements to offer Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The addition of these industry leading vendors provides a strong foundation of cloud computing solutions, and will enable… Read More »