In response to residential student feedback, we recently partnered with the Office of Residential Life and updated all residential buildings with wireless hardware upgrades that provide the fastest speeds available.  However, with innovation and new hardware can come unexpected challenges.  RT tickets from residential students helped us identify a system-wide issue that may impact your user experience.

DoIT has identified a software bug in the residential wireless system. The bug can cause devices to connect to access points further away a student’s room they necessary, resulting in slower, less consistent speeds and occasional disconnects from the wireless network. This problem is present on Eduroam and on Visitor and Campus wireless and it's an issue on the devices themselves, not just a single wireless network.  

Please note that we do not believe this problem is present in the academic areas of the campus, only in the Residence Halls.

We have been working with the vendor, Cisco, to get a version of software that fixes the bug and they are currently vetting a patch through their testing lab. In the meantime, we have worked with Cisco to develop an interim solution to minimize the impact on you. This interim solution involves monitoring the system for certain error logs caused by this bug, and resetting the access points as needed. We apologize for the inconvenience and, as soon as the new software is available, we will be applying it throughout the Residence Halls immediately.

Thank you for your patience as we work through this challenge with our campus partners. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me for more information.

Sincerely,

Damian Doyle

Senior Director of Enterprise Infrastructure and Support

DoIT - UMBC

This evening DoIT worked with DocuSign technical staff to upgrade our system to new accounts to allow full use of the latest version called ‘New Experience’. This was a fairly labor intensive activity which had some unintended emails sent upon account migration.

The intent was that the migration would be fairly seamless to our community however the silent creation feature for our users in the new account did not occur as anticipated and previous users of the old DocuSign account received an email requesting an Account Activation upon completion of the migration.

I apologize for this confusion and will be glad to handle any questions you may have.

Below is an example of the email you will receive.

Please select the yellow Activate button. The old account will be closed and no longer available to you. All documents have been transferred to the new account and DoIT will retain the old account for reference.

The DoIT Technology Support Center is looking to hire additional consultants to work during the Fall. Please see our job description below and visit our job posting on UMBCWorks to apply. The position will be open for applications until September 8th. (Search for TSC Student Consultant.)

TSC Student Consultant Job Description

Technology Support Center (TSC) student consultants are the first points of technical contact for the UMBC community and those who do well often go on to work in other areas of the Division of Information Technology (DoIT). Minimally, consultants are expected to provide initial triage and support for a wide-range of information technologies including accounts, hardware, instructional technologies, networking, software, telecommunications, and basic web development.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following:

• Provide technical assistance to users by phone, online and in person;
• Answer TSC phones in a professional and courteous manner;
• Create, update and resolve tickets in the Request Tracker (RT) ticketing system;
• Create, update, suggest and recommend relevant FAQ articles to users (www.umbc.edu/faq);
• Provide direct assistance to users on technical issues they cannot easily resolve on their own;
• Complete in-person or online training about quality support as defined in umbc.edu/go/ticketrubric;
• Respond to all work-related communications in a timely manner;
• Escalate urgent problems to the Full-Time staff, as appropriate.

Required Skills and Experience

• Demonstrated ability to effectively communicate by phone or in person.
• Demonstrated writing ability.
• Demonstrated ability to achieve successful outcomes in handling difficult situations and customers.
• Demonstrated analytical and troubleshooting skills.
• Ability & willingness to learn coupled with a clear understanding of one’s technical abilities, so as to triage and escalate an issue that leads to an effective solution for the user.