We continue to move forward on our transition to the Office 365 mail system.  Overall, the UK migration is 11% completed, while the college is still just starting out at 3%.  All of the Hive mailboxes were migrated a few weeks ago with only minor disruptions on the morning when the transition was finalized.  We will move on to the rest of A&S soon, migrating only a few departments at a time so that we have time to help address any problems that crop up with access on mobile devices or through Outlook. 

For A&S faculty and staff, we have created a FAQ page under A&S resources to address what we see as the most common concerns for our College: https://resources.as.uky.edu/mail-migration-faqs.  We have also created some tutorials for making sure your mobile device is ready for Office 365, which you will find on the FAQ page.  If you have any additional questions for yourself or for your faculty, please send them to us: https://resources.as.uky.edu/general-request-form.  We will continue updating this page whenever we have new information. 

UKAT also has a website where you can find additional details on the email migration: http://www.uky.edu/ukat/help/O365migration.

In the very first installment of Tech Tips I made of a note of an issue with Windows 10 and the campus VPN client.  I’m happy to report that as of this week UKAT has released a new VPN client that is compatible with Windows 10 (and older versions of Windows).  To get the new VPN client Go to http://download.uky.edu and search for AnyConnect.  The current AnyConnect client on download is Windows only, but a Mac version should be available soon.

A quick heads-up about upcoming changes to UK e-mail.  Previously I wrote about the campus move from an on campus Exchange E-mail environment to Office 365.  This project is moving forward and UKAT has a targeted completion date of the end of May.  We will be coordinating with UKAT in the coming weeks to begin the College migration of mailboxes to Office 365.  A few of us in the Hive have already had our mailboxes migrated to Office 365 to begin testing, and I can report that the process is rather seamless and nearly headache free.  Stay tuned for further information as we move ahead with this project.

As always, if you need technical assistance from the Hive or need to request one of the other services offered from the Hive, please submit a request via the Hive Forms https://resources.as.uky.edu/hive-forms

We've received a number of requests lately asking for assistance with dealing with SPAM. It seems that there has been a recent uptick in the number of spam messages showing up in all of our inboxes (IT staff included) so it seems like this is a great topic for this installment of tech tips.

This time around we're going to combine two tech tips into one. UKAT has a method by which they prefer SPAM emails be forwarded to them which allows them to very easily block more instances and cut back on the number of possible phishing attacks on campus. We've created a tutorial that shows you how to get this information to them in the correct format. This also gives us an opportunity to show you a really quick and easy way to do this using Outlook quick steps. If you've never used Outlook quick steps they can be a really quick and easy way to automate repetitive tasks that we all do in Outlook every day. We've created a tutorial that helps you create an Outlook quick step to report SPAM to UKIT. Check out this link for the tutorial: https://www.as.uky.edu/tutorials/create-outlook-quick-step-report-spam

As always, if you need technical assistance from the Hive or need to request one of the other services offered from the Hive, please submit a request via the Hive Forms https://resources.as.uky.edu/hive-forms

Happy New Year! Still trying to come up with a New Year’s resolution? How about committing to using secure passwords this year? The beginning of a new year is a great time to clean house of all the old and often used passwords and start fresh. This applies not only at work, but also for all the personal accounts we use (think Facebook, Twitter, online banking, credit cards, etc.). A secure password is at least 8 characters long, doesn’t contain your username or real name, doesn’t contain a complete word, is different from previous passwords, and uses all of the following: uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.

Changing passwords, especially passwords you’ve used forever isn’t easy, but there are tools that can help. Password managers can be great resources to assist you with remembering and managing all your different passwords. There’s a lot of different choices out there, but I’ll highlight the 2 that I use personally. LastPass is a browser plugin that can be installed on any browser and on any device to assist with saving and auto filling passwords for all of your web accounts. To keep all your passwords with you in your pocket, OneSafe is a great mobile app (working across IOS, Andriod, and Windows Phone) for saving any sensitive information. OneSafe uses military grade encryption to protect your personal information while keeping it all right there at your fingertips. With the start of the new year, please consider a new password as your New Year’s resolution.

