Category Archives: ITS

Telephone System Replacement at Middlebury and Monterey campuses and Washington, D.C. office

Why:

  • Middlebury campus PBX is 20 years old, past end-of-life, operating with elevated risk
  • Realize modern unified communication features to enhance user-friendliness, efficiency
  • Integrate calling between Middlebury, Monterey Washington, D.C. office

What:

  Cisco Systems Unified Communications
  • Provides voice, video, conferencing, desktop collaboration, instant messaging, presence indication including Jabber softphone and mobile client.
  • New voice mail system with email integration for all.
  • New telephones, or headsets for those who choose to use soft-phone application.
  Training
  • Customized online user training for Cisco phones and Jabber softphone client.
  • Professional trainer to conduct end-user training for Middlebury campus department liaisons.

When:

  • Middlebury campus – October, November, December 2017
  • Monterey campus – January 2018
  • Washington, D.C. office – January 2018

ITS will keep all informed through MiddPoints updates and in our Unified Communications Project web page.

Moodle Archive and the Transition to Canvas

Middlebury’s Moodle instance is redirecting to https://moodle.middlebury.edu. Please note that the archive is only accessible to Middlebury faculty, staff, and students who are accessing the site while on a Middlebury network, or via Middlebury VPN.

Archive Access

The site will prompt you with a drop-down request to login with your Middlebury username and password:

You will know that the login attempt worked when you are directed to Moodle.

To enter the site click the “Login” link which will re-direct to the MIddlebury login page. In testing, a dropdown menu came up a second time for some when attempting to login to Moodle as described below. Login once more with your Middlebury username and password.

Archive Restrictions

The archive will not be accessible to Middlebury self-registered guest accounts. The archive will be maintained until December 2018* when it is expected to be de-commissioned.

*December 2018 will mark the end of the two-year online course material retention policy since the adoption of Canvas in the Fall 2016 term.

Access from Course Hub

Active faculty, staff, and students can access the Moodle archives via Moodle links from the Course Hub. Clicking on a link to a past Moodle resource in Course Hub will prompt the login process described above.

Importing Moodle Courses into Canvas

We will continue to support faculty who plan to import archived course content from the Moodle archive to Canvas.* You may use the existing instructions to migrate your course sites, or you may request assistance.

*Some Moodle course archives are very large (greater than 1GB) due to repeated imports and remixing over the years. If your back-up is noticeably large, we may request that you be more selective with items included in the import file to reduce the file size import to Canvas. We may also make recommendations about ways to more distributively host file types (e.g. video and audio) that tend to take up greater amounts of server space.

Creating Back-Up Copies of Moodle Content for Personal Archiving

Moodle currently hosts course content dating back to Fall 2010 term. After December 2018, Moodle will be de-commissioned. If you would like to create a back-up of your Moodle formatted content for personal storage, we recommend following the course back-up process outlined by Moodle.org. The process will produce an .mbz formatted file. This file format can be imported into Canvas or re-imported into another instance of Moodle* which could be accomplished by installing a copy of Moodle on a personal MiddCreate site. Alternatively, an .mbz file can be renamed to .zip format for limited file access, or storing on a cloud file storage account like Google Drive or Microsoft 365 OneDrive.

*Please note that Moodle is frozen at version of Moodle 2.8.8 while the most recent stable version of Moodle is 3.3.1 (as of July 2017). This means that archive content may not be fully compatible with newer versions of Moodle.

Additional Questions or Help?

Contact library-at@middlebury.edu

Systems Maintenance this Sunday, July 30th

During our regular 6am – 10am EST maintenance window we have the following activities scheduled:

 

  • The VT campuses PaperCut print management system will be upgraded to address an issue with the WebPrint feature
    • Print servers will be unavailable for use up to 90 minutes during the maintenance window
    • Afterward, upgrading the individual print release stations will take an additional 90-120 minutes

 

We appreciate your patience as we continuously strive to keep our systems functioning optimally.

 

Regards,

Billy

 

Billy Sneed

ITS – Central Systems & Network Services

Middlebury College

A tour of Middlebury’s wireless network

Please join us for a special ITS Tech Partners meeting.  Rick James, our wireless network administrator, will provide a behind the scenes tour of Middlebury’s wireless network.  He’ll start with some basic information about how wireless networking works and how it is different than wired networking.  He’ll then describe Middlebury’s wireless architecture and how it has evolved over the last several years, including the recent extension to our Monterey, CA campus so that now wireless at MIDD and MIIS operate as one logical wireless network.  Rick will demonstrate how we use some of our monitoring tools to plan our wireless network deployment through a building, how we troubleshoot issues, measure performance and capacity.  Additionally, Rick recently analyzed a student survey of our wireless services, he’ll share the results and seek your input on constructing a similar survey for faculty and staff.

If you ever wonder how wifi works and Middlebury future plans for wireless, be sure to attend this ITS Tech Partners meeting.  All are welcome, please share with others you think might be interested.

When:  Wednesday, July 26, 2017 from 3:00 – 4:00 pm ET

Where:  Library 145 and Zoom:  https://middlebury.zoom.us/j/9445370958

Systems Maintenance this Sunday, May 21st, 2017

During our regular maintenance window on Sunday, May 21st from 6:00 am to 10:00am EST we have the following activities scheduled:

 

  • Our on-premise Exchange servers will be upgraded. These servers are for automated messages generated from on-premise systems, and for group management. User email does not interact with these servers.
    • There will be a number of brief (1-2 minute) Exchange service interruptions during this maintenance window

 

We appreciate your patience as we continuously strive to keep our systems functioning optimally.

 

Regards,

Billy

 

Billy Sneed

ITS – Central Systems & Network Services

Middlebury College

Systems Maintenance this Thursday, May 18th

During our regular maintenance window on Thursday, May 18th from 5:00 am to 7:30am EST we have the following activities scheduled:

 

  • The authentication platform for wireless, Aruba ClearPass, will be updated
    • This maintenance will affect the VT and CA campuses
    • New authentications will be unavailable for 30 minutes during the maintenance window
    • Wireless devices with an active session will be unaffected

 

We appreciate your patience as we continuously strive to keep our systems functioning optimally.

 

Regards,

Billy

 

Billy Sneed

ITS – Central Systems & Network Services

Middlebury College

Systems Maintenance this Thursday, May 4th, 2017

During our regular maintenance window on Star Wars Day, Thursday, May 4th from 5:00 am to 7:30am EST we have the following activities scheduled:

 

  • Hummingbird, the web server front end to the undergrad Classes folders, will be replaced by a new server named Sunbird.
  • There will be brief interruption to network services, up to 10 minutes, at each of the following building on the VT campus
    • Allen Hall
    • Hadley Hall
    • Milliken Hall
    • Forest Hall
    • Coffrin Hall

 

We appreciate your patience as we continuously strive to keep our systems functioning optimally.

 

Regards,

Billy

 

Billy Sneed

ITS – Central Systems & Network Services

Middlebury College