Oregon Schools IT Updates

Partial Internet service outage, 1/17/2012, 1-5 AM

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:52:00 +0000

This should not result in any actual outage because we have dual fiber connections, but I'm posting it here in case something ends up happening which results in a disruption.

Type: Planned Outage
Location: Madison
Ticket Number: 23172
Party: Charter
Start Time: 1/17/2012 1:00 CST
End Time: 1/17/2012 5:00 CST
Description: Charter Maintenance

Engineers:

Reporters:

Affected:
BeloitColl
BerlinSD
BigFootHS
DelavanDarienSD
EdgertonSD
JacksonCo
MonroeSD
OregonSD
RiponColl
ViterboUniv

Notices:

Maria Accuardi @ 2012-01-11 09:17:25
Charter Communications will be performing maintenance that will
affect your services.

Location: Madison, Wisconsin

Description: Resplice damaged fiber to prevent service
degradation issues and ensure optimum performance and
reliability.

Impact: 150 Minutes Downtime

Charter Ticket#: 100434

OregonSD.org website maintenance outage Saturday morning

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:12:00 +0000

From our web site provider:

"We will be performing server maintenance on Saturday, January 14, 2012 from 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM ET. While there will not be a complete outage during the maintenance window, connectivity will be sporadic during the required server reboots. We appreciate your understanding."

Gmail now has "Read Receipts"

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 02:49:00 +0000

Gmail now supports "Read Receipts" which allow the sender of an email message to request a verification from the recipient that the email message has been read. This was one of the features that people missed when we moved from Groupwise to Gmail, so I've turned it on for the oregonsd.net domain.
Instructions for using this feature are available at http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1385059

Brief email outage this morning

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:14:00 +0000

The brief email outage this morning was due to a domain used by Google to authenticate accounts (accounts.google.com) being categorized by our security filter as a phishing site. This may actually have been accurate, as there has been an increase in phishing activity lately. Alternatively, it could be that the domain was recently added by Google.

Regardless, we have fixed the problem. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Phones and voicemail are back up

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:43:00 +0000

Phones and voicemail are back up and running normally. Thanks for your patience.

Phone/voicemail outage

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:12:00 +0000

Phones and voicemail are currently down. We are waiting for the vendor support folks to either get it running again, or to give us the all-clear to reboot everything. If we don't wait for that, inevitably there is some glitch which prevents them from getting the diagnostic information they need to try to unravel this mystery.

Video on using Campus Portal Mobile App

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:24:00 +0000

There is a promotional video on using the new Campus Mobile Portal App for iOS devices. This video is meant for parents and students. It is viewable at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjW6rloXrIs

Upgrades to Firefox and iTunes coming tonight!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:08:00 +0000

We've had many requests for updates to a couple of our core applications, Firefox and iTunes. Normally, we try to do this when school is out (like during the summer) to avoid disruptions, but since our current Firefox version is having difficulties displaying Infinite Campus pages and the newest Apple OS needs a new iTunes version, we will try to push these out this afternoon (10/26) through tomorrow morning.

What we need from all of you is to NOT shut down any computers today. Close all of your programs and log off, but leave the computers powered on. I have set the applications to start installing automatically beginning at 4:30 p.m. It's actually a random schedule using a 3-hour window no earlier than 4:30, so your computer may start right away, it may wait for several hours. Either way, when the install happens, the computers will automatically reboot without warning and should also shutdown via our policy at 9:00 p.m.

If a computer does not get updated tonight, it will likely happen the next time someone starts it and will also reboot without warning. If this happens to you once in the next day or two, assume that is what is happening. If you continue to have unexpected restarts or either of the applications stop working, then report that to us via the helpdesk.

Thanks from technology!

Slow Google Docs- how you can help

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:54:00 +0000

We've been investigating reports of Google Docs being slow lately, and it appears that it is due to not having enough Internet bandwidth available. Some bandwidth hogs, such as audio and video streaming sites, are now being blocked or throttled to alleviate the traffic congestion. You can help by reducing or eliminating the use of non-instructional Internet use.

For those of you who really "need" to listen to music at work, there's this really cool invention that streams music and other programming directly to your desktop and uses zero bandwidth, plus has a wide variety of pre-selected playlists. It's called a radio, and they are really quite inexpensive.

Google Docs list not showing up

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:56:00 +0000

Google Docs is having an issue showing the document list. This is happening to people all over the world, not just our district. This is being worked on by Google. There is nothing we can do except wait until they get it fixed.

You can check http://www.google.com/appsstatus for an updated status report of this issue and all Google Apps service.

Phones and voicemail down briefly

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:15:00 +0000

The phones and voicemail systems were down briefly this morning. We rebooted, and our support vendor is reviewing the system logs in a continuing effort to track down the elusive cause of these outages.

