News

What is happening? The end-of-life for on-premises SharePoint (https://sharepoint.uwaterloo.ca/) will be May 2022.  

• On-premises SharePoint migrations are expected to be complete by November 2021 as part of the moving to SharePoint Online project with the exception of a few already identified groups. 

What is the impact?  

• Maintenance and updates will continue from December 2021 to May 2022 for on-premises SharePoint. These updates will only be completed during working hours, on the second Wednesday of every month. Browsers may need to be refreshed during updates.
• The on-premises SharePoint development environment will no longer be available beginning December 1, 2021.  
• On-premises SharePoint sites will no longer be accessible after May 2022. 

What do site owners need to do? If you have not already migrated your site: 

• Prepare your SharePoint 2016 on-premises site for migration to SharePoint Online and/or Microsoft Teams. 
• Submit a migration request if you are unsure of your site migration status, or are ready to migrate, and include the name of your site.

Questions or concerns? Please contact Andrew McAlorum (amcalorum@uwaterloo.ca)  

Resolved (September 15, 8:12 a.m.): Users should be able to authenticate when connecting to eduroam again. IST has implemented a targeted mitigation while the vendor provides a software patch to fix a bug in the authentication service.

Questions or concerns? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or ext. 44357.

What is happening? Users may be experiencing authentication issues when connecting to eduroam. IST is investigating. 

Questions or concerns? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or ext. 44357.

What is happening? In preparation for the Fall term, Information Systems & Technology (IST) has created hybrid work guidelines for University employees who will be working both in the office and from home. Read more about the recommended meeting guidelines, work equipment guidelines, and 

What is happening? Teams meeting recordings will now be stored in your OneDrive for Business account or the SharePoint site connected to your Microsoft Team instead of being stored in Microsoft Stream by default. 

What does this mean for you?

• Starting and stopping recordings: Starting and stopping a recording in Teams will remain the same.
• Accessing old recordings (recorded before September 1, 2021): Recordings from before September 1 will not be affected and will remain available in Stream.
• Accessing new recordings (recorded on or after September 1, 2021):
  • Channel meeting recordings will be stored in the Teams channel’s Files tab in the ‘Recordings’ folder. All members of the Team will have access to channel recordings.
  • Non-channel meetings will be stored in the OneDrive for Business account of the user who started the recording in the ‘Recordings’ folder. The recording will automatically be shared with all UW participants of the meeting. For external meeting participants, a link to the recording must be manually shared with them. 

For more information see Teams cloud meeting recording - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs

Questions or concerns? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca.

Resolved (Aug 27): Microsoft has successfully deployed a fix to restore OneDrive for Business storage limits. OneDrive for Business storage limits should be restored to 5TB by 6:00 p.m. today. 

Questions or concerns? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or ext. 44357.

What is happening? Users may be seeing OneDrive for Business storage limits that are lower than expected. Microsoft is aware of the issue and is working on deploying a fix. More information will be provided once available. 

Questions or concerns? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or ext. 44357.

What is happening? In preparation for the upcoming service changes announced by Atlassian on October 16, 2020, users and spaces on the on-premises Confluence instance (wiki.uwaterloo.ca) are being migrated to Confluence Cloud (uwaterloo.atlassian.net). 

When is this happening? On-premises Confluence users and spaces will be migrated to Confluence Cloud between September 29 and November 1. IST Client Services staff will reach out to owners of on-premises Confluence spaces to schedule a migration date and time. 

Why is this happening?

• Atlassian removed the ability to purchase new on-premises licenses on February 2, 2021. Additional users cannot be added to the on-premises Confluence instance once the existing license limit has been reached. 
• In order to downgrade the number of on-premises licenses, users need to be migrated before February 2, 2022.
• Atlassian has announced that support for all Atlassian server products will end on February 2, 2024.

What is the impact? 

• Once migrated, Confluence URLs will begin with uwaterloo.atlassian.net instead of wiki.uwaterloo.ca. 
• Migrated Confluence pages will continue to use the legacy editor by default. Confluence content editors also have the option to convert Confluence pages to the new editor. 

• • There is no impact if you choose to continue using the legacy editor. 
  • Some legacy editor features will no longer work if you convert the page to use the new editor. For a full list of legacy editor features and conversion impacts, please see: https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/convert-pages-to-the-new-editor/

What do users need to do? 

