Two previously independent information technology units have been consolidated with the Office of Information Technology, and the combined department is now called Information Technology Services.

The units merged are Administrative Technology Solutions (ATS), which supports Administration & Finance, and Student Systems Management (SSM), which supports student information systems such as eCampus and STAR.

To avoid compromising confidential information, WVU students and employees should avoid using Internet Explorer as a web browser until further notice and use alternate browsers such as Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

Microsoft is currently working to fix a weakness with Internet Explorer that let hackers attack through a website that installs malware and gives the hackers control over the computer. That could compromise both personal information and confidential work documents.

Jeremy Case, who has been working as a temporary employee in the Information Technology Data Center since January, will join the Inbound Support staff permanently on May 5.

Jeremy was a self-employed computer technician from 2008 through 2013, and has also worked in Facilities Management at WVU. A former student, Jeremy plans to resume his WVU classes soon, completing a degree in either computer science or accounting.

The new and improved version of eCampus is set to go live after an outage from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, May 14. A new informational site at ecampusinfo.wvu.edu will supplement the main site.

After the upgrade, faculty members will be able to lock down exam locations by IP addresses, limiting testing to a designated computer lab. Other new features include the ability to adjust all course dates automatically with one tool, to determine how long a student took to complete an exam, and to recognize student achievements. A Retention Center will replace the early-warning system, and the Grade Center and Collaborate tools will be updated.

STAR and several related academic systems will be unavailable during the weekend of May 9-11 while Student Systems Management improves their functionality. STAR, Degree Works, Banner Document Management, Banner Workflow, and Argos will be offline from 5 p.m. May 9 until 6 p.m. May 11.

Argos is used for transcripts and reporting from STAR, while Banner Workflow is used for graduation applications and grade modifications.

Some automatic notification emails sent through eSEI, the Electronic Student Evaluation of Instruction tool, are not reaching students as intended. Information Technology advises faculty members to manually email students when evaluation surveys are available.

Below is a sample email:

Data storage problems that caused several eCampus failures last week have been corrected, and testing shows the online learning system is now running faster and with more stability.

Information Technology moved data from a failing storage system to a new one during an emergency Good Friday outage. The changes have been validated through repeated testing and should prevent future problems when demand on the system peaks.

Information Technology is performing emergency maintenance on many core systems and services from 12:15 p.m. to 12:45 p.m. today. Users who are unable to log in during those times should wait until 1 p.m. and try again.

IT staff will be monitoring the outage, which will involve changing the settings on various websites. All services should be back online by 1 p.m.

Changing your MyID password now could create synchronization issues with key services including Office 365, MyAccess and wireless network authentication. Information Technology is closing in on the source of the problem and will provide an update as soon as possible.

If you are having a problem logging in, please go to https://myid.wvu.edu/ and click on Check Account Status. Enter your credentials. If your password has not yet expired, please do not attempt to change it.

WVU students and employees should avoid attempting to reset their MyID passwords while Information Technology investigates a problem with synchronization. Please do not attempt to reset credentials until further notice.

Some Health Sciences employees and some student employees are experiencing problems logging in. It appears that some users did not get automatic notification that their passwords were set to expire within 14 days.