We apologize for this outage. Thank you to the central contacts at each building who reported the outage via the helpdesk.

Phones down for maintenance tonight (9/29) 6:45 - 7:30 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 21:47:00 +0000

Phones are going down tonight (9/29) at 6:45 PM for emergency maintenance so a new part can be installed.

Phones back up

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 19:15:00 +0000

Phone and voicemail are back up. We are sending the log files to Mitel so they can try to figure out what happened.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Voicemail and phones (incoming) are down

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 18:50:00 +0000

Voicemail and incoming phone calls are down. We are working on it with ESG. As far as we can tell, most locations can still dial out.

More updates as we find more.

Brooklyn fiber is back up

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 02:59:00 +0000

The fiber connection to Brooklyn has been repaired. Phones and computer networks are working normally again.

Fiber to Brooklyn down

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 18:47:00 +0000

Update:
The likely cause has been identified (homeowner digging without calling Digger's Hotline), but that will not be confirmed until more testing occurs. We are working with vendors to find somebody to diagnose and fix the problem as soon as possible, but it will likely not happen until sometime Monday. In the meantime, we are going to bring portable Internet access devices and phones to Brooklyn to provide the office staff with communication capabilities.

>>>
Phones and computer networks in Brooklyn are down due to a fiber optic cable disruption. We are investigating the problem.

Phones are back up

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 21:13:00 +0000

Phones are back up and working normally.

Phone issues- working on it

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:31:00 +0000

We have reports of phone issues and are working on it. Incoming lines appear to be not working correctly.

Brief internet outage this morning- debrief

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:19:00 +0000

There was a brief internet outage for users on campus this morning when the network security server stopped passing traffic. It was resolved after about ten minutes. We apologize for the interruption.

Can't get to Amazon? Internet Explorer may be the problem

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:51:00 +0000

Short version:

Amazon.com no longer supports Internet Explorer, and if you are using Internet Explorer, you may not be able to use the Amazon.com site.

Longer version:

Dan the Bookman was unable to place orders on Amazon so he called the helpdesk and we started researching the problem. We couldn't really find a solution. Dan tried from home, thinking it was a problem with our firewall or network filter. He sent me this update this morning:

I remembered to place my order at 5:45 this morning and was having the same issue even at home. It turns out that as of the 1st of September, Amazon appears to no longer support Internet explorer. After searching for 15 minutes on their website, I was able to speak to a human who said that they use only Firefox and support that format. I'm not sure if it is an affront to Microsoft, but was stunned to be told that they don't "support" explorer.

Nowhere on its site do they publicly say this(probably not a good business move in my opinion). I had no trouble ordering using Internet explorer just two weeks ago, and little trouble once I switched to Firefox.

As we geeks have mentioned often in the past, you should never use Internet Explorer unless absolutely necessary. Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and Camino are some suggested alternatives.

Brief voicemail outage tonight at 9:00 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 20:40:00 +0000

The district voicemail system will be unavailable briefly at 9:00 PM to perform an upgrade. The outage should last no more than ten minutes.

Phone and voicemail documentation

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:26:00 +0000

Believe it or not, there are still people being hired. Sometimes this creates a domino effect of changes to phone extensions and voicemail boxes, so not all phone and voicemail is configured yet.

But here is the documentation page for phone and voicemail so you can read how to perform most phone and voicemail tasks. https://sites.google.com/a/oregonsd.net/technology/documentation/phone-and-voicemail-instructions (staff login required)

Instructions for teachers with Moodle courses

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 19:33:00 +0000

In response to many teacher requests over the past year, we upgraded the Moodle server to version 2.1. However, the conversion process had some technical limitations that we and our beta-tester teachers did not catch. This means that many teachers are missing some documents in their courses. Fear not, we have your data!

If you are missing items, you need to follow the instructions posted at https://sites.google.com/a/oregonsd.net/technology/documentation/moodle/2-1-upgrade-file-rollover (staff login required)

This involves retrieving your files, then uploading them anew to your Moodle course.

Many thanks to Chris Brown for figuring out a way to resurrect these files and make them accessible in a human-readable manner.

Cool new features for teachers

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 01:54:00 +0000

Teachers! Learn about the new teacher tools in Campus on this YouTube Video (in HD).

Infinite Campus Support Procedures

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Tanner) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 01:52:00 +0000

Now that the implementation phase of Infinite Campus is coming to a close, OSD staff should contact the OSD IT Helpdesk with any requests for support with Infinite Campus. The IT department will address support requests and escalate any issues we are not able to resolve up to CESA 5 or Infinite Campus support.

Additionally, staff can access instruction guides, documentation, videos, and other helpful links on the OSD Infinite Campus Support Site.