NEWS

Stop by to Celebrate Sandra Wald's Retirement on February 3

After nearly 20 years as SSCC's help desk coordinator and 11 years at UW-Milwaukee, Sandra Wald will be retiring February 3. Sandra has handled the "front line" of SSCC's help desk through many changes and the introduction of many new technologies. When Sandra started at SSCC, she was helping people with strange sounding things like GOPHER, EVE, WiscWorld, DCL, Pathworks, Mosaic, and Lynx. She helped people transition from VMS to Windows and several flavors of UNIX to Linux. She has helped people with too many email programs to even name. Through all of these changes, Sandra has always handled herself with professionalism and a positive attitude. A good sense of humor hasn't hurt either. We at SSCC will miss Sandra very much.

Sandra invites everyone to stop by our 4226 office suite on the afternoon of February 3rd to wish her well, sign a card, and have a piece of cake. In lieu of a gift, we'll also be accepting donations for the bird feed fund so that we'll be able to continue to stock the bird feeders on the 3rd floor patio. Sandra added the bird feeders several years ago and and has kept them stocked with seeds mostly with her own funding.

SSCC's Spring Training Schedule

SSCC's Spring training schedule is now available on SSCC's training web pages. We have a total of 22 workshops covering statistical software like Stata, SPSS, R, and Matlab. We have workshops on qualitative software like Nvivo and Dedoose. Last but not least we have workshops on WordPress and Linux. Remember that all SSCC training sessions require preregistration.

Windows XP Support Ends April 8

As of April 8, 2014 Microsoft will end its support of Windows XP including operating system updates that help protect your PC.  If you continue to run Windows XP, your PC will be vulnerable to security risks, malware, and viruses.  It’s likely malware producers are waiting to release their most effective attacks after April 8 when no fixes will be available. You can also expect to encounter greater numbers of applications and devices that do not work with Windows XP.

After April 8, Windows XP PCs will no longer be allowed on the campus network (See UW-Madison’s policy). This includes any wired, wireless (UW Net), or VPN network connection.  SSCC provides PC support for SSCC members residing in the Social Science building and we would like you to contact our help desk if you have a Windows XP PC (even if it's at home and used for University business).  We will upgrade your operating system if possible or work with you to replace your PC. SSCC members in other buildings should contact their local IT support staff. Also, you should check your personal PCs at home and take appropriate action if they are still running Windows XP.

Email Clients and Office 365

With the upcoming switch to Office 365 (still scheduled to be completed by August 2014), SSCC members may want to reevaluate what mail and calendaring client they are using in order to get the most out of the new services. Office 365 was designed to work with Outlook or the Outlook Web Client. Mobile apps for email and calendaring will work for basic functions, as will most email programs. However, Thunderbird cannot connect to an Office 365 calendar, even with the Lightning add-on.

For mail, Office 365 supports both the Exchange protocol and IMAP (which is what SSCC Mail currently uses), but only users who are connecting via the Exchange protocol will have full functionality of all features.  In order to access the full features of O365, DoIT is recommending that users switch to Outlook or use the Outlook Web Interface.  Other clients, such as Thunderbird or Apple Mail will still be supported, but will not have all features available. 

For calendaring, DoIT also suggests using Outlook or the Outlook Web Interface to have full functionality for calendaring, particularly for sharing events or working with resources.  All other calendaring clients will have extremely limited functionality. 

When making the decision whether to remain with your current client or switch to a new client or the web interface, it’s important to consider how you use mail and calendaring and what features are necessary for you to do your work.  DoIT has created a chart of client functionality to help you determine whether your preferred client will be able to perform the tasks that you do.

If you decide to move to Outlook to take full advantage of O365 features, DoIT has provided extensive documentation on how to perform your mail and calendaring tasks. You can also expect to see many training opportunities from DoIT and SSCC. For those interested in the Outlook Web Interface, you unfortunately won’t be able to test it until O365 goes live, but DoIT’s site provides some videos to preview how the interface will look. 

SSCC Staff will continue to provide support for your email, so you can feel confident that whether you remain with your current client or switch to a new client we will be able to assist.