To coincide with the appointment of Debra Orr to the position of Associate Vice President of Administration, we’ll be unveiling a combined Technology and Administrative Services newsletter in August.

The newsletter will serve as a unified source for technology and administration topics that will be of interest and use to our community. We will continue to share updates about important improvements to campus services, along with topical news from the larger world of computing.

In addition, we hope to share even more stories highlighting the ways in which Simmons students, faculty, and staff are incorporating technology and administrative services into their teaching and learning at the College.

You’ve probably heard about 3D printers, but you may not have had an opportunity to see or use one in person. Simmons Technology would like to change that.

On May 14th and 15th, from 8am-12pm, we’ll be holding demonstrations of our new MakerBot Replicator printer in L225.

We encourage you to stop by if you’re interested in using 3D printing in the classroom, or if you’re simply curious about how 3D printers work and what they can do. Our team will be on hand to provide an overview and to answer any questions you have about modeling and creating objects using 3D printing.

Following the initial rollout of new printers across campus, Technology is preparing to activate ID card readers for faculty and staff. The card readers will provide access to all of the new multi-function devices (MFDs) on campus using your Simmons ID card. You’ll be able to print, copy, and scan quickly and securely from any MFD on campus by tapping your ID card on the reader.

This change provides faculty and staff with the same flexibility that CampusPrint provides to students: a networked, campuswide solution that allows you to get your documents when and where you need them.

In addition, networked MFDs with ID card access help to create efficiencies and to conserve resources by separating black & white and color print jobs, and by defaulting to double-sided printing.

As the ID card readers are activated for faculty and staff, Technology will be providing training to ensure that you have the resources you need. Project manager Roy Balcom will coordinate training sessions with each department, as needed. If you have questions about scheduling a training, please contact him at[email protected].

Over the past year, there has been an uptick in the frequency of so-called imposter scams. These attempts to obtain personal information involve emails and/or phone calls from a scammer who claims to be contacting you on “official” business. These scams often involve direct threats and they can be very convincing. Click the image below to see a full list of the tactics most often employed so you can be prepared.

If you ever suspect that someone is attempting to scam you via your Simmons email address or phone number, please contact the Service Desk immediately at 617-521-2222. For more information about imposter scams and what you can do to protect yourself, see this guide from the Federal Trade Commission.

On April 15th, Technology rolled out new antivirus software to all Simmons-owned computers. The new product—called ESET Antivirus—replaces Kaspersky Antivirus, and provides an effective, sustainable solution to keeping your computer safe from viruses and malware.

If you use a desktop or laptop computer on campus, this change should have occurred automatically and your computer should now be running ESET Antivirus.

If you’re an off-campus user of a Simmons-owned laptop, you’ll need to connect it to a wired connection on campus or to the Simmons Secure WiFi network. You should receive a prompt to start this process within one hour of connecting your laptop to the network. It’s important that you bring your laptop to campus and connect to the network as soon as possible. After April 30th, Kaspersky antivirus protection will no longer receive updates and your laptop may not be secure.

As always, to help keep your personally-owned computers safe, Technology recommends several free antivirus programs for Macs and PCs. Please visit servicedesk.simmons.edu/antivirus for more information.

We’re almost there. Workday@Simmons, the new source for human resource and payroll data, will go live on April 6th.

While new technology frequently comes with the promise of revolutionizing some aspect of your work or life, we think Workday really will change the employee experience at Simmons. We’re moving from a set of systems—which required you to visit multiple sites and remember different usernames and passwords—to a single location for most employee information.

On April 6th, you’ll be able to visit workday.simmons.edu, log in with your Simmons username and password, and access everything from time entry and approvals, to benefits enrollment, payslips and pay elections, time off requests, contact information, and much more.

This phase of the Workday project has been a significant undertaking and we couldn’t have reached this point without the collaboration and hard work of the Payroll, Talent and Human Capital Strategy, and Technology teams.

We look forward to unveiling Workday. In the meantime, you can access the project site to find out more about Workday. Prior to the launch, we’ll also make available a new support site, where you’ll find FAQs, videos, and step-by-step guides to using Workday.

The idea of the “paperless office” has been circulating for the last forty years. And while Simmons, like many workplaces, has drastically reduced the amount of printing we do, there will always be documents we need printed, and printed documents we need to scan so we have digital copies.

With this in mind, Simmons Technology has conducted an in-depth assessment of our aging on-campus fleet of printers and replaced them with new multi-function devices (MFDs) that will support the future printing, copying, and scanning needs of the College. Our team coordinated with each department to install the MFDs during March, and worked to make sure employees are able to print and know how to use the new devices.

