News

What is happening? The University of Waterloo has signed an agreement with Piazza. Piazza was adopted independently by instructors before and during the pandemic; procuring this software centrally will allow instructors to continue using this tool for teaching and learning. 

When is this happening? The new agreement will allow for uninterrupted use of Piazza to the end of the Winter 2021 term and beyond, expiring on April 28, 2022. At the end of 2021, IST and partners will conduct another review to determine whether Piazza is the most suitable Q&A tool and to investigate if it should be permanently added to the University’s educational technology suite.

What is Piazza? Piazza is a Q&A platform for students and instructors. Students can interact with each other to work towards solutions for problems while instructors can ‘endorse’ or ‘up-vote’ the best proposed answer. In this aspect, Piazza differs from a traditional discussion forum such as in LEARN, which may be more suitable for structured class discussions.

Questions or concerns? For licensing-related questions, please contact Pam Fluttert, fluttert@uwaterloo.ca. For Piazza help and support,please contact team@piazza.com. 

What is happening? The Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways site is now available for all Waterloo faculty, staff, and students.

What is Microsoft 365Learning Pathways?Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways is an on-demand, self-service solution designed to provide learning resources and videos for common Microsoft (Office) 365 applications and services including Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, and more! It also provides quick links to other IT support resources, including the IST Service Desk and Knowledge Base.

How do I access the learning pathways site? Bookmark the Microsoft 365 Learning Pathways site, or look for links to the appropriate training resources from the Office 365 website and IST Service Catalogue.

This site can be customized to address the MS Office 365 learning needs of our campus community. Please let us know of additional content that would be helpful. Check the site for changes as the content evolves to meet our needs. 

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

What is happening? The IST Service Desk will be piloting Social Intents as a replacement for the existing service desk live chat tool.

Why is this happening? The end-of-life date for the existing live chat tool, PHP Live, is August 1, 2021. More information about migrating from PHP Live to Social Intents will be provided to PHP Live users once the pilot is complete.

When  is  this  happening? The IST Service Desk will be piloting Social Intents from April 5, 2021 to April 30, 2021.

What will change for users? On April 5, links to the IST Service Desk live chat on the IST website will be redirected to go to the Social Intents chat widget.

• Users who contact the IST Service Desk via live chat will see a different chat interface.

• Users will be prompted to provide their name, email, and a description of their issue before being connected to a live chat agent.

To learn more about Social Intents, visit the IST Knowledge Base.
 

Questions or concerns? Please contact Matt Harford, mharford@uwaterloo.ca.

Resolved (March 25, 1:57 p.m.): Users should be able to send and receive Microsoft Teams chat messages again.  

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

What is happening? Users may be unable to send and receive Microsoft Teams chat messages. Microsoft is investigating the issue; updates will be provided when available.

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

What is happening? Configuration changes will be made to O365 inbound and outbound email routing. 

When is this happening? Saturday, March 27 from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.

What is the impact to users? Users will be mostly unaffected by this change, however in certain circumstances emails may receive a bounce message during the maintenance time above. If this happens, users will need to resend the email after the maintenance time has ended.

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

Resolved (March 16, 9:22 a.m.): Microsoft has closed the service alert and services have been restored. Users should have access to Microsoft 365 services again.

Persisting issues? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca, ext. 44357.

Update (March 15, 8:30 p.m.): While service health has improved and many users are no longer experiencing problems, Microsoft is taking further steps to identify and remediate isolated residual impact for all Microsoft 365 services including Teams, Exchange services, SharePoint Online, Intune, Outlook.com, and the admin portal.

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

What is happening? Users may be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services including Teams, Exchange Online, and Yammer. Microsoft is aware of the issue and is investigating.

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

What is happening? The launch date for WCMS 3 websites has been revised from April 26 to June 29, 2021. 

Why is there a delay? The WCMS 3 project team needs more time to finish work on the WCMS 3 platform, which includes core (Drupal 8) functionality as well as technical setup on our new cloud hosting platform, Pantheon. The delay is required in order to release a WCMS 3 platform that contains critical bug fixes and go-live required features.

Resolved (March 15, 8:39 a.m.): The automated system for processing Teams and Planner requests is now functioning as expected.

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

What is happening? The automated system for processing Teams and Planner requests is currently unavailable. IST is investigating with the vendor. Users will still be able to submit requests for Teams and Planner but there may be processing delays until further notice.

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

What is happening? Standard Windows patching will be performed on the Skype for Business environment during the dates below. 

When is this happening? 

• Friday, April 2 at 10:00 p.m.
  • Skype EC2 pool will be failed over to the MC pool. All EC2 hosted users will be switched over to the MC pool.
• Thursday, April 8at 10:00 p.m.
  • Skype EC2 pool will be brought back into service. Existing EC2 users will be failed back to the EC2 pool.

Note: The failover process takes approximately 30 minutes.

What is the impact to users? Users will disconnect and reconnect for each of the instances above, however active calls should be unaffected. 

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

Update (March 24, 1:50 p.m.): The Skype queue call issues have been resolved. Updated timelines for the remaining EC2 maintenance will be announced at a later date.

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

Update (March 19, 10:47 a.m.): The remaining work for Skype Server patching will be put on hold until the current Skype for Business issues are resolved. Some users in the Skype for Business MC pool may experience intermittent issues with Skype queue calls.

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

Update (March 17, 2:05 p.m.): Part of the Skype Server patching originally planned for Friday, March 19 at 10:00 p.m. will now be performed today:

• Wednesday, March 17 at 10:00 p.m.
  • Skype MC pool will be brought back into service. Existing MC users will be failed back to the MC pool.
• Friday, March 19 at 10:00 p.m.
  • Skype EC2 pool will be failed over to the MC pool. All EC2 hosted users will be switched over to the MC pool.
• Thursday, March 25 at 10:00 p.m.
  • Skype EC2 pool will be brought back into service. Existing EC2 users will be failed back to the EC2 pool.

Note: The failover process takes approximately 30 minutes.

What is the impact to users? Users will disconnect and reconnect for each of the instances above, however active calls should be unaffected.

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

What is happening? Standard Windows patching will be performed on the Skype for Business environment throughout various dates mentioned below. The work will be completed throughout the week that each pool is out of service.

When is this happening? 

• Friday, March 12 at 10:00 p.m.
  • Skype MC user pool will be failed over to EC2 user pool.  All MC hosted users will be switched over to the EC2 pool.
     
• Friday, March 19 at 10:00 p.m.
  • Skype MC pool will be brought back into service. Existing MC users will be failed back to the MC pool.
  • Skype EC2 pool will be failed over to the MC pool.  All EC2 hosted users will be switched over to the MC pool.
     
• Thursday, March 25 at 10:00 p.m.
  • Skype EC2 pool will be brought back into service. Existing EC2 users will be failed back to the EC2 pool.

Note: The failover process takes approximately 30 minutes.
 

What is the impact to users? Users will disconnect and reconnect for each of the instances above, however active calls should be unaffected. 

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

What is happening? The OUAC eINFO site URL that was previously electronicinfo.ca has been updated to ontariouniversitiesinfo.ca. The former URL now redirects to a casino site. If you have any links to this site on any website(s), you should update the URL to go to the OUInfo Welcome to Ontario Universities’ Info site.

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