admin

To campus Banner users:

Computing & Technology Services has successfully put in place the new security measures that allow campus users to authenticate to the Banner production server. Users should be able to login successfully from on campus or through the VPN at this time.

Work is still ongoing for the dev/test instance of Banner but we’re expecting services to be restored by late this afternoon. A notice will be posted to the Announcement & Systems Status page once that work is complete.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the IT Service Desk by email at itservicedesk@potsdam.edu. We sincerely appreciate your patience in this matter.

Thank you

Last year, SUNY completed an assessment of the system-wide print landscape (print devices, print volume and type, and existing campus managed print contracts) which revealed some startling statistics. SUNY prints more than 50 million pages a month, and possesses more than 40,000 devices, of which approximately 50% are personal or desktop printers. The analysis, conducted by an independent print consultant (Pharos), also determined that SUNY spends approximately $50 million per year on printing, with color printing accounting for more than 50% of the cost.

As a result of this assessment, SUNY established the System-wide Print Resource Use Policy – an initiative that seeks to reduce printing across all SUNY campuses and calls on SUNY Potsdam to establish campus goals to reduce the amount of printing and number of printers. This policy also establishes system-wide print defaults and standards; limits printing to items essential for academic instruction or required to perform and complete business needs; advances sustainability goals to reduce the college’s paper, energy use and carbon footprint; deploys software to monitor usage by individual, application, department, and device; and requires campuses centralize their print budgets.

SUNY Potsdam Printing Initiative:
In tandem with SUNY’s Print Initiative, SUNY Potsdam will be moving forward with our own initiative on campus where employees will be active participants in the effort to “print smart and print less.” The project, led by Computing & Technology Services (CTS), will begin this semester and consist of three phases aimed at achieving print efficiency, optimization and meeting sustainability goals by August 2023.

In Phase 1, we will analyze the data that has been collected since 2019 to understand our current fleet of printer hardware and usage. We are looking to reduce the number of campus printers prior to migrating to a new print management solution. Per SUNY, local desktop printers must be removed and printing consolidated to larger, more cost effective, shared printers. We will be working over the course of the semester with employees and departments who currently utilize desktop printers to move tasks to digital workflows, reducing the need for printing. At this time, we will also set up new connections to networked printers.

Once the print fleet has been reduced, CTS will then move onto Phase 2, where we will begin the design and implementation process which will determine final printer locations.

Finally, phase 3 will entail migrating the campus over to a new print management solution and training all users.

Impact and Benefits:

Our goal is to achieve many benefits as a result of our commitment to reducing the amount of printing on campus. We will save on consumables and electricity and reduce our carbon footprint. Additionally, this is one of several initiatives that our college leadership has identified as a cost savings, in our financial stability plan.

We expect there to be system and end user impacts as we transition to this new low-print environment. A culture shift in “environmental shared” printing will undoubtedly unfold.

Once we have employees shifted to the new managed print solution, student printing will be evaluated.

What’s Next?
-CTS will be reaching out to those of you who have desktop printers to schedule their removal.
-CTS will work with the Physical Plant on the dissolution or recycling of printers.
-Purchasing & Payables will continue to review purchasing of any new equipment, and review any applicable maintenance contracts and leases.
-Business Affairs will assist with centralizing the print budget.

We appreciate your patience and assistance with this process, as we work to reduce our carbon footprint and realize critically needed fiscal savings.

Sincerely,

Mindy Thompson
Associate Vice President for Communications
SUNY Potsdam
44 Pierrepont Ave.
Potsdam, NY 13676
315-267-3486 (office)
thompsme@potsdam.edu
www.potsdam.edu

1. On the “More information required” page click “Next” 

2. On the “don’t lose access to your account!” page, please set up a minimum of TWO additional verification methods. It may prompt you to configure Alternate Email, Txt (Mobile Phone), Call (Mobile Phone), Office Phone, Security Questions. If you do not set up at least two methods, you will not be able to use the Self-Service Password Reset (SSRP) Portal.  Once you are done with setting up the additional verification methods, please click “finish”.  

Network system maintenance for 12/20/19 is complete.

CTS is beginning network maintenance. Expect brief losses of network connectivity throughout the campus. An announcement will be made when work is complete.

All services are now authenticating users properly.

Some services are experiencing authentication (“AD-LDS”) errors.  CTS is aware of the problem and working to rectify it.

User are not able to login to some systems, including online library databases from off campus, The Quad area of the campus web site from off campus, and the SUNY HR system and employee portal. Moodle and Outlook are unaffected. Technicians have been and continue to investigate the problem.

Microsoft recently released Office 2019 as part of Office 365.  Some users are reporting that their Office applications are in read only mode and asking to be activated.  If you are not receiving this notice, you need to take no action. Your update automatically activated successfully.
To activate and sign-in:

1. Close all of the Office applications. Make sure they are not running at all as signified by a dot under their icon in the Dock.
2. Open one of them. For example Word. Do not do this by using an existing document, just open the program so it goes to the new document selection screen.
3. In the welcome window where you can start a blank document, template, etc. click the icon in the upper left where it says Sign in.
4. Once signed in (or if you are already signed in) if you see the Activate button in the lower left, click it and enter your credentials if asked.Reminder: you will sign in with your standard email and password just like any of our other services. This will enable your campus O365 subscription and activate the apps.

By signing in you will now have access to many more of the options in the O365 suite than previously available with our standard site license. This has been a highly requested option that CTS is now able to provide with the recent update and release.

CTS is seeing a higher than normal instance of Email Spoofing. This is defined by Wikipedia as:
“E-mail spoofing is a term used to describe fraudulent e-mail activity in which the sender address and other parts of the e-mail header are altered to appear as though the e-mail originated from a different source. E-mail spoofing is a technique commonly used for spam e-mail and phishing to hide the origin of an e-mail message. By changing certain properties of the e-mail, such as the From, Return-Path and Reply-To fields (which can be found in the message header), ill-intentioned users can make the e-mail appear to be from someone other than the actual sender.”
As always, if you do suspect suspicious activity happening with your account, immediately visit https://account.potsdam.edu/ and change your password to something that you’ve not used on any site or service before.