Vice President for Information Technology

Status and Activity Report for March 2022

Prepared by Timothy M. Chester, Vice President for Information Technology (VPIT)

1. Key Items for Faculty and Staff Meetings

• Prepare for fall network maintenance: EITS plans to conduct a network maintenance on
October 22. Network maintenances are necessary to continue to support the network,
allowing EITS to provide ample bandwidth and Internet capacity to the University in the
future. We typically conduct large network maintenances twice a year, during which
campus Internet and campus information systems are usually inaccessible. For questions,
contact Rayid Tartir at rayid@uga.edu.

• FY22 user access verification kicks off March 28: In preparation for the financial state
audit for FY22, EITS will conduct a verification of all user accounts for several systems.
Verification will kick off March 28 and will include Banner systems, the UGA Financial
Management System, the UGA Budget Management System, OneUSG Connect and
UGAJobs. On March 28, users with certain levels of access to these systems will receive
emails, asking them to verify their access. Supervisors will also need to review and decide
to approve or deny access for employees under their purview. All verification processes
will be conducted in TeamDynamix this year and must be completed by April 29. For more
information about the user verification process, please contact Lynn Wilson at
llatimer@uga.edu.

• Survey of UGA Technology Services to be Administered: The Vice President for

Information Technology will administer the annual TechQual survey for UGA students,
faculty and staff this semester. The campus-wide survey will be sent to a random sampling
of students and employees. They will be asked to gauge the effectiveness of several
technology services at the University, such as network connectivity, websites,
administrative systems and wireless service. The results of the TechQual survey are used
to guide future IT initiatives at the University. For more information, please contact Lynn
Wilson at llatimer@uga.edu.

2. Services for Students

• Work under way to upgrade wireless equipment in University Housing: EITS network
technicians are in the process of installing new wireless access points throughout
University Housing to improve wireless service in each building. The work is part of a $5
million project spanning five years to replace and upgrade equipment in 18 residence halls
on the Athens campus. Technicians have completed work in Mary Lyndon Hall, Lipscomb
Hall, Mell Hall, Hill Hall, Church Hall, Boggs Hall, Creswell Hall, Russell Hall, Oglethorpe
House, University Village K and L and Rogers Road Housing M, N, P, Q, R and S. Work
will continue on other residence halls through the spring semester. For more information,
contact Chris Fleming at cfleming@uga.edu.

• More than $1M in campus wireless upgrades planned: Work is under way on more
wireless upgrades in buildings across the Athens, Buckhead and Griffin campuses. These
upgrades are part of EITS’s work to continuously improve wifi connectivity and coverage
to support teaching, learning and student life. The $1.2 million project, funded by Student
Technology Fees, includes wireless refreshes and redesigns in many buildings including

VPIT Status and Activity Report for March 2022 Page 1 of 6

 Caldwell Hall, Brooks Hall, Boyd Graduate Studies, Pharmacy North & South, the Davison
Life Sciences Complex, the Coverdell Center, the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center
and the Griffin Campus. More access point replacements are also planned at the Center for
Applied Genetic Technologies, the Lamar Dodd School of Art, the Ramsey Student Center,
the Science Learning Center, the Terry-Buckhead campus and Wright Hall, Rhodes Hall,
Miller Hall and Russell Hall at the Health Sciences Campus. In addition, more
improvements to outdoor wireless are planned for spaces north of Meigs Hall, along Herty
Drive, Myers Quad and the greenspace on the north side of Grady College, and PAWS-
Secure access will be added to areas of the Georgia Center for Continuing Education,
except the hotel. Work is expected to be completed by June 2022. For more information,
contact Chris Fleming at cfleming@uga.edu.

3. Support for Teaching Faculty

• New writing and teaching tool, Turnitin, coming to eLC: EITS is partnering with the
Center for Teaching and Learning and the Office of Online Learning to implement
Turnitin, an online utility for teaching, writing, and research. Supported services will
include the Turnitin Feedback Studio (TFS), which provides automated improvement
suggestions for students’ draft papers as well as other features, and Originality, which will
aid instructors and students in maintaining and promoting academic integrity. Turnitin
services will be available through eLearning Commons (eLC), and via MyID login on the
Turnitin website. EITS will provide updates to students and faculty as the timeline is
determined for deployment of Turnitin modules. For more information, contact Dave
Crouch at dave@uga.edu.

• vLAB Software Requests for Summer 2022 now open: Faculty and staff who wish to
request a software product be added to vLAB for Summer 2022 should submit requests by
April 3. To make a request, please complete the vLab Software Request form at
https://uga.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/2060/Portal/Requests/ServiceDet?ID=18905.
Requests are reviewed before each semester. The deadline to make requests is 30 days
prior to the last day of classes. Any requests received after this time will be reviewed for
the following semester. All requests are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. vLab, or Virtual
Lab, is the University of Georgia’s virtual desktop environment (VDI), which allows
students and faculty to access instructional computer lab resources and applications from
compatible personal devices anywhere, at any time. To learn more about vLab, please
visit https://eits.uga.edu/support/vlab/.

