Author Archives: mrichichi

UPDATE: January 3rd: Please go here for the latest summary of what has changed.

UPDATE, December 30th: Zoom logins have now been changed for most users to CUNY Login. You must now use cuny.zoom.us as the SSO login address as the baruch.zoom.us is not currently working. There may be some accounts that did not migrate correctly; please contact the BCTC Helpdesk and we will troubleshoot.

NOTE: The timing of the Zoom change is now after 4pm on Wednesday, December 29th, 2021.

We have been working behind the scenes and are now ready to implement the change of Zoom authentication to CUNY Login as of December 29th, 2021. This date was chosen as the least disruptive time–after fall semester is complete, but before January and Spring sessions begin.

The change will mean that instead of using your Baruch username and password to access Zoom you will use your CUNY Login like you do for CUNYfirst, Blackboard, and other CUNY-provided services.

The change will be a migration of your account from your Baruch username and email address to the CUNY Login. This means that all account settings, meetings, recordings, etc, will still be associated with your account. We have been told by Zoom that meetings will be accessible both at cuny.zoom.us and baruch.zoom.us once the change is completed.

We cannot predict every change that will happen but we are expecting not much to change other than the method you use to log in to Zoom.

At this point we are planning to have Zoom be unavailable from 4pm on Wednesday, December 29th through noon on Thursday, December 30th. During this time you will not be able to use your Baruch or CUNY Zoom account to run or attend meetings. We are still finalizing the exact schedule with CUNY and Zoom but we don’t expect for this to take longer than the allotted time. It is possible that the entire migration will be finished on the evening on the 29th but we’re requesting people don’t anticipate being able to log in to Zoom until the afternoon of December 30th.

While we have mapped current Baruch usernames/emails to CUNY Logins for nearly every user, there are some situations where things will behave differently. One is for students, faculty or staff with a primary affiliation other than Baruch Collge. There can only be one CUNY Login for those users and so it’s possible that your CUNY Login account will be affiliated with another CUNY college. If you were already using your CUNY Login to access that other school’s Zoom configuration that will not change but you will no longer have a separate login for Baruch. In most cases this will actually simplify Zoom usage.

Another thing that will change is the use of “Baruch users only” for Zoom security. Since the accounts will all be @login.cuny.edu instead of @baruch.cuny.edu or @baruchmail.cuny.edu, limiting to Baruch users will not work the same way it did before. However, limiting to CUNY users will provide similar security (and will work better for users without a primary affiliation of Baruch). We are still considering the impact of the change on login security and will be able to provide fully updated instructions once the change is completed. Watch this space.

We also understand that configuration of alternative hosts should still work and in fact the usernames specified will migrate to the CUNY Login usernames.

One final consideration for the migration are Zoom accounts associated with resource accounts for departments. These accounts will need to have CUNY Logins created for the migration. CUNY has outlined a process for us to follow to configure those accounts. We will be compiling a list of resource accounts in Zoom and working with CUNY to enable those CUNY Login accounts before the migration so they are successful.

If after December 30th you have troubles logging into Zoom or do not see what you expect, you can contact the BCTC Helpdesk who will be able to troubleshoot the issue and determine what needs to be done.

Here are the slides for the new faculty orientation.

To maintain and enhance enterprise security of all BCTC services, we now require VPN access to use HRAssist if you are not accessing the service from an on-campus computer.

Many full-time employees are already using the VPN to access their office desktop computers or other Baruch/CUNY services, especially during the work-from-home policy during the pandemic. The VPN can be used to access any internal Baruch service not accessible to the open internet, and you do not need to remote desktop to your computer to use HRAssist (although it will work fine from there.) Not only can you just connect to the VPN on your home computer and access HRAssist directly from that computer, you can also download the GlobalProtect client for iOS/iPadOS and Android and access the service from your smartphone or tablet.

We have updated the instructions available at https://baruch.cuny.edu/vpn to provide basic instructions for connecting with the mobile clients. Also note that since the start of the pandemic VPN access has been automatically enabled for all faculty and staff and no longer needs advance approval from your supervisor, and although we don’t require you fill out the VPN form in advance, we ask that you follow the guidance it has regarding keeping the vendor OS patches up do date, and installing and updating antivirus software (CUNY users can download McAfee from the offers.cuny.edu website.)

CUNYfirst will be unavailable from 8pm on Wednesday, March 24 until noon, Sunday, March 28th. This downtime is necessary because CUNY’s Office of Computing and Information Services (CIS) is moving the CUNYfirst application from the current hosting provider to servers located in the CUNY data center.

