Welcome to the University of Waterloo! As an Arts student, it’s important for you to become familiar with all the resources the Faculty of Arts has available to you. By keeping aware of this basic information you’ll be able to not only avoid disaster, but also keep yourself productive and in the uWaterloo loop!
Below you’ll find information about the accounts you have and computing resources available to you.
Your Accounts
At uWaterloo there are several accounts you’ll be using, some more frequently than others, but all are equally important to keeping your journey at uWaterloo a smooth one.
WatIAM
WatIAM is the key to all your other uWaterloo accounts. The password you set on WatIAM is the password you use on all your uWaterloo accounts. You won’t find yourself using this account very often. WatIAM is where you go to: change/recover your password, set email forwarding, and set your friendly uWaterloo email address.
A warning on email forwarding in WatIAM:
It’s best that you do not set your email forwarding in WatIAM. If you enter the email address you want forwarded here incorrectly, your other email account is compromised, or there is a problem with your email provider accepting email from uwaterloo.ca addresses (this has happened with Hotmail on a wide scale), then you may not receive email sent to you. If you set up your email forwarding in mailservices then you have the option of saving your emails in both your mailservices email account and your other email account, this means that you also won’t lose any emails if you’ve entered information incorrectly or your other email account has been compromised.
Mailservices (Email)
Your mailservices email is the email account the University uses to send you all of your important notices. This email account is where notices about tuition fees, course selection, and other information critical to being a student at uWaterloo are sent to. You definitely will want to keep tabs on this email account! If you would prefer to have these emails sent to another email address you have, you can set up email forwarding in mailservices.
Friendly Email Addresses
You can opt to have an alias for your email address on WatIAM. This means that if you really don’t like your userid@uwaterloo.ca but still want to use your uWaterloo email to receive and send emails you can select a “friendlier” email address on WatIAM. Activating your friendly email address doesn’t mean your userid@uwaterloo.ca email address won’t receive emails sent to it anymore: you’ll receive emails sent to both these addresses. The option of having a friendly address is so you can provide others with an email that is easier to remember. Learn how to set your friendly uWaterloo email address in our instructional video.
Quest
Quest is where you: enroll for courses, view your final grades, view your semester’s schedule, view tuition fees and scholarships or bursaries the school may have offered you. Like WatIAM, you won’t find yourself using Quest on a daily basis, but you will need to log in to Quest at least once a term to enroll in courses.
Nexus
Nexus is the network that most university computers are on. When you log on to a computer in any of the student computer labs across campus, you will be able to save files to your N: drive (you cannot save to the C: drive) and access that saved file from any other computer connected to Nexus. If you’re ever working on something on a Nexus computer and delete it by accident or need to revert it back to a previous version you can follow these instructions on: Retrieving your N: drive file back-ups. You can also access your Nexus files from home.
It’s important to note that not all computers in the university are on Nexus. Computers in the libraries are not on Nexus, but the computers in the labs in HH, ML and PAS are.
XAS (Printing)
XAS is the account used to manage your printing funds. If you want to print something in the Arts faculty you first need to activate your XAS account. You can find out where to print in the Arts faculty below.
XAS is not used in the libraries. For printing in the library you will just need your WatCard to have flex dollars on it.
Learn
Learn is an online platform many professors use to provide: grades, course notes, slides, quizzes, assignments and more. This is probably the account you will be using the most. As you may or may not already know, you do not get access to Learn until after you are “Fees Arranged” with the Student Accounts office.
Student Computing Resources
These resources include: computer labs, printing, training courses and Help Desk’s.
Computer labs
There are computer labs all over campus, many of these labs come with different software installed. You can expect most to have Microsoft word, access to the internet and other common applications. Read about the details of each Arts faculty computer lab or learn about other common areas in the Arts faculty.
Printing
There are two printing facilities available in the Arts faculty. These printers print in black and white only. For colour printing you’ll need to visit the Dana Porter Library or Davis Centre Library or go to the Engineering Computing Help Desk. Colour printing costs 40-50¢ a page and black and white printing costs 10¢ for a single sided page and 15¢ for a double sided page.
To pay for printing in the Arts faculty, you’ll need to activate your XAS account, but if you’re printing at one of the library locations you’ll just need to have flex dollars on your WatCard.
Training courses
As a student you can sign up for free courses at Lynda.com through Information Systems Technology (IST). Lynda.com provides videos that are designed to help get people familiar with different software applications. You’ll want to see what Lynda.com offers before requesting access from IST.
Other training is available through technical books from the uWaterloo library via Safari books online. You can also find plenty of documentation and help and support articles available on IST’s website, and our own Arts Computing Office website!
Help Desk
If you’re all out of options, and totally confused from some technical mishap, you can always visit the Arts Computing Office (ACO) Help Desk. The Help Desk can provide advice and support on a number of topics from choosing a new computer, to using the campus network, to recovering access for your uWaterloo accounts. The ACO Help Desk is open from 9 am to 4:30 pm, Monday to Friday. If you need help after hours you can go to the afterhours Help Desk in the Davis Centre.
References
[i] [Welcome]. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.klaviyo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Welcome-e1451398697730.jpg
