Me Too in ICT

Login Genius

4 02 2010

As you know, I love logging in to University services. I love needing to know which combination of my student ID, account ID, account ID with the “NETWORK/” prefix, email address, password and PIN I need to use. Which is why I’m such a big fan of building a reliable login system which just authenticates you once for everything.

This blog post, however, isn’t about a new login system. It’s about the current one being weird, specifically email.

Today I logged in to my email over the web using Chrome, and I shoved in my username (withouth “NETWORK/”, which is only a necessity because Internet Explorer is retarded when it comes to users not being in the domain it’s currently visiting) and password. It let me log in and worked perfectly, until I wanted to visit an external link in one of my emails.

Apparently the bit of OWA which forwards you to external URLs has logins handled differently to simply viewing your emails, and I don’t have permission to access it. No click-through of URLs for me.

Thinking this might be a byproduct of OWA not working properly in anything but Internet Explorer, I perform my ritual dance of protection and ready the talisman to ward off broken box models. I hit the email site, and log in.

Without “NETWORK\”.

It takes me a moment to realise what just happened, but it appears that the combination of IE8 and Windows 7 isn’t as retarded as previous incarnations. As in it doesn’t automatically specify a domain to authenticate against unless you tell it.

Click-through links in email don’t work, but it appears that one of our great enemies as ICT may be on the way out. I look forward to the last time I ever have to say “Just put NETWORK\ in front of it and it’ll work. Because that’s what fixes it.”.

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Tags: authentication, email, Internet Explorer, login, OWA, Windows 7
Categories : Stuff Which Doesn't Live Anywhere Else

Answering The Flood

3 02 2010

Further to the revelation that there are students out there capable of voicing an opinion, we now have to deal with the resulting fallout. At this point I need to quote Joss, the nice man from CERD, who likened my approach to IT support to this:

Whilst I’m tempted to staple this notice to the front of the helpdesk and watch confused students ask “will you really set us on fire?”, it’s actually better to deal with stupid questions by documenting your response, on the basis that the universe never ceases to provide a constant stream of the terminally confused, people who don’t bother to read the dialog box which pops up with important information and clear instructions, and people who believe that the helpdesk are there to actually operate the computer on their behalf.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: feedback, helpdesk, HTML, LUNA, support, update
Categories : LUNA, Service 2.0

My God, There’s Life!

3 02 2010

If you’ve been keeping track of the joy that is LUNA, you will know that this week is the first time we’ve let the new scanning process loose on a select few guinea pigs in the Courts (and inadvertently Riseholme, sorry guys!). We also busted out a revolutionary tool, never before seen at the University. No, really. I checked.

The anonymous, free-form feedback box. A single box with no prescribed questions, no survey-style questioning, and no requirement to tell us who you are (although the option is there for you to leave an email address or phone number in case you’re happy for us to get back in touch). The result is somewhat more than we expected – usually feedback mechanisms get maybe three or four responses a week, we’re currently getting in the region of 20 to 25 a day.

Most of the feedback is little to no use – we have a wide assortment of “rubbish”, “useless” and “crap” comments. A few responses seem to be from people with broken apostrophe and shift keys (“its rubbish” or “i dont see y ur doin this”). A couple have broken exclamation marks (“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”). However, despite this noise we’ve been able to glean a few things which we wouldn’t have been able to from simply relying on the helpdesk or by asking carefully selected questions.

Keep ‘em coming, although remember that every time you say “crap” without letting us know why God kills a kitten.

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: feedback, LUNA
Categories : LUNA

Imagine…

30 01 2010

The University’s strategic plans have a lot of things along the lines of “Imagine the {person} of 2012″, I suspect with the notion of dragging departments kicking and screaming into the 21st century whether they want to come or not. Here’s the one from the Strategic Plan Overview (actually quite a good read) on what the student of 2012 should be like:

I already know the people in my apartment. The University connected us through Facebook and a few of us went out for the night before we even enrolled.

I had my timetable, accommodation, Students’ Union Guide and University Handbook all emailed to me – I even enrolled online.

I knew the competition for places was tough because of the University of Lincoln’s reputation. The facilities are fantastic, award-winning buildings right in the heart of the city.

People here think outside the box. We’ve already had lectures in some cool places. All the buildings seem to have really sociable spaces, comfy chairs, places to meet and interact. It is a 24-7 place, totally wi-fi and networked.

Our lecturer has been doing joint research at a partner university in India. She is at the forefront of her subject and she’s teaching me!

Next week we have got workplace practitioners coming to talk to us and I have even had the careers people asking me about my ‘mobile portfolio of skills’ and how I might develop them. I have got an idea for a business so I am going to talk to the people at Sparkhouse, the University’s enterprise incubator.

All this in the first few weeks.

Cool, awesome, great… you’ve invented the student of 2010 two years late!

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Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: future, ICT, W2L
Categories : Service 2.0

Feedback!

26 01 2010

I’ve got the LUNA feedback server working, after a bit of prodding and getting other helpful people to fine-tune file permissions. Hopefully I’ll be able to requisition it for a few more things LUNA related in the future, like videos walking people through remedial actions and so on. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve also been mucking around with quick concepts for a set of posters, reflecting the ‘fresh’ ICT style you may have seen in the Gateway 2 mockups. Sadly the change.lincoln.ac.uk address doesn’t exist (And 1st February is an arbitrary date, nothing’s actually happening then) but I can dream. See what you think.