CIS has been preparing for this event for more than a year, and has been engaging in extensive testing and running the new servers for several months in parallel with the hosted environment. Some common questions about the migrations and answers are below:

• Why were the dates selected? CUNY selected these dates to have the least impact possible on University business processes. The dates are before fall enrollment and FY21 procurement deadlines. They also align with the start of Spring Recess.
• What exactly is happening? Right now CUNYfirst is run by a third-party hosting company on remote equipment. CUNY CIS is moving the application to servers located in the CUNY data center. This is primarily because the contract with the provider has ended and CUNY has chosen not to renew it. It will also allow CIS to have more flexibility in future upgrades and improve long-term planning.
• Will I see any difference? Users are not expected to see any changes in the CUNYfirst environment. All addresses to get to CUNYfirst services will remain unchanged; and the software, applications, and data will all be unchanged from before the migration. Please note CIS is also freezing system changes in CUNYfirst for 20 days before and 20 days after the migration, which means CIS will be deferring any software patches or feature enhancements to CUNYfirst during this time.
• What do I need to know? All access to CUNYfirst will be unavailable during the upgrade window. Students, faculty and staff should expect to not be able to enter any data into CUNYfirst or look up information in CUNYfirst during this time. Note that CUNYfirst will be unavailable, but all other services using CUNY Login will continue to work normally (Blackboard, DegreeWorks, etc.) However, services that receive CUNYfirst data will not receive that data during the migration.
• What about Baruch services? Services that depend on CUNYfirst data will not receive updates. This mostly affects account provisioning for faculty and staff, and any processes which receive data from the 805 and 856 files. Since the migration is not occurring during an enrollment or add/drop period data changes are minimal during this time.
• How should I prepare? If you work in an office that regularly enters data into CUNYfirst, plan for not being able to add data during the workdays of Thursday, March 25th and Friday, March 26th. You may wish to focus on other activities to support the office during this time. While you may be able to download certain data from CUNYfirst in advance, remember that data containing confidential information as per the CUNY Data Security Policy should remain on Baruch computers (i.e., access your office computer via VPN to work with that data.) If you are a student or faculty member, understand you will not be able to look up course information or rosters in CUNYfirst or otherwise change any personal information during that time.
• What should I do if I have questions? Information about the migration may be available from the CUNY IT Help website. We will also update our webpage with information as CIS makes it available. If you need additional help, please consult the BCTC Helpdesk.

CUNY CIS and BCTC appreciate your patience during this process, and look forward to continuing to serve your CUNYfirst needs after the migration.

BCTC will be installing new campus firewalls from 7-9am on Saturday, January 16^th, 2021.  These firewalls replace equipment that is nearing end of life and will support higher performance. There will be brief interruptions to the campus internet connections during this time.  In addition, all VPN connections that are active at that time will be disconnected and will need to be reestablished. Please monitor BCTC social media (bctcbaruch on Twitter and Facebook) for status updates at that time.  If you have trouble connecting to services after this service window, please contact the Helpdesk at [email protected]. 

Background

The current campus firewalls are over 6 years old and are nearing the end of support by the vendor. In addition they do not support the latest versions of the firewall software available from the vendor which offers more advanced security features and up-to-date configuration options. CUNY initiated a project late last year to procure new firewalls for all the CUNY campuses. We began the migration plan by reviewing the existing firewall configurations and removing outdated rules and other ineffeciencies. We received the new firewalls from CUNY back in December and since then have been migrating the configuration from the existing firewalls to the new ones, and have validated the configuration.

The old firewalls are in a redundant pair that supports full failover and backup if a connection is disrupted or a problem causes a firewall to crash (which is incredibly rare). The new firewalls will also be in the same redundant configuration. On Saturday morning we will disconnect the redundant pair, and then physically move the network connections from one of the old firewalls to the new firewall. At that point we will test connectivity on- and off-campus to a defined list of services that will indicate that the connection is operating normally. Since the configurations are identical and we’re plugging the new system into the same ports as the old system, we expect less than a few minutes of disruption while the firewalls configure for the network. If that does not happen we will troubleshoot the connection, with the worst case scenario being that we switch back to the old firewall and regroup. If as expected the new firewall works correctly, we will then connect the second new firewall to the network and reestablish the high availability connection between them to preserve redundancy. The only actual disruption of service occurs when we move the physical fiber optic cables from the old firewall to the new firewall, and then the new firewall becoming known to the existing network, a process we expect to only take a few seconds but in no case should take more than 5 minutes.

