Author Archives: Cynthia Slater

For Staff & Faculty: One Stop Shopping for Department & Course Website Assistance

Help Key

Need to make changes to your departmental web page?  Could you use a hand with your course website or blog?  Have questions about moving your webforms to our new secure server?  Do wiki formatting woes keep you awake at night?  We have the solution — a peaceful place where you can work on your pages AND get your questions answered.  Sign up for a Website Maintenance Work Session (or two).  Staff from Information Technology Services (ITS) and Academic Technology will be available to answer your questions and help you troubleshoot problems. These are not formal workshops — please bring your work, your questions, and yourself!

Our first session will be offered Tuesday, September 16 at 9:00 am in Davis Family Library, room 105.  Visit go/techworkshops to view the rest of the fall semester schedule.  Please use our convenient online signup form to let us know you what session(s) you plan to attend.

WorldAPP/Key Survey Performance Issues [updated 7/15/14]

We would like to share the messages received from our Key Survey vendor, WorldAPP, concerning current performance issues:

From: Customer Care [mailto:customercare@worldapp.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2014 3:34 PM
Subject: WorldAPP Performance Notification Update

We are following up to provide you with an update on the progress of the investigation of the recent WorldAPP Platform performance issue.

Our technical teams have applied a number of enhancements to the data collection module within the platform to address this issue. WorldAPP will continue daily maintenance work on the platform for the next week.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the recent performance issue. We realize the important role our services play in your business, and we take that responsibility very seriously.

For additional information surrounding this issue we encourage you to visit our WorldAPP Community message board. Please do not hesitate to contact WorldAPP Support via live chat, phone: 781-849-8118 ext. 1 or email: support@worldapp.com, if you have any further questions or require additional assistance.

We thank you for your patience and understanding.

Best Regards,

WorldAPP Customer Care
customercare@worldapp.com

——-

From: Customer Care [mailto:customercare@worldapp.com]
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2014 1:46 PM
Subject: WorldAPP Performance Notification

This message is to inform you that we are currently experiencing intermittent performance issues inside the platform.Though the application is available, and we have identified the issue, there may be temporary interruptions in service as we work to test and implement enhancements. We will be posting live updates inside the WorldAPP Community forum to keep you up to speed on our progress.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience you may experience as this technical difficulty is being resolved.

We will follow up with you within the next 24 hours with a detailed report of the cause and actions taken to address the performance issues.

Your patience is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
WorldAPP Customer Care
customercare@worldapp.com

Key Survey Scheduled Maintenance & Downtime on July 5

KeySurvey LogoThe following information is important only for individuals having a Key Survey account used to create, distribute, and work with surveys and response data.

WorldAPP is excited to announce that our Key Survey / Form.com application will be upgraded to the new version 8.5 on Saturday, July 5th, 2014, between the hours of:

EST:   1 AM and 9 AM / GMT:    6 AM and 2 PM

Please note that your account will be unavailable during the system upgrade, (including all surveys, forms, voting and reports).  Your respondents attempting to access surveys/forms or reports will receive a friendly notice of the system maintenance in progress.  Once the maintenance has been completed, the application and all survey/form/report links will be accessible.   We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

What’s new in version 8.5?  This update is intended to enhance application capabilities and provide more powerful functionality, as well as introduce the Key Survey and Form.com Mobile apps.  Here are a few resources provided by WorldApp to help you get familiar with the new features and offerings:

Printing to Public Printers — Minding P’s & Queues Just Got Easier

Blue PrinterDo you print at the College libraries?  At any of our public computing labs?  If so, on your next visit, expect a streamlined list of printer choices offering expanded locations where you can go to release your print job(s).  It’s easier and more flexible!

Look for two new print queues — Library_Printers and Non_Library_Printers — that are now available for use.    (FollowMeBW will be retired.)

Remember…  For fastest results, print directly from a lab computer.  Visit go/howtoprint to view our updated instructions on how to print to a public printer.

Drupal, Moodle, WordPress, Mediawiki & More: Upcoming workshops

The LIS summer workshop schedule is now available.  Visit go/lisworkshops to view offerings for May through August and sign up for topics of interest.

We’re happy to be able to offer new, expanded website work sessions where you can get help with any of your websites — whether in Drupal, Moodle, Mediawiki or WordPress — we’ll have staff on hand who can help with all of these!  We’ve scheduled regular opportunities throughout the summer so you can plan ahead.  You’ll find a few Drupal introductions as well, covering basic website skills for those just starting out.

Do you prefehttp://go.middlebury.edu/lyndainfor to learn on your own?  Summer can be a great time for professional development.  Check out lynda — a fabulous online learning resource that uses short videos to help you acquire new business and technology skills.  Lynda is also available off-campus and does not require VPN, so no fair trying on that excuse; simply use http://go.middlebury.edu/lynda to go directly to Middlebury’s login portal and give it a whirl.

Macintosh – Middfiles – Mmmmm… News You Can Use

Mac users…  Are you having the best possible experience with Middfiles?  It may be time to update how you connect to Middfiles, as well as create some useful shortcuts!

First, check your connection.  In the Finder, click on the Go menu, then click Connect to Server.  You should use cifs://middcloud.middlebury.edu/middfiles and remove any “smb” middfiles favorites you may have stored, as shown.

Go>Connect to Server

Removing outdated SMB favorite

Now it’s time to create some powerful Sidebar favorites for easy access to your frequently-used folders (see sample below).  Sidebar favorite locations are visible in all your programs!  Refer to our wiki article for complete details on how to create these favorites & get rid of outdated ones.

Sidebar Favorite Sample

Sidebar Favorite Sample

Technical stuff:  We use the SMB protocol to connect to Middfiles almost exclusively on campus and the latest revision is CIFS.  To use the most current version of SMB you must specify CIFS in your connection.  Outdated connections may results in errors when saving to Middfiles or be slower.

Get Help with Drupal, Moodle, Mediawiki & WordPress — One Stop Shopping!

Help balloonDo you maintain a website in Drupal, Moodle, MediaWiki, or WordPress?  LIS is now offering expanded work sessions that cover all four of these web applications, providing you with “one stop shopping” when you need website assistance.  Staff from Web Application Development, Curricular Technology, and User Services will be close by to lend a hand with your projects.

Our first expanded session will be offered Wednesday, April 30 at 3:00 pm.  Please let us know you plan to attend; use our convenient online signup form.

LIS Workshops for March – April: Google Analytics, Drupal and Video-based Learning

Our current workshop schedule is now available.  Visit go/lisworkshops to view upcoming offerings and sign up for topics of interest.  Choose from Drupal introductions that cover basic web site maintenance skills, work sessions where you can get help with specific questions about how to improve your departmental web site, as well as Google Analytics to learn how to unlock the mysteries of your website’s traffic patterns.

We are also offering several opportunities to learn how to access and use  lynda.com  — Middlebury’s fabulous online learning resource that uses short videos to help you acquire new business and technology skills.  Anyone who is unfamiliar with this “no-cost-to-you” training benefit is missing out!

Lynda’s recently added courses include such varied topics as “Up and Running with Excel What-if Analysis,” “Delivering Employee Feedback,” and “The Art of Photoshop Compositing.”  Watch a single video or work through an entire course, but be warned — it’s addictive.