IT Central - Faculty and Staff

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Support and resources for faculty and staff

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator." ~Francis Bacon, 1597

As the means and methods of interaction with technology evolve, so must our skills. It's the goal of the Information Technologies department to create, maintain, support and grow an environment where all members of the community have access to the resources required to succeed .

Hot Topic: Google Apps

google apps for edu The process for migration to the new Google powered @css.edu email for faculty and staff is pretty straight forward. Many of you are already familiar with the functionality, look and feel and operations of Gmail. You will still have the same email address and password you used for Groupwise.

This actually represents the first part of a larger transition in the way web based services are delivered to our community, it's called "Single Sign On" and will allow you to login in one place, the new portal coming second semester 2011, and have access to all of your services without signing on again. For now, we're starting with how we handle email and calendaring, by moving to Google Apps.

Please use the tabs below to find resources and instructions on how to use the your new Gmail powered css.edu email, calendaring and collaboration tools.

We've assembled many resources for you to assist with your new Gmail powered css.edu email account, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the beta testers found the answer to their question within 5 minuets of simple web searching. Here are some starting points.

By this point, someone within your department has taken part in the beta test phase and can be a resource for you. Also, the helpdesk@css.edu and the friendly Google buddies in the IT department are availble to assist at any time.

Send your official news items - the "need to know" kind - to either Faculty-Staff Bulletin at fsbulletin@css.com.

Send your "nice to know" items to Faculty-Staff Community at

fscommunity@css.edu.

These two email groupings are replacing Daily Announcements.

Bulletin news includes institutional policy and College

information that has wide-reaching effects on employment, academics,

business practices or other fundamental activities and interests of our

faculty, staff and students. This includes new hires, academic news, first

notices of major College arts and entertainment events and the like.

Community includes news that, while important, is not

essential to the smooth functioning of the College or to a full realization

of the College's scope of activities. This would include items such as a

garage sale, a special Greenview menu, lost and found, and second and third

notices of a College event.

It's your professional responsibility to make sure that your information

goes to the right email group - "need to know" or "nice

to know".

If you're unsure, please ask one of us. We're happy to help.

Everyone will receive role targeted bulletins and community Announcements every day based on your membership in a group.

Bulletin and Faculty-Staff Community will be published in the early morning hours, so if you want something in on a given day, be sure to submit it by end-of-day before.

Anybody with a CSS email account can send to both announcement groups, however, you will only be able to view/receive announcements from the Group in which you are a member.

In Google Apps, at the top of the Google Page, click "more", then "Groups". You will see a listing of all the Groups of which you are a member. Just click your Announcement Group and you can see a history of announcements. As an alternative to emailing an announcement, you can also post an announcement by clicking "new post".

If you wish to unsubscribe from the Groups web page (at the top of the Google Page, click "more", then "Groups"), click your announcement group at the right, then click the "Edit my membership" link and select one of the following:

No Email (only read the announcements on the web)
Abridged Email (a summary of new announcements)
Digest Email (default- sends a daily digest of new announcements)
Email (sends each announcement as an individual email as it arrives)

Then click "Save Settings".

It is your professional and community responsibility to stay informed about the college. These are the official means by which we communicate. If you opt to not receive these emails, you do so at your own risk of being un-informed.

Folders / Sub-Folder v. Labels / Nested Labels - GMail looks at organizing your mail (or in Google-speak, conversations) differently than traditional email applications. The linear hierarchical tree structure of folders and sub folders is replaced with the non-linear convention of labels. Here's a good basic tutorial on labels and filters.

When we migrate your inbox to GMail, the migration tool will re-create your folder structure as a label attached to each email message. If your email was in a folder called "CSS" in a sub folder called "announcements", the tool will attach a label to that email called "CSS/announcements". Please notice the lowercase "a" in the title of the sub directory

After the migration we can enable a feature of gmail called "nested labels" (it's in the labs section - "settings" >> "labs"). This will automatically create a hierarchical view of the labels as per their names. any label "CSS/announcements " will nest inside "CSS" and the email labeled "CSS/announcements " will be inside it.

Missing Folders/Labels - Anyone in the pilot group who used sub folders to organize their inbox in Groupwise had missing folders or sub folders. Once the correct structure of labels and sub labels was recreated, everything nested as it should. Often this meant creating a middle tier label and all the sub labels nested fine.

Capitalization - Nested Labels in GMail is much more strict than Groupwise in this regard, you may need to rename labels with the correct capitalization to get the nesting to function correctly.

Complex Folder Structure - Nested labels is a "lab" feature in GMail and as such is still in development. It seems that if you have a highly complex folder structure (3 to 4 deep and many, many folders) that the nested labels feature will cause issues. Please work with your Google buddies in IT to simplify your structure and re-examine your approach to organizing your inbox.

With Google Calendar, you can:

Share Your Schedule: Let your co-workers see your calendar, and view schedules others have shared with you. Check to see who is free or busy. You can even share your calendar with people outside of the College of St. Scholastica.
Send Event Invites and Track Responses: Invite others to events. Guests can RSVP by email or via their own Calendar.
Never Forget an Event: Customizable reminders help you stay on schedule. Choose to be notified by email or calendar alert, or schedule a reminder to be sent to your mobile device.
Use Tasks with Your Calendar: Calendar Tasks always stay in sync with Gmail Tasks. Use Calendar Tasks to create to-do list items on your calendar.

Your Google powered @css.edu account has a powerful calendaring and scheduling tool. There are many online resources to assist you with learning how to use it. Chief among them is: Google Calendar Getting Started Guide