Here is the official announcement re changing passwords, and accessing Peoplesoft. You need access to this for:

* Submission of online leave applications and online leave tracking
* Managing online leave requests
* Viewing, updating, and changing personal profiles
* Viewing payslips and pay summaries online
* Completing and submitting timesheets online

From ICTS:

A reminder that PeopleSoft Self-Service will go live tomorrow (Tuesday) and will be available to all staff at this link:
https://ucpeople.canterbury.ac.nz.

Prior to logging in for the first time, staff must change their password using the IT Account tool:
https://ras.canterbury.ac.nz

This will change their password on all systems, and the rules governing passwords have altered. They are as follows:

“Your password must have a minimum of 8 characters, up to a maximum of 32. Please note that only letter/number characters can be used, though you may use a combination of both. No spaces or special characters are allowed. You cannot use any part of your own name, or your username. Additionally, you cannot use the word “password.” Passwords are case sensitive. Once reset, it can take up to 20 minutes to update.”

Information on using the system is available on the HR Intranet’s PeopleSoft Information page https://intranet.canterbury.ac.nz/hr/news/peoplesoft.shtml

Please contact the ICT Service Desk if you or the staff you support have any difficulties.

With the pending changes to Peoplesoft, where we will all be expected to login to apply for leave, etc., we believe ICTS will be requiring all University Staff to change their password, probably next week.

Don’t do it now – you’ll just have to do it again! But do start thinking about a new password. There is a new password policy pending which will require stronger passwords, so give it some thought. The password should now be at least 8 characters long.

Peter

Extract from the new policy:

Password Construction
Passwords are required to be secret, and for them to remain secret it is important that passwords can’t be easily guessed. A good password is called a “strong” password.

Strong passwords have the following characteristics:
• Are long – 15 characters or more is recommended
• Contain both upper and lower case characters (e.g., a-z, A-Z)
• Have digits as well as letters
• Are not words in any language, slang, dialect, jargon, etc.
• Are not based on personal information, names of family, etc.
• Passwords should never be written down or stored on-line.

Try to create passwords that can be easily remembered. One way to do this is create a password based on a song title, affirmation, or other phrase. For example, the phrase might be: “This May Be One Way To Remember” and the password could be: “TmB1w2R” or “Tmb1W2rr” or some other variation.

A new version of Internet Explorer was released by ICTS on Monday night. In some cases you may get an error message that looks like this:

This is likely if you have set your I.E. browser home page to point to a wiki page. It also occurs with the links on the Horizon Launcher bar that go to Horizon reports or to Payment Plus.

To proceed, click on the *Diagnose Connection Problems* button and it should then let you login and proceed normally. We have reported this to ICTS, and it will be some strange security change that has been made to I.E.

Peter

Earlier this week ICTS sent out an email about P: drive maintenance on Sunday. Any staff-members not working on Sunday should ensure their PCs are logged-off and shutdown as usual.

For those working on Sunday, ICTS hope that staff won’t notice anything, but it is possible that there may be so-called synchonization errors – these include text such as:
‘Unable to connect to ‘\\server\share’. The specified network name is no longer available.”

If you get that, let Library IT know on Monday. There is a fix, but it is a bit messy. Thanks, Peter

… but the 2010 midyear exams are now available

Remember, if you or a colleague do find yourselves a bit overcome by the news, the University has a defibrillator and oxygen tanks. Ring 7777 for a jump start. It would be a shame to miss the weekend.

Jack

There are some interesting developments happening in the e-book as a text-book market. New Zealand lags behind in the availability of readers and e-texts. Already there are USA book-shops that provide downloadable e-texts to students licensed for a year. Now we start to see companies working directly with academic staff to provide access to e-texts through Learning Management Systems such as Moodle. Not a lot of library involvement here: see http://bit.ly/c5wwP2
We need to be aware of these trends because I suspect that when they arrive in this part of the world, they will do so with a rush. However, it is interesting to note that in the USA there is still considerable faculty resistance to e-books.

Peter

The Syndetics cover art and table of contents links have now been added to the live catalogue.

Regards, Peter

Camelot/wiki pages are down at the moment. I have reported the problem to Peter Kennedy, Library IT, who is looking into it for us now.

Angela Berry.

The phones in the Central Library all appear to be down at the moment. The problem has been reported to Security Staff, who are also having problems with their phones. Hopefully the problem will be fixed tonight.

Angela Berry.

This note from ICTS at 9.20 Monday morning:

Over the weekend we have experienced issues with some ICT Accounts, which have been denied access to ICT services. We have had staff working on this since yesterday, and hope to have restored access to the accounts soon.

We will provide updates as soon as more information becomes available, and we apologise for this inconvenience.

Regards, Peter