Microsoft has not identified the root cause, so we cannot say what fixed the problem.  We will update users as we find out. 

If you have questions, or experience voice mail issues following the update, please contact the IT Central Help Desk at 243-4357 or email italk@umontana.edu.

The University is closed on Monday, January 15 for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

The outage started this morning and Century Link is working on resolving the issue.  

We will post as we hear more. 

Please notify IT Central (itcentral@umontana.edu) of any further issues.

Course description

Use DocuSign to complete approvals and agreements in hours—not days—from anywhere and on any device. Quickly and securely access and sign documents. Easily upload and send documents for others to sign. Send reminders and check signing status any time.

If you use UMwpa as your wireless network, we encourage you to log into Eduroam as soon as possible to avoid interruption to your wireless service. Beginning Aug. 9, UMwpa will not show up as an available wireless network.

Logging into Eduroam wireless

Your Eduroam login credentials are similar to UMwpa in that they both use your NetID and NetID password. With Eduroam, however, you need to add "@umontana.edu" after your NetID.

Example:

Username: ab123456@umontana.edu
Password: Your NetID password

For more information, visit our wireless support site, or contact IT Central at 243-HELP.

Benefits of Eduroam

Eduroam is a global wireless network access service that allows you to use your UM credentials to seamlessly connect to secure wireless at more than 12,000 locations worldwide, including more than 450 colleges, universities, and research facilities in the United States.

Map of participating US institutions | Global Eduroam map

Network and telephone chargebacks have constituted a significant part of Information Technology's operating budget for many years, but revenue has dropped 35 percent over the past three years as departments have discontinued telephone service in favor of personal cell phones and opted to have employees connect to the UM network wirelessly rather than through a hardwired network port. While those strategies helped units meet budget challenges, they did not produce overall savings for UM and had a detrimental impact on productivity and services.

A new funding model will rely on allocations from each sector. For FY18, those allocations will be based on historical data and predicted billing.

"We see this as a win-win," CIO Matt Riley said. "The change provides funding stability that allows IT to continue a core set of critical IT services previously funded through the chargebacks. It also makes it feasible for all employees to have University phones for communication and customer services, as well as access to a robust network worthy of a high-level research University."

Units not directly funded by UM will continue to be billed monthly for network and phone ports. One-time charges for service additions or changes will still apply to all UM and non-UM funded units.

Questions about these services can be directed to the IT Central Help Desk at 243-4357, or visit our IT support site.

The team worked through a restoration plan last evening that did not work.  We have fallback options, and will begin work this morning.  It is likely that a relatively small number of Banner transactions, yet still significant, that were placed in the system yesterday morning will require re-entry.  We will follow-up with detailed communication around the exact time-frame where any Banner transactions or changes will need to be re-entered.

Thank you for your patience as our teams work through the issue.  As you can imagine, the highly integrated nature of our systems, most based upon Banner, can create a larger set of complexities in restoring information from backups.

Please direct questions to HELP (x4357), functional area departments (Registrar’s Office, Financial Aid, Business Services & HR) or to me directly.  We are sharing information and our teams will be well-informed around the Banner restoration efforts.

Matt

Matt Riley, CIO

University of Montana

 User's access to a variety of campus applications are impacted, including the following applications:

• CyberBear
• NetID lookup tool
• AIQ
• Academic Planner
• Electronic Banner Request Form
• U Approve
• eProp
• GTO
• Griz Mart
• InfoGriz

We appreciate your patience as they work to restore the system.

We apologize for the inconvenience and we thank you for your patience as we continue to maintain our systems.

If you have not already, we encourage users to take a look at UM Box - UM Box is a cloud-based file storage and collaboration tool available for free to anyone who has a UM NetID. With Box, you can share files, collaborate on documents with others on campus and beyond, back up documents and access your files from any computer or mobile device. With UM Box, you have unlimited storage space. To find out more information about UM Box, please go to: https://www.umt.edu/it/support/box/default.php. If you have already moved all of your data to UM Box, you can ignore this message.

Password change required

Voice mail users will need to reset their password in the new system. Your temporary password will be the last six digits of your University ID (790) number.

To reset your password, dial extension 6245 (MAIL) from your campus phone or 243-6245 from a non-campus phone and enter your temporary password when prompted. You will then be directed through the process of changing your password.

Voice mail commands mostly the same

The new voice mail system from Avaya uses almost all of the same commands for navigating, recording and listening to messages as the current CallPilot system. Voice mail instructions are available at umt.edu/it/support/telephone/voicemail.php.

