May 2009 Archives

Here we are  at the end  of another day, and we're getting closer and closer to having the portal migration completely finished. Here's a recap for the day.

 

First thing this morning, we got the new portal online, ready for use. However, it was somewhat crippled because not all of the data has been migrated. Email was still in the process of migrating and calendar data has not been migrated due to some complications in the migration process. The look and feel has not been finalized, but it's getting close.

 

Around mid morning, we started receiving calls about problems with the new portal. Things like, tabs missing, channels missing, and password problems. We worked through those the best we could at the time.

 

After lunch, I was finally able to get a support ticket in with Sungard about our calendar import issues. We continue to converse back and forth the rest of the afternoon, troubleshooting the problem. Unfortunately, we were not able to come to a resolution, but we will continue work tomorrow and will hopefully have a fix soon.

 

This evening, I've recreated all the default layouts and applied them to the system. This should correct our disappearing tab problem. I also researched a method to use the built in email client in the portal, instead of the one that is provided with this version. This client is very similar to the one from the previous version of the portal and should look very familiar to you. Mail migration is about 75% complete.

 

Tomorrow morning, I'm planning a restart of the portal services early in the morning to repair some look and feel issues and to apply the change to the email application.

 

On the docket for tomorrow (Wednesday):

Calendar Migration

Channel Repairs

Look and feel refining

Other user issues

 

And on that note, it's time for bed. Too many nights with too little sleep. 

The OneTech Portal upgrade has been successful so far. However, there are a few steps of the upgrade that have not been completed. There are a few things you need to be aware of before you start using the new OneTech Portal.

 

• Mail is still being migrated. Most mail has already been migrated, however the migration process is still running. If your mail is not in your inbox, please be patient for a day or so and it will appear. Any new mail is already available. We will post another announcement once all mail has been migrated. The mail for users who have not logged in during the past year will not be migrated.

• Calendar information is not available yet. We ran into an issue with the calendar migration, and were not able to make it available yet. We are working with Sungard to get this issue resolved.

• The Look and Feel is not finished. While we've made some improvements to the look and feel of the portal, we are still ironing out some of the details. We do not recommend modifying your layout at this time, it may still be reset.

We will notify you when we have corrected these issues. If you have any questions, please contact the Campus Support Center at tech.support@atu.edu or 479.968.0646.

 

Thank you for your patience while we correct these issues.

 

Computer Services

Arkansas Tech University

The planned upgrades to OneTech are moving along smoothly. So far, we have not run into any issues to prevent us from deploying the next version of the OneTech Portal. The data migration process has been tested to be successful so far, and will continue to be tested as we prepare to launch the new system.

 

As mentioned in previous announcements, our planned go-live date is scheduled for this coming weekend. As promised, we would like to further detail our schedule for the upgrade. Starting this Friday (May 22) at 5:00 p.m., the OneTech Portal will be made unavailable in order to start the transition process. Users will not have access to the portal, or to email during this time. If everything goes as planned, the new version of the portal will be live before campus opens on Tuesday, May 26 at 8:00 a.m.

 

The portal will have a new look and feel applied, however many of the same channels will still be in place when you log in the first time. After we are live with the new system, we will begin to roll out new channels and features in the coming weeks. All changes to the portal will be documented on the OneTech Portal Blog (http://blogs.atu.edu/luminis).  Major changes will be announced in the Campus Announcements channel.

 

If you have any questions, please contact the Campus Support Center at tech.support@atu.edu or 479.968.0646.

 

Thank you,

Computer Services

Arkansas Tech University

You may have seen this on the OneTech Campus Announcements and you should also receive this as an email, but I thought I'd post it here anyway.

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Arkansas Tech is in the process of preparing for a major upgrade of the OneTech Portal as you were recently notified. This upgrade to the next version of the OneTech Portal is in support of our Unified Digital Campus initiative and it is required to move forward with upgrades to other systems connected to the OneTech Portal.  

 

In the previous announcement we stated that the OneTech Portal upgrade would include integration with Google Apps; a set of services provided by Google and including Gmail accounts rather than the university email currently in use.  In the interest of maintaining the highest possible level of security for our email accounts, we have decided against integrating with Google Apps and Google Mail at this time.  Your Tech email account will continue to be the official email account for the university to correspond with you.

 

Most of the services provided through Google Apps are available to you as a free resource and you may choose to sign up independently.  If you wish to find out more about  the available Google Apps, including free word processing, spreadsheets, calendar, talk, etc., you can find information at  http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/.

We are still planning to upgrade the OneTech Portal sometime during the week of May 25th. We will announce an exact date and outage duration when we get closer to our go-live date.

If you have questions or concerns, feel free to contact the Campus Support Center at 479.968.0646 or tech.support@atu.edu

 

 

Sincerely,

Computer Services
Arkansas Tech University