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IST Service Desk holiday closure

The Davis Centre and Dana Porter service desks will be closed from 4:30 p.m. on December 22, 2021 to January 3, 2022. These service desks will open January 4, 2022 with regular hours.

The Village 1 service desk will close at 4:30 p.m. December 23 and will open January 2, 2022 with regular hours.

What’s happening? The UW Microsoft 365 Automation Platform will be upgraded from .NET Core 3.1 to .NET 6. IST uses this system to streamline the following automation processes:

  • Creating new instances of Teams, Planner, and Bookings resources
  • Teams Roster Sync (TRS) - includes Team creation, Team life-cycle management, and the roster sync
  • Administrative Web Portal - used by IST staff to manage and monitor automation processes

When is this happening? The Microsoft 365 Automation Platform will be upgraded on Tuesday, November 23.

Why is this happening? This upgrade will allow for continued development and software support from the vendor until the end of 2024. This upgrade will also provide platform feature enhancements such as: 

  • Performance improvements through a simplified codebase
  • Enhanced error handling and reduction via the exposure of new exception types
  • Reduced overhead due to unification of shared resources

What is the impact? No impact is expected for the automation processes listed above. IST will closely monitor these automation processes after the upgrade to ensure no unexpected issues arise. 

Questions or concerns? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or 519-888-4567 ext. 44357. 

Resolved (November 8, 4:00 p.m.): All incoming and outgoing calls should be working as expected again. A faulty T1 card on the Avaya PBX was replaced and all service has returned to normal.

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


What is happening? An issue is intermittently affecting incoming and outgoing calls from all campus telephone systems. Bell has been contacted to assist in troubleshooting and we have a technician on site attempting to maintain service until resolution. Additional details will be shared when available.

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

Resolved: A common and routine networking change had an unexpected broken outcome that resulted in a number of IST managed servers going offline. The change has been reverted. IST is following up with the vendor.

What was the impact? Users may have been unable to access a number of services including Skype for Business, Git, and Jira.

When did this happen? Wednesday, October 13 between 11:30 a.m. and 12:25 p.m.

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

What is happening? Webex users may have received an email entitled ''Convert to Enterprise Account' from webex_comm@webex.com. This is a legitimate email from Webex. No user action is required for UW Webex users; there is no impact and no service disruption.

Why is this happening? The Webex system is trying to clear up inconsistencies between users logging in withfriendly email addresses (e.g. firstname.lastname@uwaterloo.ca) instead of username@uwaterloo.ca.

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

Resolved (October 7, 1:35 p.m.): Users should be able to connect to the wireless network again. Wireless controllers were rebooted to mitigate a suspected bug. IST will follow up with the vendor to determine the root cause of the outage. 

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

What is happening? Users may be unable to connect to the wireless network. IST is investigating.

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

What is happening? As part of the Microsoft 365 email investigation recommendation, alumni Mailservices email accounts and some Exchange (Connect) accounts will be moved to Microsoft 365. During this time, Information Systems & Technology (IST) will also move email from Mailservices to Connect for a small group of users that have not yet migrated to Microsoft 365; their email accounts will not be moved to M365 at this time.

When is this happening? Between Friday, October 15 after 4:30 p.m. and Friday, November 12, 2021.

What do I need to do? No action is required.

  • Alumni will receive email communication about this work on Friday, October 8, 2021.
  • Communications will outline the post-migration steps and link to necessary support resources.
  • Alumni will be instructed to contact the IST Service Desk for support; however, Faculty and Academic Support Unit computing desks may receive support calls.

Support resources:

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

What is happening? Emergency maintenance will be performed on the wireless network.

What is the impact? Users may experience interruptions when using the Wi-Fi service. Users in residence may experience interruptions to Wi-Fi, and to wired connections where devices are connected directly to access points.

When is this happening? 

  • Wednesday, September 29 6:00 a.m. to Wednesday, September 29 8:00 a.m.
  • Thursday, September 30 6:00 a.m. to Thursday, September 30 8:00 a.m.
  • Monday, October 4 6:00 a.m. to Monday, October 4 8:00 a.m.

Why is this happening? The purpose of this maintenance is to apply software patches.

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

Resolved (October 12, 1:20 p.m.): The 'UniversityOfWaterloo' Captive Portal for guest Wi-Fi is now working as expected.

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


What is happening? Some users may be experiencing issues when trying to access the 'UniversityOfWaterloo' Captive Portal for guest Wi-Fi. IST is investigating. 

When did the issue start? Monday, September 20 around 7:00 a.m.

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