Vice President for Information Technology

Status and Activity Report for July 2020

Prepared by Timothy M. Chester, Vice President for Information Technology (VPIT)

1. Key Items for Faculty and Staff Meetings

• Fall network maintenance scheduled for October 24: EITS plans to conduct a network
maintenance on October 24, 2020. Network maintenances are necessary to continue to
support expansions and upgrades to the network, allowing EITS to provide ample
bandwidth and Internet capacity to the University in the future. We typically conduct large
network maintenances twice a year, during which campus Internet and campus
information systems are usually inaccessible. Additional details will be provided at a later
date. For questions, contact Jeff Farese at [email protected].

2. Services for Students

• Free Adobe licensing ends July 6: Effective July 6, free student access to Adobe Creative
Cloud desktop applications will no longer be available. The software package was offered
to students in the spring and part of summer to aid in virtual learning. UGA students can
purchase Adobe Creative Cloud applications, including Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator
and more, at a discounted annual rate through Adobe’s website. For more information on
available software at UGA, visit software.uga.edu.

• EITS preparing computer labs for social distancing: EITS staff at the Miller Learning
Center are helping to prepare the building for social distancing during the fall semester.
Our staff are measuring the computer lab spaces, the Digital Media lab and our MLC Help
Desks to determine how many people can safely occupy these areas at once. Our print
kiosks are also cleaned regularly. Staff plan to space out computers and other equipment
and put up signage to encourage social distancing later this summer. More information on
our preparations for social distancing will be forthcoming.

3. Support for Teaching Faculty

• Zoom integration with Kaltura rescheduled: Activities to integrate Zoom with Kaltura
originally scheduled for May 29-31 have been rescheduled to July 31 – August 2. Once
implemented, the integration will make the unlimited storage and captioning services
offered by Kaltura available to many UGA Zoom users. For more information and project
updates visit our information page.

• Video quizzing now available in Kaltura: Faculty now have the ability to create
interactive video quizzes in Kaltura. Faculty can create quizzes using videos stored in their
Kaltura My Media folder. Quizzes can be associated with grade items in eLearning
Commons. For more information and instructions on how to create a video quiz, visit the
eLC Help site at https://help.elc.uga.edu/faculty/kaltura-audio-and-video/kaltura-video-
quizzes/.

• Zoom replaces GoToMeeting: On June 30, the UGA license of GoToMeeting expired.
Given the adoption of the Zoom teleconferencing platform, the University is no longer
renewing the GoToMeeting license. Zoom is the recommended replacement for

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GoToMeeting on campus and is available free. Zoom is an online meeting tool that allows
for video or audio conferencing from desktops or mobile devices. Features include video
conferencing, desktop sharing and collaboration tools, as well as personalized desktop
control. EITS provided repeated communications to specific end-users and the IT
community about the GoToMeeting decommission. Units who want to continue using the
GoToMeeting platform should reach out to their local IT department for assistance.

• Blackboard Collaborate to be decommissioned, replaced by Zoom: Blackboard

Collaborate will be decommissioned December 31. After this date, Zoom will be the
primary web conferencing solution available to instructors within eLearning Commons
(eLC). During the fall 2020 semester, instructors that need to incorporate web
conferencing into their courses in eLC may use Zoom or they may continue to use
Blackboard Collaborate. After December 31, Blackboard Collaborate will no longer be
available and Zoom will be the supported web conferencing tool within eLC. Saved
recordings of Blackboard Collaborate sessions will also not be available for viewing or
download after December 31. Users are encouraged to download saved recordings from
Collaborate, and to upload them to Kaltura for sharing or long-term storage. For more
information and project updates visit our information page here.

4. Support for Researchers

• GACRC preparing for major update to workload manager: As was previously

announced, the Georgia Advanced Computing Resources Center (GACRC) is working to
migrate Sapelo2’s workflow manager to a more advanced and capable one called Slurm. In
order to prepare our user community for this migration, which will affect how they submit
their compute jobs and any associated workflows, we will make available a test cluster for
a period of no less than two months. The test cluster will be made accessible to all current
GACRC users during the week of July 23, 2020. Further instructions will be sent directly
to users. In the meantime, GACRC users can review documentation on the transition on
the wiki here. Additional documentation and more hands-on training materials are under
development for upcoming workshops.