The next step in this project will be to activate the ID card readers attached to all MFDs on campus. This effort will provide employee access to printers the same way the CampusPrint project provided networked, campuswide printing to students. ID card access allows you to send a print job and then release it at any printer on campus. This provides flexibility and a layer of security if you happen to print documents containing sensitive information. For example, if you need 50 printed, collated, and stapled packets for a meeting in the Kotzen Room, you can upload the job from your office computer, and then release it at the MFD nearest to Kotzen. Please note that while this feature will be available to all employees, if you have access to an office printer that does not require use of an ID card, you can continue to print there directly.

Because this is a significant change to how employees print, Technology will provide documentation and training. We will work with each department to determine your needs and provide customized training, if necessary.

Once the ID card readers are fully functional, Technology also will conduct quarterly reviews of the MFDs, verifying that each department has a device that meets its needs and continues to provide a long-term solution for printing, copying, and scanning.

When a computer hard drive fails, there aren’t any easy solutions that don’t involve a lot of stress, time, effort, and (worst of all) money.

Fortunately, with the widespread adoption of cloud-based backup tools, you can keep your most important data securely stored somewhere other than your computer’s hard drive.

Here are some tips for backing up your data. If you have specific questions about creating backups, or need help setting up a data backup plan, contact the Service Desk at 617-521-2222.

• Simmons Network Drives are available to all students, faculty, and staff. You can use your personal drive (Y: drive) as backup storage for files you do not want to share. Faculty and staff can also use department drives(G: drives) for files that need to be shared within a department or school. These drives are the ideal location for files containing sensitive information.
• Chrome is the recommended web browser for everyone at Simmons. Whether you’re using it for work or at home, you can sign into Chrome to back up your bookmarks, web history, and more. Signing in means that this information will be available on any other device when you sign into Chrome there. It also creates an almost seamless transition between Chrome on your computer and the Chrome app on your mobile devices. One security warning: be sure not to sign in on public workstations that other people can access.
• Google Drive stores and syncs data continuously. If you install the Google Drive app on your computer, it will sync files to the cloud and to a folder on your hard drive. The files are accessible and editable (some of them online, using Google Docs, Sheets, and Presentations) from any device with an Internet connection. Drive is an ideal space for storing data that you would not keep on your shared department drive (G: drive), which is the go-to spot for any files containing sensitive information, such as credit card and Social Security numbers.

Both Chrome and Google Drive are supported by Simmons Technology and our technicians can assist you in setting up and managing your data storage and backups.

Pilot Testing
Simmons Technology and the Library staff are currently testing the new phone system to ensure that both the infrastructure and phone features work as expected. The testing period also will provide an opportunity for our team to troubleshoot any problems encountered during installation of the new phones, and to verify that the new system will match and exceed the level of service provided by our current platform.

Get Your Calls on the Go
After the snow day (or five) we experienced this winter, we think everyone will appreciate the twinning feature available on the new phone system. Twinning allows you to forward calls from your office phone to a mobile phone or your home phone. Once activated for your extension, you can turn this service on and off at any time, making it a perfect solution when you’re traveling or working from home.

To find out more about the new phone system, please visit theproject website.

When School of Nursing and Health Sciences professor Karen Teeley prepares for each new semester, she draws on twenty-five years of nursing experience and more than twelve years of experience teaching blended courses. Recently, Professor Teeley has expanded her toolkit by adding a set of short, reusable introductory videos that help to engage new students.

The videos are created using Tegrity Campus, our fully automated lecture capture tool. Tegrity provides Simmons faculty with on-demand access to recording services for their courses. Faculty can capture lectures, demonstrations, guest speaker presentations, and other in-class elements for use by their current students and in future courses.

Recorded course content is typically associated with the so-calledflipped classroom (PDF), which many professors at Simmonsemploy to varying degrees. But even if you’re not ready or interested in repurposing your class time for non-lecture activities, capturing content can be a great way to make additional resources available for students or to address complex topics that don’t fit into a single lecture.

In fact, Simmons faculty have used Tegrity to record more than 260 hours of content which students have viewed 33,000 times. Recordings are initiated and shared via Simmons Moodle, enhancing online course content and providing students with additional resources outside of the classroom.

If you’d like to try using Tegrity to record videos for your courses, simply enable the Tegrity block in Simmons Moodle. From there, you can begin recording and sharing immediately. We’ve created brief introductions (PC and Mac) to help you through any technical challenges, and our Service Desk technicians are available to answer your questions.