Banner Briefs: November 29, 2006
One of the consequences of moving to Banner is that it is highlighting some of the areas in the College's computing environment that are lagging behind and need attention, including the following:
Windows 98 Operating Systems Need to Be Replaced
We need to replace all of the remaining Windows 98 systems that are still out there. They are no longer supported by Microsoft (no bug fixes) or by the latest anti-virus software. They are generally too slow and their screen resolution is too low to run Banner well.
Microsoft Office
We need to move faculty and staff PCs to Office2003, and eventually to Office2007. This package integrates well with Banner data extracts, but beyond that it is time to move this along. The academic labs have been on 2003 for a while and that is now the standard. The Help Desk will be rolling this out over the next several months and everyone cannot be first, so please be patient. If not having Word 2003 is causing you an immediate problem, such as not being able to open documents sent to you, please send an e-mail to fshelpdesk@newpaltz.edu requesting to be moved up in the queue.
Phasing out GroupWise
When the all new my.newpaltz.edu is up and running in January, it will include a new campus-wide calendar system. The combination of the new calendar, the latest version of NPmail, and Outlook 2003 available as the e-mail/calendar client, means we can plan the phasing out of GroupWise.
User IDs
Banner has provided a new ID number for every student, faculty, staff and alumni. We will be using this number as the basis for the NPCUID (New Paltz Computer User ID). This is coming along just in the nick of time, because we have been running into increasing problems with our old way of assigning student IDs. We will also be exploring ways to use this for faculty and staff IDs while still providing a means to have reasonable and identifiable e-mail address.
All of these are not mandatory Banner changes, but these improvements and consistencies across campus will provide benefits in the long run. Since we are going through many changes as we convert and adjust to Banner, we hope to take advantage of the opportunities provided along the way to improve the overall computing environment.
