Nebula Fall 2009 Brown Bag

The Nebula Fall Brown Bag was held on Tuesday, November 3, from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the fourth floor Auditorium in the UW Tower. About 75 clients and support staff attended.

New Anti-Virus vendor: Sophos

Sophos has been selected as the UW's new centrally licensed anti-virus/ anti-malware software product. The software is available now from the UWare site at: http://uw.edu/uware/sophos. The vendor selection was made by a team that included representatives from across all three UW campus, Purchasing, and UW Technology. Nebula desktops will continue to use McAfee until our Sophos deployment strategy is in place. When released, the Nebula package will uninstall McAfee from your Nebula Gold computer and install and update Sophos.

If you are using McAfee on a home computer, you must uninstall McAfee and install Sophos by March 31, 2010.
This applies to Mac computers as well as PCs.

Web access tool: Integratum

Integratum is a file transfer program that gives you access to your H: and I: drive files from any browser. We gave a brief demonstration of this tool at the Brown Bag. More information is available on the Web access tool: Using Nebula Filesystem Web Access page. If you would like help, please contact nebula@u with a good time for us to contact you at your Nebula Gold desktop location.

Account request form

We demonstrated the new on-line account request form. This form helps you give us all the information needed, which streamlines the account request process. If you have any questions or suggestions, please let us know.

Internet Explorer v8

Internet Explorer v8 was released some months back. Many Nebula clients have downloaded and installed the update themselves. Some screenshots and basic instructions are available on the Nebula Update to IE8 page.

Because browser upgrades have become more significant due to the greater number of web-based applications, Nebula has delayed in deploying this upgrade to its client population. Internet Explorer v8 does have a Compatibility Mode tool that will handle some incompatibility issues.

Several concerns were raised at the Brown Bag about IE8's compatibility with various applications. Here is a summary of what we know now. Please email us with updates, or other questions.

J.D. Edwards:
different versions of this software is used by a number of clients. Some versions are compatible with IE8 and some are not. Contract Accounting uses a version that is not compatible, and we are looking at ways to prevent them from receiving the IE8 upgrade when it is sent out to the Nebula Gold population.
e-Procurement:
e-Procurement is scheduled to load an IE8-compatibility patch in mid-November. For now, IE7 (or Firefox) is the recommended browser for e-Procurement.
Medical Center IT services help desk application:
Clients including Radiology, Network Operations and Network Services use this help desk software to enter tickets for medical center IT staff. We are investigating this.
Radiology applications:
We received confirmation that Radiology applications RIS and PACS are not certified to run under IE8.
CAAMS:
We are investigating whether the CAAMS building access system has compatibility issues.

New IT Connect site

IT Connect is a new site that aims to connect you to information technology at the UW. It includes a link to the Administrative Business Connectivity toolkit, which contains helpful information about preparing for a pandemic or other emergency.

New resource for Mac clients

We showed a new resource page aimed at our Mac clients, called Mac Support in Nebula.

Questions and Answers

Windows 7
- What hardware is required for Windows 7?
  Anything that will run Vista will run Windows 7, so any new hardware purchased under our existing specifications will work.
- What happens if I upgrade to Windows 7?
  It will be removed from the Nebula domain.
- Can we add Windows 7 machines as Bronze?
  Nope, not yet. We can't scan it or patch it until we've built the tools to support it as an operating system. Nebula support staff will check on reports of existing Windows 7 machines. (Thanks, Bert! ;)
Are we will ordering from Dell?
Yes, we are.
Is there an end of Nebula support for XP?
There is no end date yet established for XP in Nebula.
If I'm purchasing computers in January, what operating system should I buy?
Vista.
The I: drive is not searchable. Is there a search tool in the works?
We will discuss this with our engineering team next week.
Update: there are no plans to add this feature to the current Nebula offering, as it requires an enterprise-capable system that can handle ACLs.

Thank you to everyone who joined us. If you have questions, comments, or any other input, please send it to nebula@u.