The Avaya system will provide some additional capabilities, such as managing your voice mail through a web interface and receiving your messages in your email inbox. More information on new features will be available after the transition.

Getting help

The phone system (PBX) will be taken off line at 9:30 PM and will last 5 minutes. Shortly after that, the voice mail system will be taken off line for 5 minutes. The total outage should not be more than 10 minutes for both systems.

We are working with Cisco engineers to get this resolved as quickly as possible and will notify you when it has been resolved. As of right now, we don’t know when service will be restored.

Recorded greetings and stored messages will transfer from the current voicemail system to the new one, but login passwords will not transfer. Employees will receive communication regarding their initial password and how to reset it.

The new system will use almost identical keypad operations to record greetings and manage incoming messages, but you will notice some difference in terminology. For example, instead of using the terms “internal,” “external,” and “temporary” greetings, the new system uses the terms “personal,” “optional,” and “extended absence” greetings.

If you need help

For details on how to use the system visit the voicemail instructions page on the IT website.

• There will be a complete phone system outage for the first approximately 30 minutes.
• All calls to/from campus and on campus will be impacted.
• Existing live calls will be disconnected.
• No new calls into voicemail or any voice menu will be accepted.
• No messages will be able to be left during this first outage.

Here is the schedule of outages during the 6 hour window:

• 6:00 – 6:30 pm:  Campus wide outage including East and West Campus, and all outlying offices with UM-supported telephones.
• 6:00 – 8:00 pm:  All Palmer telephones (VOIP) will be out of service for at least 2 hours beginning at 6:00 pm
• 6:20 – Midnight:  Various patching, testing and configuration updates, may have additional short duration interruptions in services.

Special Notes for Campus Police:

• The CJIN system that campus police uses from the State will NOT be affected.
• UM Telecom personnel will contact Campus Police prior to start of the upgrade to make sure there is no active crisis needing phone service.

Thank you for your cooperation with this planned activity,

Detailed information about Office 365 ProPlus is available on the IT website at:

http://umt.edu/it/support/software/365-pro-plus.php

Questions may be directed to IT Central at 406-243-HELP (4357)

Tuesday, March 31 – 6:30 am – 7:00 am: winapps.umt.edu unavailable

IT administrators will be moving winapps.umt.edu to the new data center on Tuesday, March 31, between 6:30 am and 7:00 am. Content located on the following will be unavailable during this time:

• Student email gateway
• www.umt.edu/winapps
• winapps.umt.edu
• www.umt.edu/media
• wtsiisprod1.gs.umt.edu

Tuesday, March 31 – 6:30 am - 7:00 am: video gateway upgrade

IT network administrators will be upgrading the video gateway Tuesday, March 31, between 6:30 am and 7 am.  Part of the upgrade process involves "unregistering" currently registered video endpoints.  We expect these endpoints will re-register themselves when the gatekeeper again becomes available.  The upgrade process takes ~15 minutes.  If, after the upgrade process, you have problems with any registered video device, please confirm it is registered with the gatekeeper, and if it hasn't re-registered itself, try to again register it with the gatekeeper (video.umt.edu, or 10.10.43.249).  If you have any problems with this, please contact IT Central at 406-243-4357. IT will notify campus when the upgrade is complete. 

Wednesday, April 1 - 7:00 am – 7:30 am: apps.umt.edu unavailable

IT administrators will be moving apps.umt.edu to the new data center on Wednesday, April 1, between 7:00 am and 7:30 am. Content located on the following will be unavailable during this time:

• Apps.umt.edu
• www.umt.edu/apps

Thursday, April 2 – 5:00 pm – 11:00 pm: DFS file share unavailable

The DFS (\\gs\dfs) file share will be unavailable on Thursday, April 2, beginning at 5:00pm until approximately 11:00pm, as IT continues to move equipment into the new data center. If you have folders or files located within this file share, please plan accordingly as they will be inaccessible during this time. As a reminder, secure file storage and sharing is available through UM Box. If you have files located on the DFS share, it’s a good time to permanently relocate them to Box. More about UM Box is available on the IT website at: http://www.umt.edu/it/support/box/default.php.

On the afternoon of March 11, we opened a ticket with Microsoft in search of a solution. At the request of Microsoft, we made two changes. Authorization for the Exchange servers was changed to bypass Active Directory authentication and a group policy change was made.