4. Support for Researchers

• GACRC website gets new look and feel: At the beginning of February, EITS launched a
revamped website for the Georgia Advanced Computing Resources Center (GACRC). The
revamped website, gacrc.uga.edu, includes informative sections for researchers
experienced using the GACRC, as well as sections for new researchers seeking information
on how to take advantage of UGA’s high performance computing resources. The site
features updated navigation tools, links to frequently used pages and systems, as well as a
search bar that will search the main GACRC site and the knowledge base wiki. For more
information about the GACRC, contact Dr. Guy Cormier at gcormier@uga.edu.

• Major network bandwidth expansion under way to improve connectivity: EITS
networking staff are working on a multi-year project to upgrade building routers,
increasing network bandwidth for research and allowing for 10G connectivity. The

VPIT Status and Activity Report for March 2022 Page 2 of 6

 Building Edge Router Refresh project will upgrade the current building edge routers and
cabling in 180 buildings to a new platform that connects buildings back to the university’s
core network. Buildings completed in February include Psychology Building, Broad Street,
Biological Science Building, Rutherford Hall, Myers Hall, Joe Frank Harris Commons,
McWorther Hall, Creswell Hall, Brumby Hall, Bolton Dining Hall, Building 1516, Hugh
Hodgson School of Music, Performance Arts Hall, Lamar Dodd School of Art, University
Health Center, Vandiver Hall, Busbee Hall, Forestry 1-4, CCRC, and the South Milledge
Greenhouse Headhouse. Visit
https://eits.uga.edu/network_and_phones/building_edge_router_project/ for more
information.

5. Support for Staff and Administrators

• OneUSG Connect down for maintenance in March: The OneUSG Connect system is being
upgraded and will be unavailable from Friday, March 11 at 11:15 p.m. until Monday, March
14 at 7:00 a.m. Additional information on the impact, upgrades and new features can be
found at https://onesource.uga.edu/news/oneusg_connect_downtime_march_2022/.

6. Other General Services

• EAB research resources now available campus-wide: Resources from EAB, an

educational research leader, are now available to all UGA students, faculty, and staff.
With EAB, students, faculty and staff have access to an extensive repository of research on
many topics including insights on current trends, challenges facing higher education
today, and expertise on information technology strategic directions. EAB resources can be
accessed by creating a profile at eab.com using your UGAMail address. For more
information, please contact Lynn Wilson at llatimer@uga.edu.

• Review, update your DNLs by April 6: To ensure every school, college and unit has
designated contacts for network and security incidents, EITS conducts an annual audit of
Departmental Network Liaisons (DNLs). DNLs are IT professionals within a school,
college, or unit who serve as the primary contact with EITS for network and security
related issues. Vice presidents, deans, department heads, and IT directors will receive a
memo this month asking them to review the assigned DNLs for their department and
make any necessary changes by completing the Departmental Network Liaisons (DNL)
form at itsupport.uga.edu. Departments will have until April 6 to complete the audit in
compliance with the University System of Georgia policies. EITS will conduct an online
training session for all DNLs on Thursday, April 21 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. For more
information, please contact Ben Myers at bmyers@uga.edu.

• Identity Management System upgrade planned for end of month: EITS will upgrade our
Identity Management System in late March. Work will begin at 5 p.m. on Friday, March
25 and will last until 5 p.m. on Sunday, March 27. During the upgrade timeframe,
identities will not be created or modified. This upgrade will not impact your ability to log
in to systems using a MyID and password. For more information, contact Shannon
Marable at shannon.marable@uga.edu.

• Google Suspended Accounts Clean-up Under way: To ensure current students, faculty
and staff have adequate access to Google Workspace offerings at UGA, EITS is conducting
an audit and clean-up of suspended Google Workspace at UGA accounts. Suspended
accounts include those of former students and employees who have left the university and
no longer have access to their MyID to log in to Google Workspace and other tools; most
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 of these accounts have never been accessed and do not have files stored in Google
Workspace. Current students and employees should not be affected. In late February,
EITS began deleting approximately 33,000 suspended Google Workspace at UGA
accounts, starting with those that had never been accessed and had no files. If a former
student or employee decides to return to UGA, their Google Workspace account will be
reprovisioned to them, but their old files will no longer be available. For more information
on this change, please contact Ashley Henry at ashenry@uga.edu.

• LinkedIn Learning clean-up planned: To ensure that the UGA LinkedIn Learning
associated license count is current, it is necessary to periodically complete a user cleanup
to remove users who are no longer associated with the university. EITS will conduct an
account cleanup this spring with notices to affected users. The clean-up will be complete at
the end of July 2022. For more information, contact itcla@uga.edu.

• Proxy server decommission set for April 17: EITS will decommission its proxy server
April 17. The maintenance subscription on the server ends in April and the server has been
made redundant by our new Palo Alto firewalls. These firewalls inspect for malicious
traffic and can now limit connections based on URLs. EITS has transferred proxy policies
to the new firewalls. System administrators in units and departments should change the
settings on machines that used the proxy server and test those machines by April 17. For
more information, contact Chris Workman at cworkman@uga.edu.

