Category Archives: IT

IT Project Request Cycle Begins Monday, November 10

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Greetings from the IT Project Management Office!

BCOs can begin submitting IT project requests for the 2015 / 2016 fiscal year on Monday, November 10, 2014. The project request window will be open until Friday, January 23, 2015. This will be the only request cycle for the 2015 / 2016 fiscal year. A link to the IT project request submission form is provided below.

http://www.grcc.edu/informationtechnology/projectmanagement/projectrequestform

Shortly after your project request is received, a project manager from GRCC’s IT Project Management Office will set an appointment with you to ask a series of questions about your request. The information gained from this meeting will aid the IT Department in properly assessing and prioritizing your project request.

Blackboard outage resolution

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Yesterday morning at 8:42 a.m., the network storage that supports Blackboard data, suffered a failure that caused Blackboard to be unavailable until 5 p.m. GRCC network engineers worked with our storage vendor to restore the system as it was at the time of the outage.

We deeply apologize for causing an interruption in your classes. If you encounter any problem in your courses, please contact IT Customer Support at 234-4357.

R25 scheduling system to be offline this week

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The R25 system is going to be moved to a hosted environment this week.

IT will be turning off all scheduling access for users during this migration, which will begin Tuesday evening.  We will have “VIEW ONLY” access on Wednesday and Thursday, with completion scheduled by end of business on Thursday.

In the event of an emergency, Mary Jo Chisholm, Becky Yoder, Bryan Vliem and Victoria Janowiak will continue to have access.  Becky Yoder will be the primary contact for the “down days” for individuals who may need to schedule a room on short notice.  Please contact her if you have any questions at 616-234-3715 or byoder@grcc.edu.

Security threat for Apple computers

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GRCC IT has identified a security threat that affects the bash terminal for Apple computers. The vulnerability, also known as Shellshock, affects most Linux and Unix systems. For more information concerning the threat please see http://support.apple.com/kb/ht6495

If you have a college owned Mac, please schedule a service appointment with the help desk (x3688) so that we can patch your system. If you have a personally owned Mac please apply the Shellshock security update http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

IT PMO Weekly Update: project risk management

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Project Risk Management includes the processes of conducting risk management planning, identification, analysis, response planning, and controlling risk on a project. The objectives of project risk management are to increase the likelihood and impact of positive events (i.e., opportunities), and decrease the likelihood and impact of negative events in the project.

The six Project Risk Management processes are as follows:

  • Plan Risk Management– The process of defining how to conduct risk management activities for a project.
  • Identify Risks– The process of determining which risks may affect the project and documenting their characteristics.
  • Perform Qualitative Risk Analysis– The process of prioritizing risks for further analysis or action by assessing and combining their probability of occurrence and impact.
  • Perform Quantitative Risk Analysis-The process of numerically analyzing the effect of identified risks on overall project objectives.
  • Plan Risk Responses-The process of developing options and actions to enhance opportunities and to reduce threats to project objectives.
  • Control Risks– The process of implementing risk response plans, tracking identified risks, monitoring residual risks, identifying new risks, and evaluating risk process effectiveness throughout the project.

This preceding information was taken directly from the following:

(2013) A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) Fifth edition. Newtown Square, Pa.: Project Management Institute, Inc., pg. 309.

Next week we’ll look at strategies for managing negative project risks or threats.

 

Security Updates to Internet Explorer

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Improvements include:

  • Homepage will be set to grcc.edu to prevent malicious programs from changing the default homepage
  • Automatic pop-up blocking will be enforced
  • Adding websites to the Trusted Sites Zone will be managed by IT
  • Internet Explorer will automatically remove temporary internet files when browser is closed

Internet Explorer 10 now available for office computers

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Internet Explorer 10 is now available for staff and faculty to install. Please follow the steps below to complete the installation. Note that this installation will require your computer to restart.

1) Launch the Application Explorer from the desktop or from Start > All Programs > Novell ZENworks > ZENworks Application Window

2) Double-Click on Internet Explorer 10 (a window will appear saying “Internet Explorer 10 Installation Notice / System Restart is Required.) Click OK

3) Once the installation has completed, another window will appear to restart the computer. Click Yes to restart computer. Internet Explorer will not work until a restart has been performed.

Changes to Google Chrome Browser for office computers

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A new policy update to GRCC’s version of Google Chrome is being released this week. Users may install the new version from the Application Explorer. Look for the bundle titled “Google Chrome Enterprise”. This version will increase user functionality while also addressing several security issues.

What to expect in the new version:

  • Availability of bookmarks – bookmark management is currently unavailable with the existing version of Chrome. The new version will give users the ability to create and manage bookmarks.
  • Corrected the “File path too long” error when attempting to download a file.

To Install:

  1. Launch the Application Explorer from you desktop OR via Start > All Programs > Novell ZENworks > click on ZENworks Application Window
  2. Double-click the icon labeled “Google Chrome Enterprise”
  3. View the progress of the installation by Right-clicking the ZENworks icon in the system tray, and selecting “Show Progress”