As we plan for other future network upgrades in anticipation of being able to support in-person and hybrid learning in Fall of 2021, the new network switches being installed will support higher-speed connections between campus buildings and the CUNY ring connecting to the Internet. The new firewalls have high speed interfaces that will allow us to fully benefit from the connections to the new network equipment. For now we are using the connections for our existing network.

CUNY has procured a site license for Camtasia and Snagit for faculty use. Please reach out to your tech coordinator or email the Helpdesk for the license key and installation instructions. You can get support for the products at the TechSmith help center.

The University’s free student, faculty, and staff access to Adobe Creative Cloud ends on October 30, 2020.  

After October 30, the following Adobe Creative Cloud licensing will be in effect at Baruch: 

For students: 

Students who are enrolled in courses that require Adobe Creative Cloud use can continue to use the software without interruption.  If your course has been identified as requiring Adobe Creative Cloud, your entitlement through your CUNY Login will continue to work after October 30. 

 All other students can access Adobe Creative Cloud from the Baruch online labs located at https://onlinelabs.baruch.cuny.edu/. The online labs can be accessed using your Baruch username and password.  
 
Creative Cloud entitlements for students will be revised on a per-semester basis. 

For faculty and staff:  

Faculty and staff currently who previously received an Adobe Creative Cloud account authenticated by your Baruch email and Baruch username can continue to use the software without interruption. 

If you are faculty or staff and need access to Adobe Creative Cloud you should contact the BCTC Helpdesk for further information. 

One of the side effects of our remote work environment is a different understanding of how online documents and signatures work.

I personally have been living in the electronic document world for a while now–a standard workflow for me is receiving an electronic invoice, opening it in Acrobat (either Acrobat Pro or Reader) and signing it:

This usually works well. However, there are documents that faculty and staff need to sign that are PDF forms. PDF forms are specially formatted to allow users to enter data into specific form fields. For whatever reason Acrobat does not allow documents designed as PDF forms to be signed in Acrobat.

Fortunately, there is a simple workaround (at least on Windows, see below for the issue on a Mac): You can fill out the form in Acrobat (again, either Reader or Pro) and then “Print” the document, but print it to a PDF instead of a normal printer:

“Microsoft Print to PDF” is available on any computer with Microsoft Office installed. Users with Acrobat Pro may also see an “Adobe PDF” virtual printer in your printer list. Either will work.

When you print to PDF you will get a file dialog asking you to name the file to save. I recommend using a different name than the original form.

When you print the PDF you will get a new PDF with the form fields filled out that you then can use the “Sign” functionality in Acrobat Reader or Pro to sign normally, and then email or send the file to the appropriate offices. As always, remember that email cannot be used to send information (such as social security numbers, bank account information, etc.) classified as “Confidential” by the University’s Data Classification Standard. Offices who request such data will provide you another mechanism to share that data with them.

Unfortunately Adobe Acrobat on a Mac does not allow you to print to PDF, asking you to save the PDF instead, which will not make the document editable. We are exploring options for determining the best way to handle this. For now the option of printing to paper, signing the paper, and scanning the signed form back into a PDF is probably the best option (and I believe the option most commonly used when we were working on campus.)

Please be advised that as of September 27th, all Zoom meetings will either require a passcode or a waiting room. There are more details available at https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-ushttps://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360045009111.

Please note that according to the CUNY Zoom Security Protocol, all CUNY Zoom meetings should have a password as per CUNY policy. Having a password or a waiting room are two important ways to reduce the possibility of Zoombombing in your meeting.

Baruch students can now remotely access the software on the computers in the main student lab (Kaplan Center) using BCTC’s new Online Labs application (https://onlinelabs.baruch.cuny.edu).

This is especially helpful for students who are working with devices that cannot support the installation of software that is required for their courses.

This remote access service is designed for the use of software that is installed on the lab computers.  It should not be used for software that is delivered via the CUNY Virtual Desktop (https://www.cuny.edu/about/administration/offices/cis/virtual-desktop):  SPSS, SAS, ArcGIS, Mathematica, Maplesoft and Matlab).  Also, it should not be used for access to Adobe Creative Cloud in classes that require its use.

Access is limited to Baruch students.  Faculty and staff should continue to use VPN to access the software on office computers.

Arthur Downing
Vice President for Information Services and Dean of the Library