After months of planning and development, the portals are now at an exiting stage, with staff and students having recently participated in prototype testing.

Web Project Director Rich Powell will be updating all staff on project developments at two upcoming presentations. Attend one of these session to learn what will be changing, and when.

Student portal wireframes are also available to view in the windows of the Web Transformation Project office in the courtyard side of the Lincoln Building (C8A).

Student and staff portals update
When: Tuesday 22 March and Tuesday 5 April
Time: 3pm
Where: E7B T2 Theatre

In preparation for this process, staff are encouraged to make sure all Gmail calendar events have been recreated in Office 365.

It is recommended you do not interact with Gmail calendars in the meantime – this will cause issues in your Office 365 calendars due to incompatibility between the two. This means you will no longer be adding, creating, deleting or editing any events in your Gmail calendars.

Gmail mailboxes
You will still continue to have read-only access to all your email in Gmail, however, you will not be able to send or receive any email from your Gmail account.

Devices
If you have Gmail mail and calendars set up for Macquarie University on IOS and Android these will no longer work.

Google apps
Full access to all Google Apps (except Gmail and calendars) will continue to be available, however these will no longer be accessible from the app. To access you will need to login via a browser from your mobile, PC or laptop.

Special access for Gmail calendars
After Gmail calendars have been switched off, if you require urgent viewing of your calendars in Gmail, contact the IT HelpDesk on 9850 HELP (4357) or email ask.office365@mq.edu.au.

Note: this access will only be given on a temporary basis to staff who require it for a specific business reason.

Where to get support
If you need extra support :

• visit the Office 365 support page  for news, FAQs and user guides
• view troubleshooting and known issues
• email ask.office365@mq.edu.au
• check out the latest user guides and the official Microsoft Office Training Centre site.

Identifying wall plug adapters
An affected wall plug adapter (pictured below) has four or five characters, or no characters on the inside slot where it attaches to an Apple power adapter.

Safe adapters (pictured below) have a three letter regional code in the slot (EUR, KOR, AUS, ARG or BRA).

Exchange process
Apple are recalling all affected plug adapters and replacing with free new AUS redesigned adapters, in exchange for those impacted.

Note: This only applies to University purchased equipment.
For personally purchased affected equipment, contact your local Apple store directly.

If you are affected
Advise your Faculty/Office IT team and they will help facilitate this exchange. If you do not have an IT contact, contact the IT Service Desk at onehelp@mq.edu.au, or call 9850 1539 (HELP).

Students, staff, and visitors will benefit from the well-signposted welcoming entry, self-service area, and easier access to IT assistance.

In line with the new and improved facility, the IT HelpDesk has been renamed the IT Service Desk.

The IT Service Desk can be contacted via:

Online: onehelp.mq.edu.au
Phone: +61 2 9850 HELP (4357)
Email: help@mq.edu.au
Walk-in: C5C 244 (Monday – Friday 8am-8pm. Saturday – Sunday 10am-6pm)

New training sessions available
Office 365 training sessions for 2016 are out now. Sign up if you missed out any courses last year and remember to check out our new Skype for Business course.

See a full list of training options.

Key things to know
The Office 365 Team have identified a number of key things to know and FAQs to help you get the most out of Office 365 and ensure your experience using email and the other Office 365 applications is as easy as possible.

View key things to know.

Feedback survey
We would love to hear your thoughts on Office 365, now that you have been migrated and had the chance to test it out. Please let us know what works for you or any areas you feel could be improved on.

Complete the five-minute survey by 5pm Friday 5 February.

Office 365 Desktop Clients
The Office 365 Pro Plus Suite and Skype for Business clients are available to University staff. The deployment and installation of these programs on University administered computers and devices is dependent on your Faculty/Office IT Team. Contact your local IT team regarding their support policy and schedule for the roll out of these programs.

Where to get support

• Visit the Office 365 support page  for news, FAQs and user guides
• Email ask.office365@mq.edu.au
• Contact your local faculty or office IT team , or the IT HelpDesk on 02 9850 HELP (4357)
• Check out the latest user guides and the official Microsoft Office Training Centre site.

