With final grading for some classes finishing up in AARC and all future student information activity having moved to Workday, Simmons Connection will be retiring at the end of October. Quick links to frequently used services are now available on internal.simmons.edu.  Select either “Current Students” or “Faculty & Staff” and scroll down to view various resources that are available to you.

Looking for events?  Navigate to events.simmons.edu in your browser and you will find what’s happening on campus.  You can also reserve a room for meeting or study. 

If you have questions regarding the retirement of Simmons Connection, please contact the Service Desk.

We know that you’ve been waiting for Simmons Connection to be available on mobile devices and we’re happy to announce that we have completed an upgrade that allows for full mobile access.

You can now use Connection, including AARC, by visitingconnection.simmons.edu on any common mobile device (iPhone, iPad, Android devices, etc.). We recognize that the lack of mobile access made things difficult for many of our customers, especially students, and we hope that this upgrade makes accessing grades, registration, student billing and other services easier and more efficient.

In addition to the mobile upgrade, we’re also working on a project to enhance the news and announcements section of Connection. This upgrade will allow you to add rich media to announcements, comment and interact, and share listings on Facebook, Twitter, and more.

Based on your feedback, we’re also investigating alternatives to Planga as the event management tool for Simmons. We included Planga in Simmons Connection because it is a free tool and we wanted to test the value of an event management platform for our community. After months of use, it has become clear that Planga does not have the tools that you want nor does it have the technical capacity to fully integrate into Connection. Moving forward, we will assess other products based on criteria that you provided for us over the last six months. As soon as we have more information about when and how we will replace Planga, we’ll send an update to the entire Simmons community.

When Technology launched Simmons Connection in June, we promised that it would be an ongoing project that would be improved over time. During the last four months, we have received invaluable feedback from many members of the community, and we have used your suggestions to begin work on a second phase of Simmons Connection.

Over the next few months, we will be implementing several major improvements, including Moodle integration, a revamped news and announcements section that simplifies the workflow and incorporates sharing and social media, and inclusion of the Simmons directory within Simmons Connection. These changes should have minimal impact on how you use Simmons Connection and we will provide documentation and, as necessary, training on any new features.

During this time, we will also be creating a new Simmons Connection Governance Team, made up of various stakeholders at Simmons, who will help guide future changes by providing perspective on the needs of students, faculty, and staff. If you would like to be involved with this initiative, please contact the Simmons Connection team using this link.

We remain committed to constant, incremental improvement to our services so that they work better for you. Thank you as always for your feedback and patience as we make these enhancements.

With the Fall semester well under way, most students, staff, and faculty have probably used Simmons Connection to access information about classes, events and other campus news. Behind the scenes, Technology is working on the next phase of Simmons Connection. We’re currently mapping out changes and improvements based on your feedback and we will continue to do so as work on this new platform progresses.

We are aware that some features in Simmons Connection have not worked as well as we had originally intended. For example, the revamped menu structure in AARC has caused some confusion and we found that the display of student email was working inconsistently. Your feedback has helped us to identify these issues and subsequently make changes to improve or replace features as necessary.

As we prepare for phase two, we want to keep the lines of communication open with everyone in the Simmons community. If you have problems that you’ve encountered or suggestions for future improvements and upgrades, we encourage you to submit feedback on the Service Desk website using this link. Every comment we receive from you is discussed among the team and we will follow up to let you know when and if we can incorporate your ideas.

Thank you for taking the time to be a part of the ongoing upgrades to technology at Simmons.

To help everyone learn more about using Simmons Connection and Google Apps for Education, Technology will be offering several drop-in workshops throughout September. Just check the dates below, pick one that works for you, and stop by with your questions!

General Technology (ask us anything!)

– Wednesday, September 5th from 9am-1pm in L006 (Lefavour Hall)

Simmons Connection & Google Apps for Education

– Thursday, September 13th from 12pm-2pm in L003 (Lefavour Hall)

– Thursday, September 20th from 10am-12pm in L003 (Lefavour Hall)

– Thursday, September 27th from 1pm-3pm in L003 (Lefavour Hall)

Remember, if you have questions that you need answered right away, you can check the Simmons Connection/Google Apps section on the Service Desk website, or call the Service Desk at 617-521-2222.