• Help Desk hours change: To better serve our customers and make good use of our
resources, the EITS Help Desk has changed its hours, effective February 26. Our new
hours are Monday-Thursday: 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Friday: 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.;
Saturday: CLOSED; Sunday: 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. This change was made so we can ensure we
have the most staff available during times of peak call volume, which is usually during the
week. As a reminder, we also have documentation available for many of our services at our
knowledge base: https://confluence.eits.uga.edu/display/HK. You can contact the EITS
Help Desk by phone at 706-542-3106 or submit a ticket via email at helpdesk@uga.edu.
Our online chat service is also available, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., at
http://hd.support.uga.edu.

• ArchPass required for accessing Office365 off-campus: Effective late February, ArchPass,
powered by Duo, is required for accessing all Office 365 web applications while off-
campus. ArchPass is UGA’s two-step login solution and is already required for accessing
UGAMail off-campus. Putting all Office web applications behind ArchPass helps prevent
unauthorized users from accessing these apps and using that access to log in to UGAMail
and other UGA accounts. In addition, Microsoft recommends protecting all online
applications with two-step logins. For more information about this change, contact Ashley
Henry at ashenry@uga.edu.

• Changes coming to Google Workspace storage offerings: Google has announced the
unlimited storage we’ve enjoyed in Google Workspace for Education is being
discontinued. New storage limits for Google Workspace for Education, formerly known as
G Suite for Education, are being imposed for academic customers. These limits will take
effect for all UGA students, faculty and staff in March 2022 and will allow EITS to manage
costs while continuing to offer Google Workspace services to the university community.
Under these limits, UGA will have a 100TB limit in our shared storage pool, and each user
in that pool will have access to 3GB of storage for their Google Workspace
account. Currently, there are about 400 users at UGA who are over their 3GB limit. We
began communicating with these users in November, letting them know they needed to
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 manage their storage by moving files to another service or deleting
files. All Google Workspace accounts at UGA must be under the 3GB limit by February 25,
2022. It is important high-consuming users move or delete files, as overconsumption of
storage in our 100TB pool by a few users can affect everyone using Google Workspace at
UGA and prevent any user from being able to save files. For those needing more storage,
UGA also offers OneDrive for Business, free to all UGA students, faculty and staff.
OneDrive includes 5TB of storage. For more questions about these changes, contact
Ashley Henry at ashenry@uga.edu.

7. Did You Know

• Tabletop exercise teaches campus leaders about preparing for ransomware attack: In
early February, campus leadership and IT professionals gathered for a two-day
ransomware tabletop drill. The exercise was led by cybersecurity firm Mandiant, who
drilled participants on how they might respond in the event the university became
vulnerable to a ransomware threat. The first day of the exercise was designed for IT
professionals and focused on technical tactics for identifying ransomware threats early.
On the second day, campus leadership discussed how they might respond if a ransomware
attack disrupted campus operations. Ransomware computer infections through web
browsing and emails pose a growing threat to many industries, including higher
education, so practicing a response to potential threats is key. For more information on
tools for keeping your data secure, visit
https://eits.uga.edu/access_and_security/infosec/tools/. For questions, contact Ben
Myers at bmyers@uga.edu.

• New video features available in Microsoft Teams: Throughout January and February
there were multiple updates to the video call functions in Microsoft Teams. Some of these
features include:

o Mirror my video: Mirror my video feature provides the user the option to un-
mirror their video and thereby have the same view as the other users(s) in the
meeting. By un-mirroring their video, the user will see the text correctly. This
feature is helpful in gallery, large gallery, ppt-content only sharing, and ppt-live
scenarios.
o Hide your own video: This feature allows users to hide their own video during a
meeting. This will help reduce distractions during the call while still having your
video available for other participants.
o Pin your own video: Currently, users can pin video feeds to increase the size of the
desired video on their own screen. Now, we have expanded the ability for users to
pin their own video on the stage as well.
o Background effects: When you use Teams on the web, you can either blur your
background or replace it entirely with the images provided in your video meeting
or call.
o Co-organizer meeting role: Organizers will now be able to share control by
assigning the new "Co-organizer" role to people they invite. Co-organizers will have
almost all the capabilities of the organizer, including management of Meeting
Options.
o Background effects: When you use Teams on the web, you can either blur your
background or replace it entirely with the images provided in your video meeting
or call.
o Co-organizer meeting role: Organizers will now be able to share control by
assigning the new "Co-organizer" role to people they invite. Co-organizers will have

VPIT Status and Activity Report for March 2022 Page 5 of 6

 almost all the capabilities of the organizer, including management of Meeting
Options.

University of Georgia students, faculty, and staff, as well as interested others, may subscribe to
this monthly report by sending an email to listserv@listserv.uga.edu with the phrase subscribe
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VPIT Status and Activity Report for March 2022 Page 6 of 6