Thank you again for your continued support throughout the Office 365 migration. For questions or to provide feedback contact: ask.office365@mq.edu.au

Prepare this week by:

• Registering for training. 2016 training dates will be provided soon.
• Checking out the latest user guides and the official Microsoft Office Training Centre.
• Finding out who is your Office 365 Ambassador. They can assist with your non-technical queries this week.
• Familiarising yourself with the ‘Welcome to Office 365’ quick reference guide which will be available this week from your Office 365 Ambassador. It contains important information on what you need to do on day one, and where to find help. Download a copy now.
• Registering for SMS updates (click on the ‘subscribe to updates’ button at the top of the page and select the phone icon – we will inform you should an issue arise). Note, this will subscribe you to all IT systems and services updates.

Email and calendar downtime from 5pm Friday 11 December

• The migration will take place between 5pm Friday 11 December and 8am Monday 14 December. During this time you will not have access to your email or calendar (unless you have already migrated to Office 365).
• As access will be unavailable during this time, check the Office 365 page itservices.mq.edu.au/office365 for all related updates. A link to this page will also be available from the staff homepage.

After launch

• Log in and update your email signature (instructions can be found in your quick reference guide).
• Your Gmail calendar will not be migrated and all appointments will need to be re-created in Office 365 (instructions can be found in your quick reference guide).
• For queries or questions visit the Office 365 drop-in-centre: Open 9am to 5pm, Monday 14 to Friday 18 December, Building W6B, Room 207, Building E4B, Room 206 (Monday only) and Building E4B, Room 306 Tuesday to Friday.
• Need assistance: Contact your local faculty or office IT team, or the IT HelpDesk on 02 9850 HELP (4357), or help@mq.edu.au.

Additional resources
Visit the Office 365 support page for news, FAQs and user guides.

Thank you for your patience, feedback and support throughout this project; we’re nearly there. If you have a question or want to provide feedback: ask.office365@mq.edu.au.

Maintenance is being undertaken to carry out essential network, load balancer, server update and firewall maintenance to improve network reliability, security and functionality. As a result the following services are impacted:

• Finance One
• SMSS (Student System)
• HR Online
• DataMart
• Wiki
• Truth
• Web Central
• CourseFinder/Handbook
• Sponsor OneID
• iLearn/iTeach
• iPrint

Access to university hosted systems and websites may be disrupted by intermittent outages for five to 10 minutes between 4am to 4pm.

Stay informed:

• Check the IT calendar for dates and times of planned information technology downtime windows for 2015
• Keep up-to-date on the operational status of all IT systems and services by subscribing to real-time notifications at https://itstatus.mq.edu.au
• Follow @mqu_it on Twitter for breaking alerts and status updates
• Contact the IT HelpDesk on 02 9850 HELP (4357) or email onehelp@mq.edu.au.

For more technical details and to view all maintenance occurring this month visit the planned maintenance Wiki page.

Please note: In order to prepare for December’s maintenance window there is a change freeze on all change requests from COB 2 December 2015 to COB 8 December 2015. No CRs will be implemented between these dates.

Contact the HelpDesk on 9850 4357 (HELP), email onehelp@mq.edu.au, or visit C5C computer lab 219.

• Email (Outlook) – provides a clear, coordinated view of emails, calendars, and contacts
• One Drive (for Business) – allows users to share, read and edit office files through an app or via offline access
• Skype for Business (Lync) – offers instant messaging, group video chats and online meetings
• Office 365 Pro Plus (Office 2013) – delivers a full suite of Office applications such as Access, Excel, InfoPath, OneNote, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Word.

To help get ready you can:

• attend training – new sessions have just been added
• talk to an Office 365 ambassador – find your ambassador.

Got a burning question to ask? Check out the Office 365 FAQs.

Don’t forget, help is available at anytime by contacting your local IT Support team, calling the Help Desk at (02) 9850 HELP (4357) or emailing ask.office365@mq.edu.au

With an increase in traffic of around 15 per cent compared to the same time last year, we’re pleased to see visitors are also spending up to 15 per cent more time on the site.

Supporting the ‘mobile first’ strategy of the project, a massive 82 per cent of visitors have viewed the site on a mobile device which now makes up more than 21 per cent of overall traffic to the new site. The success of this strategy will be carried through to phase two of the project, the staff and student websites.

Work is already well underway on the research and design phases of the second stage, with valuable involvement from staff across the university as well as a strong contribution from current and future students.

As part of this transition process, the Digital team within Group Marketing and IT will now provide ongoing ‘business-as-usual’ support for the new public site, just as they have done for the previous public site.

For most people seeking assistance with the new public site, you won’t see any changes to the process. All requests should continue to be lodged via onehelp, with requests to be marked to ‘the new website’.

All current issues lodged with the Web Transformation Project team will continue to be managed by the project team.