• Expansion of two GACRC Storage Services: The GACRC recently upgraded Sapelo2’s
Lustre appliance, which serves the cluster’s scratch tier, by increasing its total storage
capacity by an additional 1.2 PetaBytes, resulting in a total of 2.7PB. Additionally, the
long-term project storage tier available at the GACRC was increased by the addition of a
1PB ZFS-based appliance, which will be mirrored to an identical appliance to be located in
the HSC data center, providing additional data resiliency.

5. Support for Staff and Administrators

• Annual account clean-up under way: EITS is preparing for its annual account clean-up.
Last month, many former students, employees and affiliates received initial notice that
EITS will disable their MyIDs and delete their UGAMail account information in August.
These former students, employees and affiliates will receive reminder notices this month
about the impending clean-up. EITS performs these account clean-ups annually to help
prevent unauthorized access to UGA systems and services. This summer’s clean-up
includes about 81,000 records of people formerly associated with UGA, including
undergraduate and graduate students who left UGA during Spring 2019 or earlier, and
dependents, previous employees, and other affiliates who are no longer eligible for an

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account. Of these 81,000, 9,000 still have UGAMail email addresses, so they will receive
three notices that EITS will disable their account August 3. Those who need to maintain
their MyID and access to UGAMail for UGA job duties can have their affiliation updated.
More information about account clean-ups, including how to archive old emails and
contacts can be found on our MyID Account Removal page. For questions, contact Kristi
Wall at [email protected]. 

• EITS cleaning up old listservs: EITS is cleaning up inactive listservs. Listserv owners who
own lists that have had no activity in the past two years should receive notices that EITS
will deactivate their list in September. Owners who want to keep a list should make a post
to that list to keep it active. Listserv owners will have until September 21 to complete this
process, after which, listservs with no activity will be deactivated. For more information,
contact Wes Johnson at [email protected].

• Identity Management Access Review under way: This summer, EITS will begin reviewing
the list of users who have read access to the Identity Management System (IDM). This
review is part of continued efforts to streamline access, leverage functionality available via
the data warehouse, and improve the security posture of the Identity Management System.
This work will assist in transitioning users to leverage UGA’s data warehouse and the
systems of record for data where appropriate. Staff who currently access the portal in the
Identity Management System with only read access will receive additional information
about this effort and any actions needed on their part. For more information contact
Shannon Marable at [email protected]

6. Other General Services

• Microsoft Teams meeting participants limit increasing to 300: Effective this

month, Microsoft Teams will allow up to 300 participants in a meeting. This is an increase
from the 250 limit in Microsoft Teams. Teams is an online collaboration tool that makes it
easy to call, chat and meet from anywhere. It’s free to all eligible UGA students, faculty
and staff as part of the Microsoft Office 365 software package. Starting a Team is easy—
submit a Microsoft Teams Request ticket.

• OneUSG Connect System Maintenance Reminder: OneUSG Connect will be unavailable

for scheduled maintenance from Friday, July 17 at 6 p.m. until Monday, July 20 at 7 a.m.
During this time, OneUSG Connect will not be available. KABA Time Clocks and OneUSG
Connect-Benefits will be available for use. Tentative release notes can be found on
the OneUSG Connect website.

7. Did You Know

• Tech Tip: How to Create a Strong Password: As part of the UGA community, it is our
duty to have strong passwords for our UGA accounts. Strong passwords keep you and
everyone at UGA safer from cyber criminals trying to steal information. The UGA
password standard is 10 or more characters, including complex numbers and characters
(capital and lower case). About 1,600 UGA accounts have eight characters or fewer or do
not follow the new standard of complexity and length. This summer, these accounts will
receive notices to update to a stronger password. Here are some things to avoid when
creating passwords:

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o Words, numbers or known public information associated with you (ex: Social
Security numbers; family names or pet names; birthdays, phone numbers,
addresses; etc.)
o Your login name or any variation of your login name (ex: If your name is Charles,
don’t use “cH@r13s” as your password.)
o Using the same character as the majority of the password (ex: 222222) or using
common letter or number patterns in your password (ex: 123456 or abcdefg)
o Reusing a password that has already been compromised. Here is a good tool to
learn if any of your passwords have been found in a data breach.

University of Georgia students, faculty, and staff, as well as interested others, may subscribe to
this monthly report by sending an email to [email protected] with the phrase subscribe
vpit-news as the body of the message.

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