Today’s IT news blast covers a lot of stuff:
- Ricoh printer: The most obvious thing going on with TFREC IT is the new Ricoh printer and getting connected. I hope all of you who want to use that printer are now connected. If you are still having issues, please review this page for instructions: http://tfrec.cahnrs.wsu.edu/admin/computer-resources/#printers. If that doesn’t help, please contact me or send a ticket to cit.support@wsu.edu. The biggest issue people are having is when it asks for you to enter your WSU credentials. You will need to sign in using ad\YourNetID. If you leave off “ad\” it will fail to connect.
- CAHNRS IT visit: Another item of note is that Michael Gibson from CAHNRS IT will be here on Sep 25-26. Although he will be with a group touring our physical plant infrastructure, he will have some time afterward to help with any computer issues you may have. To get on his list, please submit a ticket to cit.support@wsu.edu or online at https://support.it.cahnrs.wsu.edu. He already has plenty to do while here, so if you don’t submit a ticket in advance he may not be able to help in person.
- Lobby slideshow: I’m in the process of updating the lobby “Kiosk” slideshow. Soon Li has volunteered to help with redesigning some of the content. Anyone else interested in helping out, contact me, Soon Li, or Kate. Right now we are soliciting contributions from program leaders. What we’re aiming for is based on the elevator talk concept. But instead of having the time it takes to get from one floor to the next to get your point across, you’ll have a single slide to represent what your program is about. If you don’t have time or don’t have an idea of how you want the slide to look, don’t worry. We can develop a slide for you based on a summary or bullet points from you that highlight what your program does along with one or more images.
In addition to these new program slides, we would like to have a section of the slideshow that highlights current research/extension activities that are relevant for the season they are being viewed. For example, showing harvest-related activities during harvest season. Right now, we have a couple of slides titled “Current activities” that are way out of date and not happening this time of year. We need images submitted by programs that showcase current activities that will be updated frequently to stay current.
We can also add a section for special events such as field days, awards, celebrations, etc. - TFREC public website: I’m looking for people that would like to be on a committee to help with developing our center’s public website. We need help with developing ideas for how it will look and what content it should have. If you would like to help with the hands-on site-building (making pages/posts/etc.), that would also be welcomed. If you would like to be on the development committee, please let me or Kate know. Here’s our website: http://tfrec.cahnrs.wsu.edu
- TFREC public calendar: Although our public website is “under construction”, we do have an active events calendar found here: http://tfrec.cahnrs.wsu.edu/events/. I’ve posted all of the Science in Our Valley Seminars (SVSS), as well as any upcoming event that I’m aware of – many with few details. Feel free to send me notices and I will post them. Even though an event may not be “open” to everyone, it is still nice to know when tours or groups will be visiting or other events/activities are taking place here.
- TFREC Admin website: We have added a page for Implicit Bias Awareness Training found here: http://tfrec.cahnrs.wsu.edu/admin/implicit-bias-awareness-training/.
- Campus IT announcement regarding Microsoft Office 2013 support: “Office 2013 client connections to commercial Office 365 services will not be supported after October 13, 2020. Microsoft recommends that customers upgrade to Office 365 ProPlus. Support for Office 2016 and Office 2019 connections to Office 365 cloud services will continue until October 2023.
“Microsoft is not planning to block older Office clients, such as Office 2013, from connecting to Office 365 services. However, legacy clients attempting to connect to a modern, always up-to-date cloud service may experience performance, reliability issues, or connectivity failure.
“While we realize this change will not take place until next fall, we want to provide you the opportunity to address it early in light of the modernization changes next summer.”