Email that was queued immediately started to flow to the exchange databases, but connections for clients still didn’t work. Microsoft then advised us to back out patch KB3002657 from our domain controllers. This resolved some of the connections issues, but not all. We then reverted the group policy change requested by Microsoft and asked server administrators on campus to force the change through their servers, clearing up the remaining issues.

No email was lost during the two days, and was always available through Outlook Web Access (OWA).

Again, we apologize for the issues that occurred as a result of this Microsoft update.

• Outlook users who are experiencing the inability to connect to their Outlook clients, please use Outlook Web Access (http://messaging.umt.edu) until the issue is resolved.
• Those users who are unable to send mail, please be assured that your messages will be stored in your Outbox. The messages will automatically send once the issue is resolved.

We apologize for this inconvenience.

 As a reminder, secure file storage and sharing is available through UM Box. If you have files located on the DFS share, it’s a good time to permanently relocate them. More about UM Box is available on the IT website at: http://www.umt.edu/it/support/box/default.php.

 Detailed information about Office 365 ProPlus is available on the IT website at:  http://umt.edu/it/support/software/365-pro-plus.php

Questions may be directed to IT Central at 406-243-HELP (4357)

Beginning April 22, UM employees who did not change their NetID password are required to answer a security question and enter a new password to login to NetID-based services. If you can't remember the answer to your security question, or have not set up a security question, contact IT Central at 243-4357 for assistance.

Please visit umt.edu/it/security/heartbleed.php for more information. (4/23/14)

*Wednesday, April 9: The synchronization process for UMConnect and NetID passwords is now complete. This means that UMConnect passwords are now the same as the NetID password. Mobile devices and email clients may prompt for the current password. Students should enter their NetID passwords. PLEASE NOTE: There was an issue that occurred during the synchronization process that’s impacting some UMConnect email delivery. Messages sent to first.last@umconnect.umt.edu are bouncing back to the sender. We have submitted an incident with Microsoft to correct this issue. In the meantime, when sending email messages to students, please use their Umontana aliases (first.last@umontana.edu).

PLEASE NOTE: There was an issue that occurred during the synchronization process that’s impacting some UMConnect email delivery. During the process Microsoft inadvertently removed the “friendly” UMConnect email address (first.last@umconnect.umt.edu).  This means that messages sent to these addresses are bouncing back.

We have submitted an incident with Microsoft to correct this issue. In the meantime, when sending email messages to students, please use their Umontana aliases (first.last@umontana.edu).

During a crisis, messages are also sent to all university email accounts; communication is kept up to date on the UM home page; and information is sent through social media outlets including Facebook and our Twitter feed @umontana. (3/3/14)

In the meantime, I urge you to make sure you have arranged to receive emergency text notifications from the UM on your cell phone.  To sign up for the texts; log into Cyberbear, click on ‘Personal Information’, and then set your preferences in the ‘Emergency Text Messages’ section.  If you need help with this process, please give our support team a ring at extension 4357 (HELP). 

During a crisis, messages are also sent to all university e-mail accounts; communication is kept up to date on the UM home page; and information is sent through social media outlets including Facebook and our Twitter feed @umontana.

Communication is a key element in helping the campus through a crisis.  We all need to work together to share information during any crisis – and not just through technology.  Campus officials will send updates as our emergency plan is improved.

Matt Riley, CIO

University of Montana

posted: 2/18/14

This outage will affect the following:

All internet access at all UM locations will be lost during this time

• All VPN users
• USFS Internet and Internet 2 access
• Montana PBS link to MSU
• PBX link between UM and MSU through Northern Tier
• SKC, DCC, FVCC and MCC internet access through UM

If you experience any issues after this outage, please contact IT Central @ 243-4357 or itcentral@umontana.edu.

If you or your device are impacted by this change, the easiest way to get connected again is to forget the UMWPA network and then reconnect the device leaving the default network authentication in place.  Use your NetID and password, and accept any certificate prompts you may receive.

For questions or assistance, please contact IT Central at 406.243.HELP (4357). (2/3/14)

For any of your users or devices impacted by this change, the easiest way to get connected again is to forget the UMWPA network and then reconnect the device leaving the default network authentication in place.  Use your NetID and password, and accept any certificate prompts you may receive.

Central IT has a list of people who are known to be connecting using the UM-domain credentials, and we will try to contact them directly as well as provide departmental IT support staff with list of their impacted users. However, Central IT may not be 100% successful in contacting all impacted users directly. Please be prepared to instruct users on how to change their wireless connection(s) or please direct them to IT Central at 406.243.HELP (4357).