The Root Cause team in IT is tasked with finding the causes of significant IT issues that affect campus. In this news update we draw your attention to some of the problems being investigated or issues handled in February.
Outlook Email – (various issues) As the fall 2013 semester ended network servers used to provide email and calendar services to Faculty and Staff were updated. The change was made as recent Microsoft updates caused compatibility and technical issues with WCU’s current environment.
The physical move of the mailboxes from the current Exchange Server over to the new Exchange Server was successful. However, several issues with the Outlook client software used on the Windows and Macintosh Operating Systems occurred. The majority of these issues were resolved by upgrading the Outlook software on the Faculty/Staff computers to a newer version or by running the repair tool within Outlook (Repair tool instructions available for Microsoft Outlook).
However, some issues are still be encountered by our clients. Some of these issues include extreme slowness, deleted items re-appearing, recurring calendar events not populating correctly to everyone invited or they are missing, continuous prompts to enter credentials and some messages which have been read are becoming ‘unread’. An Email ‘TIGER’ team is being created to investigate these on-going issues. Please call the IT Help Desk at 227-7487 to report any issues you are having with Outlook. You may also visit IT’s self-service website at help.wcu.edu to open a ticket for assistance.
VPN Access (Virtual Private Network) Clients were unable to access some WCU websites when connected via the VPN (Virtual Private Network). The VPN allows faculty and staff access to on-campus resources from off-campus. Sites included the Banner Gateway Portal, the WCU home page, the WCU Hub, and My Cat. Recent configuration changes affected the Proxy settings needed for successful VPN connection. These settings were corrected and connectivity to the sites via VPN were restored.
Website Access Access to certain WCU websites were disrupted during the afternoon hours for several days. The websites were operational but various links throughout WCU sites were unable access the pages. Campus Services websites were updated to reflect a new organizational structure which changed approximately 200 pages. This change took several hours for WCU’s search engine to update with the new addresses.
February 2014 Global Problems: (Total 17) • Network, Internet & Phone Services: 3 • Servers & Storage: 7 • Services & Support: 2 • Web: 5
The Division of IT is committed to adopting a proactive, process-oriented approach to prevent problems before they arise. We will continue to keep you informed on our progress.