IT Support Staff

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 is happening? As part of the project recommendation to move to Microsoft 365 email, IST will migrate all on-premises Exchange (Connect) resources (i.e., rooms and equipment) to Microsoft 365 (M365). 

What is the impact?   

• There are no changes to the appearance or process of booking resources by email; resources will look the same in the Global Address List (GAL)
• The interface when updating resource booking permissions has been modernized; the process itself remains unchanged. 
• If the resource owner’s personal email uses on-premises connect, they will now receive a M365 login link when opening the resource from Outlook on the Web; resource owners should click the link and log in with username@uwaterloo.ca

What do I need to do? 

• Windows Outlook
  • After the migration, resource owners, and others with the resource calendar open in Outlook, may see a message prompting them to restart Outlook
  • Click OK then close and re-open Outlook
• Mac OS
  • After the migration, resource owners, and others with the resource calendar open in Outlook, may see a message indicating that “Outlook was redirected to the server Autodiscover-s.outlook.com to get new account settings ….”
  • Click Allow then close and re-open Outlook

Please note: In some cases, Outlook may need to be closed and re-opened after the change. In rare cases, the resource calendar or mailbox may need to be removed and re-added in Outlook.

When will this change take place? Tuesday, November 30, 2021.

Benefits of this change: Migrating resources to M365 will improve usability as resources in M365 work better for users in M365 while continuing to work for those still using Connect. 

Additional resources: 

• Exchange Calendar resource settings reference
• Exchange Calendar configure a room with approval required
• Exchange Calendar configure a meeting room          

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

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.

What’s happening? As of November 4, 2021, Bookings Calendars should be created using the new Bookings request form. Previously, Bookings Calendars were created directly through Microsoft 365, but this functionality will be disabled.

What is the impact? There is no immediate impact to existing Bookings Calendars, but IST will contact the owners of these calendars to discuss required future updates.

Support resource: See the Microsoft Bookings Overview support article in the IST Knowledge Base.

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