Enterprise Services

Mobile Devices Connect to Enterprise Services

May 22, 2009 by Andrew Laurence

The campus wireless network has enabled mobile computing for laptop and tablet computers for years. Faculty and staff may be less aware that NACS also offers services to users of handheld mobile devices such as iPhones and Blackberries.

If you use Oracle Calendar to manage your appointments, NACS offers support for wireless synchronization so you can carry your calendar with you. Oracle Calendar offers two methods for synchronizing a personal digital assistant, Desktop Calendar Sync (for PDAs) or Mobile Data Sync (for smartphones and cell phones.) These methods are mutually exclusive, and should not be intermingled.

For users of NACS’s Exchange server, you can get access to your email via Blackberry by using Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) for Exchange. BES is a “push” technology meaning the Exchange server will update your Blackberry whenever new data (email, events) is delivered to your account.

If you need help with these resources, or have other ideas how NACS can support mobile devices and technologies, please call x4-2222 or email nacs@uci.edu.

More Space on Webfiles

May 22, 2009 by John Mangrich

Webfiles is a campus filesharing service available to faculty, staff, and graduate students. Using a simple Web interface, users can upload files to be shared and specify a wide variety of access restrictions, specifying individuals or groups, number of allowed accesses, or a time window of accessibility. NACS offers quarterly classes in the use of Webfiles.

NACS has recently doubled the disk space available to users from 1 gigabyte (Gb) to 2Gb. More information on the use of Webfiles can be found online.

Application Development for DUE

May 22, 2009 by John Remy

The mission of the DUE-IT Application and Database Development Team within NACS is to build and support applications and databases for the Division of Undergraduate Education. One such program is Student Academic Advancement Services (SAAS). SAAS works to increase the academic success of key student populations and receives funding from the US Department of Education (USED). Accordingly, it has considerable data collection and reporting requirements.

NACS has helped SAAS staff to consolidate nearly a decade’s worth of program data by building a new Microsoft ASP.NET application to collect and track how students utilize SAAS services, by recruiting a student reporting specialist, and by providing extensive support in its annual reporting efforts. The Director of SAAS, Joe Maestas, had this to say about NACS’s assistance with last year’s federal reporting efforts:

I was extemely pleased with the ease and professionalism that the folks at NACS handled a very difficult and complex task. Our reporting requirement to the USED is a monstrous task which has always caused us problems due to the size and complexity of the database and report requirements. After John and Kenny’s help I no longer worry about getting it done. We now get this baby put to bed early, and we are notified that there is no need for corrections. Makes us look good with the USED folks.

The new ASP.NET-based Student Tracking system supplanted a less cohesive array of Microsoft Access, Excel, and paper-based data-collection tools, eliminated duplication of effort in data collection, and improved the quality of collected data by adding a layer of data validation that did not exist beforehand.

Spam Tagging – Your Friend in a World of Spam

April 24, 2009 by Brian Roode

NACS employs many techniques to maximize the quality of the campus email system, and in particular to limit the amount of junk email (spam) faculty and staff receive. Known spam senders are automatically blocked, for example, and campus mail gateways require adherence to email standards (which spammers often ignore) before email is accepted for delivery.

Beyond that, email delivery is a balancing act between reliability and convenience on the one side, and security on the other. It is annoying to receive junk email, but it is unacceptable to block a message which was wanted.

One feature of the campus email service that helps achieve this balance is the mail-scanning service which rates every incoming message for the likelihood that it is junk mail. This assessment is recorded in special “header” lines in the delivered email of the form “X-UCIRVINE”.

Sometimes a message comes from a dubious source. Those messages get a header line “X-UCIRVINE-MailScanner-From:” Other times the content of the message matches patterns associated with spam. These messages will get a line “X-UCIRVINE-SpamScore:” with a number of copies of the letter ‘s’ proportional to the number of suspicious elements in the messages.

These lines are not normally displayed by email readers, but users can configure the programs to look for these lines and file away such messages in a spam folder for later assessment at their convenience. For users of NACS’s Enterprise Services email, this spam filter is easily activated with “My Email Options.”

Only messages coming to UCI from off campus are subject to this analysis. Intracampus email is delivered directly.

NACS tunes the rules that characterize email regularly, incorporating each new trick developed by spam senders into the mail scanner.

Faculty and staff working from home (sending email from off campus) should consider using Webmail, the VPN, or configuring their email software to use the authenticated campus mail gateway (smtp.uci.edu) to avoid the possibility that your email might be scanned, flagged, and isolated.

DMRnet Keeps You Up

April 24, 2009 by Allen Schiano

NACS and AdCom have jointly developed a network infrastructure for units with mission-critical computing services. “DMRnet” (short for “Dual Modular Redundant Network”) allows you to create twin servers and to locate them separately in the NACS and AdCom Data Centers.

With this arrangement, an interruption in service (power, network, etc.) at one physical location can automatically transfer services (fail over) to the server in the other location. Users of your critical services will see no interruption.

DMRnet was designed and developed in response to the need to have UCI’s main web site, www.uci.edu, continuously available. The upcoming Student Portal will be the latest client of the DMRnet system.

NACS staff are available to consult with interested departments on the options, cost, and fitness of DMRnet for your particular need. DMRnet is intended only for the most critical campus services.

Enterprise Services

Mobile Devices Connect to Enterprise Services

More Space on Webfiles

Application Development for DUE

Spam Tagging – Your Friend in a World of Spam

DMRnet Keeps You Up

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