• During your scheduled migration time, please log out of Confluence and do not add or edit content.
• Once migrated, WCMS content editors will need to update all links to on-premises Confluence spaces (wiki.uwaterloo.ca) with the new Confluence Cloud links (uwaterloo.atlassian.net).

Additional Resources

• Atlassian Server end of life FAQs
• Atlassian's Journey to cloud overview

Questions or concerns? Please contact Andrew McAlorum (amcalorum@uwaterloo.ca)

What is happening? Exchange servers are being removed from service for maintenance/updates. Individual servers will be taken out of service between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. each night throughout the maintenance period. 

When is it happening? Sunday, August 15 to Friday, August 20 - between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. each night.

Why is it happening? To upgrade Exchange software with the latest updates.

Who will it impact? Users that are actively connected to an Exchange server when it is removed for maintenance may be prompted to enter their username and password. Outlook may also alert about being redirected to autodiscover.uwaterloo.ca. This is normal behavior and the user should click 'Allow' when this happens. No other impact is anticipated as the remaining servers will continue to carry out email and calendar functions. This maintenance will not impact mailboxes that are in Microsoft 365.

Questions or concerns? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or ext. 44357.

Resolved (August 4, 2:38 p.m.): Emails for past Outlook meeting requests were sent as a result of the restoration of Teams voice conferencing licenses. All voice conferencing licenses have been restored; users should no longer receive these emails.

Questions or concerns? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca, ext. 44357.

What is happening? Users may have received email notifications for past Outlook meeting requests yesterday between 5:00 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. IST is investigating with the vendor.

Questions or concerns? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca, ext. 44357.

Resolved (August 4, 12:04 p.m.): Voice licensing for users is currently being processed and restored. All licenses will be restored over the next several hours.

• Users will be able to use voice conferencing again once licenses have been restored.
• Users may receive another email confirmation once their license has been reapplied. This is a legitimate email; no action is required.

Questions or concerns? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca, ext. 44357.

What is happening? Teams voice conferencing licenses are currently unavailable. 

What is the impact? Users are unable to create new Teams meetings using a telephone number. This issue does not impact any other features in Teams or Skype.

IST is working with the vendor to resolve the issue.

Questions or concerns? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca, ext. 44357. 

Please share with employees and students in your department. 

What is happening? The campus-wide Zoom license is now available for employees and students; pro/educational licenses are available for employees and graduate students, and basic licenses are available for undergraduate students. 

• IST is continuing to migrate existing University of Waterloo Zoom users to the campus-wide license. 
• The integration of Zoom with LEARN is currently underway and is expected to be complete during the first week of August.

If you do not have an existing Zoom account: Faculty, staff, and students can create an account by going to https://uwaterloo.zoom.us, clicking Sign In, and logging in with their username@uwaterloo.ca credentials. 

If you have an existing Zoom account:  Migrate your account to the campus-wide license using the steps below. 

1. If your Zoom account username is not username@uwaterloo.ca, update your username.
2. Go to https://uwaterloo.zoom.us and click 'Sign In'. Enter your username@uwaterloo.ca login credentials. The first time you login, you will be asked to migrate your existing account. Follow the prompts to migrate your account. 
3. If you have a paid Zoom account, Zoom will update your account balance and you can request a refund by calling Zoom Support: +1.888.799.9666 ext 2.

Notes: 

• The ability to log in with Zoom credentials will be disabled at a later date and users will be required to log in with their University of Waterloo credentials. 
• To optimize the reimbursement of your remaining account balance, it is recommended that you create or migrate your Zoom account as soon as possible. If you have an upcoming Zoom event, you can create or migrate your Zoom account at your convenience after the event date.

Additional resources

• For Zoom Support, visit the Zoom Help Center or call +1.888.799.9666 ext 2 for account balance inquiries
• Zoom Support Guidelines
• University of Waterloo Zoom licensing information
  • For information regarding licensing, email rt-ist-itms-collab@rt.uwaterloo.ca 
• Zoom support articles - IST Knowledge Base (will be expanded on as resources are created)

Questions or concerns? Please submit to the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca.