The Curative Analysis 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 recently.

Communicator Desktop Application Error:  Faculty and staff were unable to make or receive calls using the Communicator App recently. An error message indicated Calls Unavailable. IT staff resolved the issue for clients by having them connect directly to the core gateway (the cloud) instead of the remote user gateway. Going forward, IT will be phasing out the remote user gateway and having clients connect directly to the core gateway.

High CPU Usage on Windows:  130 clients who have been enrolled in VMWare Workspace ONE (WS1) began experiencing a degraded experience related to high CPU usage and scheduled tasks. There was a known issue with the previous version of WS1, and the vendor released an update which IT applied to all clients.

Finals Calendar Events:  After automation was created to populate calendars with final exam schedules, calendar events appeared for several courses during finals week other than the accurate scheduled events. The issue was caused by a personal email address which was entered into 25Live. IT staff were able to clean up the finals calendar events, update the feed, and rerun the automation.

Authentication Issues from Off-campus:  An attempt to apply a fix to remediate the Beast vulnerability made off-campus authentication temporarily unavailable. IT staff rolled back the fix to restore off-campus access and have rescheduled the fix for the Fall Break Data Center maintenance.

Talent Management System:  New identity requirements from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) required an update to InCommon sites. Those sites include jobs.wcu.edu/hr which became inaccessible after the update. The vendor for the Talent Management System (PeopleAdmin) requires a separate set of special requirements. IT staff worked with the vendor to make the special updates and have altered the process to make changes to the Talent Management System separately in the the future to avoid this issue.

Unable to Access Vault:  Some students were unable to access vault.wcu.edu. Investigation showed that authentication was paused while the database was backing up due to a scheduled job. IT staff changed the database backup schedule to ensure that it is not backing up during peak usage times. Vault and Mercury currently share a backup, and both systems are very large. During the Fall Break Data Center maintenance, IT staff will create separate backups for Vault and Mercury to prevent this issue from happening in the future.

Account Processing Portal:  An issue with a database server recently impacted the job processing portal for new account requests for consultants, suppliers, etc. A recurring issue causes the database to lose the permissions needed to do its job. IT staff have corrected the permissions, turned on auditing logs, and are currently working with the vendor, One Identity Manager (1IM) to identify a solution.

October 2021 Problem Tickets: (Total 4)
ADFS: 1
Email and Calendar: 1
PeopleAdmin: 1
Wired Network Connectivity: 1

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.

Contact the IT Help Desk
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Closed weekends and university holidays
Call: 227-7487 or 866-928-7487 (toll free)
E-mail: ithelp@wcu.edu
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For walk-up technology assistance for faculty, staff, and students
See our hours at tc.wcu.edu