Winter 2023 Announcements

Happy New Year!  We hope you all had a good holiday season and a smooth start to Winter.  As you know, we're already off and running in the new term, but there are still some changes we want you to know about. Keep reading to hear more about new staff and services available to you as well as other changes that can help you save time.

New Director of Technology Support Services - Karen Park

Please join me in congratulating Karen Park as she assumes the mantle of Director of Technology Support Services. Karen rejoined CIS in March after 5 years serving in Educational Technology and Media (ETM). She’s been an employee of SPU for over 15 years after as staff in CIS and ETM, as well as being a CIS student employee before graduation. We are very excited to have a person with her passion for education and her wealth of knowledge and experience leading the team.

If you haven't already, drop her a line to welcome her into her new role!

Azure Multi-Factor Authentication

At this point, all SPU accounts are now protected by Azure Multi-Factor Authentication. Thank you all so much for your part in helping keep our accounts and data systems secure!

With the last accounts migrated during the Winter Break, we are ready to enable some new security features that will increase security and save you time if you use the Authenticator App to authenticate.

How to Login in Fewer Steps

A new feature that you can enable on your account is to sign in without your password. Instead, your device lock code or biometric lock act as the 2nd factor to your authentication rather than your password. After you enable this feature, all you'll need to do to login is type your username and authenticate on the app.

1. Follow these instructions for setting up Phone Sign-in: Enable Phone Sign-in
2. Then, the next time you login to a campus service, click the "Use an App instead" link on the login page after entering your username.

Combating MFA Spam

With the increasing use of MFA, we're seeing new techniques by malicious actors to bypass MFA and gain access to your account. The most common is MFA Spam. To combat this, we are enabling a feature that will display a two-digit numeric code on the device you're trying to log in on, and you must enter that code in the Authenticator App to login. Additionally, it will provide the location information of where the request is coming from. These features help to ensure that you are authenticating a real login session that you requested and someone else hasn't compromised your password and is trying to log in elsewhere.

Remote Lab Access for Students

We are excited to announce the launch of Remote Labs for students! During fall quarter we launched a pilot remote computer lab, which allowed students to access specialized SPU Academic Software on a Windows computer from their personal devices. If you are a student that would like remote access to the specialized software SPU has, or if you have students in your class or program who would benefit from it, please consider sharing our Remote Computer Lab Access instructions.  Students can connect from a Windows or Apple PC's as well as Chromebooks, iOS and Android devices too.

Please also note that Remote Computer Lab Access replaces AppStream and AppStream will be deprecated this quarter.

Microsoft PowerBI

Have you heard about the power of visualizing your data? Microsoft now includes its Business Intelligence platform application with the licenses all SPU Faculty, Staff and Students have. PowerBI is a great way to transition from Excel to a more visual, powerful business intelligence and data analytics tool. Create graphs, metrics, analyze multiple data sources together, and more using PowerBI. Get started by clicking on the PowerBI application in Office, choosing an Excel document to import, and selecting a graph type. Further your data analysis skills by learning the platform for free directly from Microsoft. Ask your Data Manager, Supervisor, or visit the Power BI page in SPU's Service Catalog for more details or help getting started.

SPU Docs to move to OneDrive

Due to aging hardware and rising costs to manage and replace it, we're making plans to move all employees' SPU Documents to OneDrive and are looking for pilot users.  If you're interested in participating, please reach out to the CIS HelpDesk.

2022 MISO Survey Results

CIS posted the CIS 2022 MISO Survey Results back in November.  We wanted to thank you again for your candid feedback that is helping shape our future direction and how we provide services to campus.  

Staffing Challenges and Response Times

The MISO survey clearly communicated your number one concern is customer service and response times.  We're doing what we can with the resources we have on hand.  CIS is currently operating with 33% of staff positions vacant.  The Technology Support Services area covering the classrooms and HelpDesk is currently 50% vacant.  Many of these positions have been open and posted for over a year.  We appreciate your continued patience as we work to hire, but we would also love your help in recruiting new members to team CIS!