Potpourri

Here are some quick hits as we near the end of the spring semester.

The Library Staff Development blog Growing People recently posted an article on using the VPN.  Several years ago, CITES began a pilot for an SSL VPN implementation.  The project was never officially supported, but the infrastructure has been maintained.  Many people who have encountered problems with the CITES VPN have found stability with this version, branded Aventail.

We have completed testing for moving distribution lists and shared mailboxes to the CITES Exchange server.  Distribution lists will be automatically migrated next week.  This move should be completely transparent to everyone, and there are no anticipated service interruptions.  In specific cases, we expect that this migration will substantially improve email performance.  One of the changes that CITES made in response to the recent phishing attacks was to put a delay on outgoing mail, so antivirus software and spam filters had more time to analyze threats before sending them off to the Internet.  Mail that stays internal to the Exchange server are not affected by this delay.  Once we move the distribution lists, mail that is sent from a University account through the distribution list to other addresses at illinois.edu will stay internal to the CITES server; currently, those messages are delayed because they have to run through spam control as they leave the Library mail server.

Shared mailboxes will not be moved at this time, but we will begin scheduling meetings and walk-throughs with units who have shared mailboxes.  Unfortunately, the shared inbox migration isn’t as seamless as moving distribution lists, but Library IT will make every effort to make it as simple as possible.  The shared inbox move will provide many new features that are not available in Squirrel Mail, and will also benefit from the afore-mentioned performance shortcut.

Adoption of PaperCut for the Library’s public printing system is nearly ubiquitous.  As such, we will be retiring the old service, LibPrint, on May 17, 2013.  Look for a proper send-off for this ground-breaking service after finals.

IT has several initiatives ready to kick off for the summer session.  The full scope for most of these projects haven’t been finalized, and many of them will take us into next year and beyond.  Look for more details on infrastructure upgrades, technology enhancements in classrooms, added and improved printing services, and much more in the coming months.