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Learning to Use Exchange Calendar

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In order to assist Oracle Calendar users with the transition to Exchange Calendar, OIT is offering several means for you to familiarize yourself with the new service.

Live training is being offered at several levels: Introductory and Advanced, as well as specialized training for “delegates” – those who manage other calendars (for example, rooms or campus officers) – and for those involved in IT support.

Introductory classes are offered as small, hands-on classes in Social Sciences Tower room 104, and as larger lecture-style classes in Humanities Gateway room 1030.  You can check the Exchange Calendar training page for the schedule, and you can enroll via the UC Learning Center (search for “Exchange”.)  Advanced classes are also held in SST 104.  Programs for delegates and IT supporters are scheduled on request.

OIT also offers self-help information on the OIT Exchange web site, with detailed information on how to accomplish many common tasks such as logging in via Outlook Web Access or setting up mobile devices.  There also a FAQ and a collection of known issues related to UCI’s implementation of Exchange.

Migrating Oracle Calendar Data

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OIT will be copying calendar data from Oracle Calendar to Exchange Calendar the weekend of August 4-5, immediately before Exchange Calendar becomes the production calendar on Monday August 6.

Oracle Calendar will become unavailable after close of business on Friday August 3, and Exchange Calendar will be on line at 4am on Monday August 6.

All calendar events, for all Oracle Calendar users and all Oracle Calendar resources, will be transferred.  There are some differences in how calendar events are defined in the two systems:

  • Exchange differentiates between an event that includes only you (an “Appointment”) and an event that includes others (a “Meeting”).
  • Daily Events and Daily Notes in Oracle Calendar will become All-Day Events in Exchange.  Availability will be set as “Free” to avoid scheduling conflicts.
  • Exchange deletes events that you have declined, so Oracle Calendar events you indicated you would not attend will not appear in Exchange.
  • Repeating meetings in Oracle Calendar will be transferred as repeating meetings only if the repetition follows a very simple pattern.  Other repeating meetings will be transferred as a group of independent events.

More information can be found on the Calendar migration web page.

Kuali Financial System Offers Stability and Efficiency

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UCI’s mission focuses on education and research, but there is a business enterprise which makes that possible.  Accounting and Fiscal Services, in partnership with OIT and other units, are working to implement the Kuali Financial System (KFS) at UCI.  KFS is a product of the Kuali Foundation which aims to provide community sourced software to higher education.

UCI’s current financial system is almost thirty years old and is increasingly difficult to maintain.  Moreover, the campus has grown in size and complexity beyond what the current financial system can readily serve.

KFS is an integrated suite of financial software which will replace a range of financial sub-systems, enhancing ease-of-use, software consolidation, work transparency, and administrative efficiency.  Departments will enjoy a number of benefits including better quality financial data from a single authoritative source.

Community sourced software draws on the knowledge of coalitions of experts and can be used without paying licensing fees.  In the case of Kuali, that coalition comprises higher education institutions.  UCI has been a member of the Kuali Foundation for several years and ramped up KFS implementation efforts in 2011.  The current plan is to deploy KFS in July 2013.

Jeff Martin, New Manager for OIT’s Windows Services Group

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Jeff Martin

Jeff Martin

Jeff Martin has recently joined OIT to lead its Windows Services Group (WSG).   His responsibilities include facilitating the consolidation and integration of campus Windows infrastructure, services, and Windows system administrators into the centralized campus Windows enterprise managed by OIT.

Jeff comes to UCI from UC Riverside, where he served for ten years, most recently as Operations Manager for Financial and Business Operations.  This was a unit formed in a consolidation process analogous to OIT’s current effort to provide the most efficient use of resources and more consistent IT support to faculty, staff, and students.

Jeff wasn’t actually looking to move to UCI, but was intrigued by the WSG manager job when he saw it posted on a UC mailing list.  He decided to come to UCI because he was inspired by the consolidation vision, and the opportunities that became apparent during the interview process.

When not planning Windows services improvements, Jeff enjoys cars and photography.  He said UCI provides a wonderful variety of architectural styles for his camera.

The Windows Services Group was created in 2009 to help bring consistency, security, and reliability to a diverse array of Windows installations around campus.  Jeff’s immediate responsibilities will be to continue to bring this vision into being, but he says he plans to be at UCI for a long time. He looks forward to helping OIT provide managed, integrated, effective information technology systems and services to faculty, staff, and students.  Jeff can be reached at 824-0977 or jeffrym@uci.edu .

Network Security Vulnerability Scans

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hacking

The OIT Security Team has begun implementing periodic scans of all hosts connected to the UCI network for the most common and high impact network and web security vulnerabilities.

The purpose to these scans is to find unprotected systems before hackers do.  We can then work with system owners to better protect their computers and data.

Since these scans are benign versions of the attacks hackers use, you may notice certain behaviors in your computer:

  • Your log files may show attempts to login from strange addresses or multiple failures in a row that you don’t expect.  Web access logs may show many requests from the same IP including strange URLs.
  • If you allow anonymous updates to your websites (i.e. no login required), junk data or what looks like spam may be inserted into your application’s database or email forms.
  • If web application uses a database and vulnerable to input injection, regular database queries with altered SQL could take longer to run, connection pools may fill up and requests hang waiting for new connections.

If you observe any of these behaviors, treat it as you would any security breach.  This may include contacting OIT’s IT security team. If these scans discover a vulnerability, IT Security will contact you with advice.  More information can be found on the Security Vulnerability Scans web site.