'Changing...' poster for LUNA Phase 2

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Tags: design, feedback, ictblog, LUNA, poster
Categories : LUNA

Today In Brief

21 01 2010

Today, I attended some training. I also have a headache, need to do some washing, and need to pack for a weekend in London (off to see the Lion King!), but that’s another issue.

Other things that happened today are good:

I updated the jQuery framework which lies behind LUNA and PFMPC to the latest version, giving several speed increases which will be completely unnoticeable for most people but which make my benchmark tools very happy.
I updated some of the CWD CSS to fix a niggling bug in IE6 and improve appearance on browsers supporting the CSS3 specification. This brings CWD to version 1.3.7.
I updated the HTML in PFMPC from CWD 1.2 to 1.3, bringing more cross-browser goodness, better semantically valid navigation, improved printing and a liquid layout to make best use of bigger screens.
I hacked some regex into the game console registration pages in LUNA, which now forces people to enter a valid MAC address when they’re registering. Unfortunately they have to enter uppercase letters (a true MAC address can be either) to keep our network access software happy, but tomorrow may include fixing this so some clever JavaScript converts it to uppercase for them.
I’ve got a server to play around with where I can put a nice LUNA feedback page.
Kirsty has managed to do some more work on the ICT team blog, so I’m seeing if this post will cross over successfully.

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Tags: CWD, ictblog, jQuery, LUNA, PFMPC, regex, update, validation
Categories : CWD, LUNA, Print From My PC, Stuff Which Doesn't Live Anywhere Else

Another Week…

15 01 2010

This week has been one of tidying up loose ends. LUNA has had several minor HTML and typo fixes, and is currently undergoing a bit of JavaScript development wizardry to let users select their location during registration. JSON data from the server encodes how rooms, apartments and blocks are organised which is then extracted by the magic of jQuery into something usable. I’ve got the basics working (and the full thing if I generate a lot of unnecessary files), now it’s just a bit more work on extraction of arrays from within the JSON.

In other LUNA nonsense, working out which combination of technical features to use to let people provide feedback on Phase 2 changes (the compulsory anti-virus and anti-malware) is proving challenging and may lead to a new server being temporarily put together just for handling the feedback. I’m going to push for a LAMP stack, but since Lincoln is a Windows shop I’m not holding my breath.

Finally, balls are rolling on my posters project – a meeting for scoping and specification is booked where key parties can bang heads together until we get something reasonable before I begin doing hardcore implementation stuff.

Now, back to JSON.

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Tags: feedback, HTML, JavaScript, jQuery, JSON, LUNA, posters, server
Categories : LUNA, Posters

LUNA Has Landed

8 01 2010

The waiting is over, the changes have been made, LUNA is here.

All users of the internet in University accommodation (Student Village and Riseholme Park) will see the new service whenever they connect to the internet. None of your details have changed, you still use the same username and password to connect, but how things look will be different. Hopefully cleaner, faster and easier to use.

The next phase of the upgrade (requiring people to have updated machines and anti-virus) is already partially in effect, all new machines being connected and those already in quarantine will need to be running recent service packs. However, as far as we are aware nobody is affected by this requirement since you’re all well behaved and have updates turned on. At the next scheduled required rescan (about two weeks away) all users will be required to be up to date and running anti-virus and anti-malware software. Sadly we don’t have a cool web address like http://getsecure.lincoln.ac.uk to give to people which talks them through what to do, so in the meantime I’ve created my own quick guide:

Nick’s Guide to Getting Secure

Read it, make sure you follow the three simple steps, and that’s it. Easy.

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Tags: anti-malware, anti-virus, design, LUNA, Riseholme Park, security, Student Village, update
Categories : LUNA

Weather, Network and Posters

5 01 2010

Well, it’s been an exciting day today. Riseholme library and the Hull campus closed early, persistent if not particularly heavy snow over Lincoln, people going home stupidly early to avoid the chaos, and a continuation of the ongoing saga of getting LUNA working.

Our new date for deployment is… (drum roll)… Thursday 7th January. As long as nothing else goes wrong, the pages work and our server guy makes it through the snow.

Now, a quick mention of my next project: A website providing an electronic copy of all of the posters you normally see littered around campus, giving you a one-stop location to get all those details you were walking too quickly to remember. More on that later, I’m off to fight the snow now!

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: Hull, LUNA, posters, Riseholme, servers, snow
Categories : LUNA, Posters

A hiccup on the road to network nirvana

4 01 2010

Today, big things were meant to be happening to the network. “Were” is the key word here, since upon the arrival of the ICT team from their Christmas break – having dined and wined – we found that one of our two servers which support the student halls network had given up and fallen over. Not wanting to make sweeping changes on a broken system, we’ve now postponed updates until a time in the future. Hopefully this afternoon, but possibly not depending on how badly things have exploded.

Our ever-valiant team members who look after the servers and feed the gerbils running on the wheels inside them are looking at the problem right now. I’ll keep you posted.

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Tags: delay, ICT, LUNA, network, servers
Categories : LUNA