Table of Contents

New Office 365 Services for October
Caveats on macOS and Windows Updates
Zoom and NVivo Now Available
Updated Class Tools for Faculty

New Office 365 Services for October

For the fall quarter, Drexel is enhancing the Office 365 suite with new productivity features for students, faculty, and professional staff and adding security features to protect accounts and data. These features are newer than those in Office 2019, which was announced on Monday. Roll out has started and will complete at the end of October.

Additional Storage Space for Email

The storage space provided to email mailboxes will soon be doubled to 100 GB per person.

MyAnalytics for Office 365

This new tool will be available in Outlook and in the Office 365 web portal. Microsoft says that My Analytics is designed to help reduce stress, increase productivity and creativity, and make our days more enjoyable. Importantly, MyAnalytics is both opt-in and confidential: it does not share its findings, insights, recommendations, goals, or progress toward goals with your supervisor or anyone else.

My Analytics is available to students, faculty, and professional staff. It can draw insights about our network of colleagues, the email that we send and receive, the time we spend in meetings. It infers how distracted we may be in meetings, how often the arrival of email disrupts our workflow, and how we and others are respecting each other’s time after hours. Once insights are discovered, MyAnalytics lets you set goals to improve productivity and offers suggestions to achieve those goals.

Microsoft has prepared a 10-15 minute presentation to explain why MyAnalytics was created, how it works, and what we can each hope to gain from it. View it at https://sway.com/K5EOvoLYrGUil5H1. More information will be provided when the service is available to opt-in to.

Multi-Factor Authentication for Office 365

As do some financial services, social networking, and e-commerce sites, the Office 365 website will soon use multi-factor authentication to provide more security than can a password alone. Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) verifies sign-in attempts by having you approve each one from an app, via a text message, or a phone call.

In October, MFA will be used when faculty and staff sign in to the Office 365 Web site. When you first sign in to the Office 365 website after MFA is enabled for your account, you will be asked to perform a one-time setup. On subsequent sign-ins, you’ll be asked to approve the sign-in attempt. (You can also tell Office 365 to bypass approvals when you sign in from devices that you use often.)

Multi Factor Authentication for the Office 365 website will be extended to students later in the fall. MFA protection will be expanded to additional technology services in late 2018 and 2019.

Enhancements for Teams

Teams is Microsoft’s service for online meetings, text chat, voice and video calling, and collaboration. Three enhancements will be made available in October.

Teams, which already lets users join meetings by browser or the Team app, will soon provide dial-in numbers so that participants can join by phone. This feature is limited to Teams meetings organized by faculty or professional staff.

Meetings scheduled in Teams can be recorded and stored in the cloud. A transcript and closed captions for the video are automatically generated and made available to those invited to the meeting or, in the case of a meeting conducted in the channel of a Team, to all members of the team. The transcript is also searchable.

To minimize distraction during video calls, Teams can blur the background behind you, leaving you appearing sharp. To activate it during a call, click the “…” button near the bottom of the video then Choose Blur my Background. This feature is still being rolled out; if you don’t have it yet, check again in a few days.

Caveats on macOS and Windows Updates

macOS Mojave

On Monday, September 24, Apple released version 10.14 of macOS; its popular name is Mojave. Drexel-owned computers should not yet be upgraded to macOS 10.14 because Mojave is known to not work properly with the Drexel’s complement of security products.

Drexel-owned Macs enrolled in Self Service will be able upgrade when compatibility is achieved between the security products and Mojave. Those interested in getting Mojave as soon as it is safe, should enroll their Macs in Self Service to be notified when it is time to upgrade.

Windows 10

Users of Drexel-owned Windows 10 computers that use an old version of Windows 10 will be contacted in October, before the computer is automatically updated to the latest support version of the operating system.

Late in 2018, an even newer version of Windows 10 will be made available for Drexel-owned PCs.

Zoom and NVivo Now Available

Over the spring and summer, Drexel IT worked with the Faculty Senate Committee on Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities and the leaders of every college and school to consolidate multiple small-volume purchases of Zoom and NVivo into new university-wide licenses for both products. We thank the Senate Committee and the deans for their assistance.

Zoom Online Meeting and Video Conferencing

Beginning with the fall quarter, the Zoom meeting service will be available to students, faculty, and professional staff. People who need to conduct meetings involving sensitive information will be able to do so using a secondary account that meets the standards for handling HIPAA information.

Meetings scheduled in Zoom can be recorded and stored in the cloud. A transcript and closed captions for the video are automatically generated and made available to those invited to the meeting. The meeting organizer can also download the MP4 file or make it available to others.

The Zoom meeting service will be tied to Drexel Connect so that users can sign in with their existing DrexelOne user-id and password rather than having to remember a special password that’s just for Zoom.

Instructions will be sent to people already using the Zoom service telling them how to move their accounts into the Drexel license. Once moved, Zoom will stop invoicing for paid accounts and will even refund any service prepayments.

If you already use Zoom or have a Zoom license, continue to use it as you do now until you receive instructions for moving your account onto the university license. If you do not yet use Zoom, feel free to try it at https://Drexel.zoom.us. (Do not use this URL if you already have a Zoom account. Signing in via Drexel Connect may cause problems for your existing Zoom account. Wait for further instructions.)

NVivo Qualitative Analysis Application

NVivo is software for the organization, analysis, and presentation of both qualitative data, (e.g. questions and interviews) and quantifiable data (e.g. demographics). While in use by researchers across the university, that use has been limited because of cost. That cost barrier has now been removed.

The Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Computing and Informatics, and Nursing and Health Professions, along with the Dornsife School of Public Health and the School of Education have joined forces with the Office of Research and Drexel IT to acquire a site license that provides NVivo to all faculty, professional staff, and graduate students, regardless of department. Further, users now have access to the high-end “Plus” version rather than the more basic “Pro” version.

NVivo Plus is available for Drexel-owned computer via Software Center (for Windows) and Self Service (for macOS). To install on a personally-owned computer, faculty, professional staff, and graduate, may download an installer from http://software.drexel.edu.

Updated Class Tools for Faculty

Camtasia 2018

Camtasia is a video production suite that allows for screen recording, webcam capture, editing, and production of multimedia content, generally for inclusion in online courses hosted in Blackboard Learn.

The upgrade to Camtasia 2018 is now available to licensed users via Software Center and Self Service for macOS.

Faculty and Staff who have completed Camtasia training by the Instructional Technology Group (ITG), are licensed for Camtasia. For more information on what Camtasia can do for you or to schedule training, visit http://drexel.edu/it/help/a-z/camtasia/.

Blackboard Ally

Starting with the Fall Quarter 2018-19, faculty may request to use Blackboard Ally for their courses. Ally provides feedback on the accessibility of course content and provides students with alternate formats, like audio versions of text files. To have Ally activated in a course section, write to itg@drexel.edu. Learn more about Ally at: http://drexel.edu/it/help/a-z/ally/.