We discussed VPN and Remote Desktop in a previous tech tip, but with the winter weather now here, the threat of campus closures becomes real. If UK is closed because of the snow or bitter cold, you can still get to your office desktop and all of your work files by using the Campus VPN client and remote desktop. We’ve created a series of tutorials to help you through the process. See below to get started:

• Using VPN & Remote Desktop on a Mac 
  • VPN - https://www.as.uky.edu/tutorials/configuring-vpn-mac-os-107-and-higher 
  • Remote Desktop - https://www.as.uky.edu/tutorials/using-remote-desktop-connecting-mac-office-pc 

• Using VPN & Remote Desktop on a PC  
  • VPN - https://www.as.uky.edu/tutorials/downloading-installing-and-using-campus-vpn-client-windows 
  • Remote Desktop - https://www.as.uky.edu/tutorials/using-remote-desktop-home-pc-office-pc 

As always, if you need technical assistance from the Hive or need to request one of the other services offered from the Hive, please submit a request via the Hive Forms https://resources.as.uky.edu/hive-forms

Have you ever received a new work computer, bought a new computer for home, or had a hard drive fail and wondered how you would migrate all of your browser settings (Chrome, Firefox) to the new computer?  Both Google Chrome Sync and Firefox Sync allow you to bring your bookmarks, saved passwords and other browser settings to any computer you use.  Both features require you to sign in to the application, but once signed in you can then enable sync to any device you use.  We’ve created Tutorials to help you with the process.  Click here for the Firefox Sync Tutorial, or click here for the Google Sync Tutorial.

Need to access your office computer and work files from home?  Install the UK Cisco VPN client and use Remote Desktop to access your work whenever you’d like without coming in to the office.  The Hive has created tutorials to walk you through the process of downloading and installing the VPN client, and accessing your work machine using Remote Desktop.  Have a look at these tutorials to get started:

•  Using VPN & Remote Desktop on a Mac

VPN - https://www.as.uky.edu/tutorials/configuring-vpn-mac-os-107-and-higher

Remote Desktop - https://www.as.uky.edu/tutorials/using-remote-desktop-connecting-mac-office-pc

• Using VPN & Remote Desktop on a PC

VPN - https://www.as.uky.edu/tutorials/downloading-installing-and-using-campus-vpn-client-windows

Remote Desktop - https://www.as.uky.edu/tutorials/using-remote-desktop-home-pc-office-pc

As always, if you need technical assistance from the Hive or need to request one of the other services offered from the Hive, please submit a request via the Hive Forms https://resources.as.uky.edu/hive-forms

Welcome to the first installment Tech Tips from the Hive. Tech Tips will be a regular feature of the staff newsletter where we hope to provide you with useful information about technology for both work and personal use. We will also use this space to answer technical issues that our support staff sees regularly in the College. Additionally, we’ll try to provide information on programs, apps, technology, etc. that you may find useful at home or at work.

Did you know that as a member of the staff at UK you are entitled to access all the latest versions of the Microsoft Office Applications at no cost? You can install Office apps on up to five devices (PCs, Macs, or mobile) via Office 365 for Education. Each UK Office 365 account also includes one TB of Microsoft OneDrive Cloud storage. To access your Office 365 account and download the latest versions of the Microsoft Office Application suite, go to http://office365.uky.edu and login with linkblueid@uky.edu and your linkblue password.

If you have recently purchased a new Windows PC with Windows 10 or are considering upgrading your Windows 7 machine to Windows 10, here’s a word of warning. If you use the campus VPN client from home or on a mobile device, upgrading to Windows 10 can limit your ability to connect to the UK VPN service. The current UK VPN client is not compatible with Windows 10. We hope to receive a new version that is compatible from UKAT in the near future.

As always, if you need technical assistance from the Hive or need to request one of the other services offered from the Hive, please submit a request via the Hive Forms https://resources.as.uky.edu/hive-forms