MyEMU and Jenzabar EX Scheduled Outage

Friday, December 30, 8:00 am to Saturday, December 31, 5:00 pm is a scheduled information systems outage for Student Information Systems (EX) and myEMU. We will be installing a major upgrade. EX and myEMU will be unavailable during this time.

We expect the outage to be for only EX and myEMU. No other systems will be affected by this outage.

If you use EX and your computer is not shut down during the upgrade (i.e. before you leave for the holidays), you will need to restart it after the upgrade for EX to work correctly.

If you have questions or concerns please contact the Information Systems Helpdesk: helpdesk@emu.edu or 540.432.4357 (x4357 on the Harrisonburg campus).

Scheduled: Upgrade Moodle to v3.2

On Wednesday, 21 December 2016 between 8:00am and 10:00am, Information Systems will be upgrading our Moodle system to version 3.2.

Moodle will be unavailable during the upgrade. No other systems will be affected.

This release brings new features and fixes. Highlights of the new features include:

  • Assignment overrides
  • Turnitin updates/improvements – we will also be setting the default for new assignments to “Allow Submissions after the Due Date”.
  • General fixes and improvements.
  • A new, updated and simplified theme called “Boost”.  This theme also improves how notifications and messages appear.  The intent of the theme is for Moodle to look the same across all devices (computer, tablet, and mobile) and while using the Moodle app.  Please note: We will not be rolling this out as the default theme at this time since we still need to customize it and test the new theme with all of the Moodle plug-ins that we have installed.

For more details about Moodle 3.2 please refer to the new features tour or the version release notes.  There are also a series of videos that describe new version 3.2 features.

Please contact the Helpdesk with questions or comments: helpdesk@emu.edu or 540 432 4357 (x4357 on the Harrisonburg campus).

Update: The upgrade was completed successfully at 9:00am.

Scheduled: Panopto Upgrade

On Saturday, December 17, Panopto will be upgraded to v5.3 (7:00pm-11:00pm)

During the time our site is offline, you will not be able to access records, and any attempts to upload from clients will result in a “Server unable to connect” message.

  • Quizzing — Instructors can add multiple choice, multi-select, and true/false questions into any video using the Panopto editor. Viewers can take quizzes in the interactive player, and instructors can access real-time reports of all responses.This new feature will be off by default, can be previewed by admin users, and can be turned on for all users via a site setting.
  • Captions — Users can access Panopto’s machine-generated speech-to-text captions and modify them in the video editor. In addition, users can customize the color, size, and position of captions during playback.
  • Primary Video Switching — For multi-camera recordings, video creators can switch between primary video feeds using the Panopto editor. This eliminates the need for costly video-switching hardware, making it easy to create professional-looking multi-camera events.
  • Enhanced Editing — In June, we introduced the industry’s first HTML5-based video editor. Now, we’re adding the ability to upload custom thumbnails, and to upload and manage slides within the video timeline.

For more details about the features in Panopto 5.3, check out our release notes.

 

Scheduled: 25Live Upgrade

On Tuesday December 6 (9:00pm), 25Live will be upgraded to v27.

During the time of the upgrade, 25Live will not be available for viewing or creating events.

The most anticipated new features of v27 are:

  • Event Wizard: Files can be uploaded and attached in the Event Wizard
  • Workflow: New automatic email of Tasks digest
  • Administration: Ability to remove blackout dates en masse
  • Security: Ability to set assignment policy exceptions on multiple security groups simultaneously
  • Reports: The “User List By Security Group” and “User List By User Name” reports now indicate which usernames are inactive
  • Mobile: Organizations now appear in the Mobile version
  • Mobile: Event list for Locations and Resources appear in the Mobile version

See release notes as well: What’s New in 25Live

Scheduled: Software Updates for Webservers

Between 6:30 AM and 7:00 AM on Friday, November 18th we will be performing software updates on our website servers. You may notice intermittent issues accessing moodle.emu.edu, www.emu.edu, and the Broadcast Email system web-interface during this time.

The web-accessible interface of the Broadcast Email system will be unavailable during this outage. However, emails sent into the Broadcast system will continue to be processed normally, but their delivery may be delayed slightly.