Planned maintenance will be conducted on the Okanagan campus telephone system Saturday September 26, 2020, between the hours of 08:00 to 12:00 PT. Incoming calls to campus may experience intermittent service interruptions during this time. Local calls within campus, 5 digit dialing on campus and outgoing calls including to emergency services will NOT be affected.
External emails to include a new security warning banner
UBC Cybersecurity and UBC IT Communication & Collaboration Services will be launching a new email security enhancement on September 28, 2020, targeting emails that originate from outside the university. This enhancement will add a warning tag to the top of emails that originate from outside the University.
The External Email Security Warning Tag serves as a reminder to users to verify the authenticity of the email before clicking on any hyperlinks, opening any attachments, forwarding or responding. The tag is not an indicator that an email is phishing, fraudulent or spam.
Please note, at this stage, the external email security warning tag will be applied to external emails sent to staff and faculty email accounts only.
With the imminent implementation of Workday, it is critical that employees are able to spot fraudulent notifications that claim to originate from Workday but are actually from criminals looking to take advantage of the high volume of communication associated with Workday implementation. Legitimate Workday emails do not have the yellow external email security warning tag typically associated with emails that originated from outside of UBC. If you receive a Workday email with a yellow external email security warning tag, forward it as an attachment to security@ubc.ca.
For more information on how to know the difference between legitimate and fraudulent Workday notifications please visit:
hxxps://privacymatters.ubc.ca/workday-notifications
(Copy and paste the URL into your browser and replace hxxps with https).
For further technical information on the External Email Security Warning tag, including the exemption process, implementation phases and FAQs, please check out this article on the UBC Confidential Communications website:
hxxps://cc.cybersecurity.ubc.ca/external-email-warning-tag
(Copy and paste the URL into your browser and replace hxxps with https – CWL login and UBC VPN connection required).
Telephone services maintenance – Okanagan Campus, September 19, 2020, 08:00-12:00 PT
Planned maintenance will be conducted on the Okanagan campus telephone system Saturday September 19, 2020, between the hours of 08:00 to 12:00 PT. Phone service to and from campus will be intermittent during this time, with no incoming calls from 10:00-12:00 PT.
This is the final outage required to complete our full upgrades to the campus telephone system to provide enhanced phone services to better support remote operations for UBC Okanagan. These upgrades will also substantially reduce future telephone service interruptions during routine maintenance in the future.
Tuesday September 15 – 2100 to 2200 PT – Planned upgrades to campus phones, outage for incoming calls
UBC IT Okanagan will be conducting required maintenance and upgrades on the campus telephone system this week. There will be an outage for all incoming calls Tuesday September 15, 2020 from 2100 to 2200 PT. Local calls within campus, 5 digit dialing on campus and outgoing calls including to emergency services will NOT be affected. Maintenance will continue in the evenings all week however no further disruption to services is expected.
These upgrades will provide enhanced phone services to better support remote work including receiving UBC calls remotely, as well as improved functionality and easier access to voicemail. The new software will also minimize or eliminate telephone service interruptions during routine maintenance in the future.
Issues with Student Service Centre Financials
We are experiencing issues with Student Service Centre financials today—students are experiencing significant delays in processing their payments. The Academic Systems Support team is actively monitoring the performance of the SSC and will take necessary actions to achieve and maintain usability.
UBC Research Data Management Fall Series 2020
Interested in learning more about research data management (RDM)? Heard about the Tri-Agency’s upcoming RDM Policy and want to know how to meet the requirements?
The UBC RDM Fall Series 2020 will run daily virtual sessions from September 28 – October 16.
These sessions will walk through the full research data lifecycle, with a series of hands-on workshops that build on one another using a mock research project and data (although we encourage you to bring your own project if you’d like!). We’ll explore practical skills that will allow you to meet Tri-Agency requirements, organize and maintain control of your data, and develop workflows for your research lab.
These sessions are open to all UBC faculty, staff, and students, and will be presented by the UBC Research Commons, UBC Advanced Research Computing (ARC), the UBC Okanagan Library, and the UBC Centre for Scholarly Communications.
View the full schedule on the Research Commons’ website and REGISTER ONLINE NOW
Message from the CIO – August 2020
August 31, 2020
August marks the sixth month since UBC transitioned to remote teaching, learning, and working in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. September preparedness this year has taken on a very different pace within the OCIO and UBC IT as a result of converging priorities and supporting the remote experience in addition to the usual start of term activities.
Updates to the community this month include:
- MS Teams and OneDrive
- Discounted technology for students
- Zoom passcode security updates
- Workday training
- Integrated Services Centre
To read the full update from the CIO, Jennifer Burns, click HERE.
UBC IT Community Update – July 30, 2020
Read this month's news from Jennifer Burns, Associate Vice-President, Information Technology & Chief Information Officer, including details on:
- Implementation of Microsoft Teams (MS Teams) and OneDrive
- Remote Access to Application Software and Computer Lab Resources
- Discounted Vendor Packages for Students
- Internet Connectivity Improvement for International Students
- Relaxed FIPPA Data Residency Requirements Extended
Read the full update HERE.
Register for 2020 UBC Research Computing Summer Sessions
Interested in high-performance computing? Want to learn a new programming language?
UBC Advanced Research Computing (ARC) is hosting the 4th annual UBC Research Computing Summer Sessions from August 17th-28th, 2020. This year, the program will be offered virtually in the form of a series of webinars and hands-on online workshops. The Summer Sessions are free and open to faculty, staff, students, and interested members of the public.
Courses will explore introductory and advanced topics in high-performance computing, Linux and Bash Shell programming, and provide valuable insight into UBC’s latest high-performance computing infrastructure, UBC ARC Sockeye.
View the full schedule on the ARC website.
For more information and questions regarding the 2020 UBC Research Computing Summer Sessions, please email arc.info@ubc.ca
buyIT Website Retired
To prepare for the launch of Workday this fall, UBC IT Okanagan will be retiring the buyIT technology equipment purchasing portal on August 1, 2020. Staff and faculty can continue to request quotes or purchase items such as computers, software and technology accessories by submitting a ticket to the IT helpdesk at helpdesk.ok.ubc.ca. More details about using Workday to purchase technology equipment will be coming soon.