Starting at 11am on May 1, 2014, DoIT began a cleanup process on our non-Gmail based email servers, named Cryus.  There was an error in this process and it inadvertently removed the mail of approximately 230 people using the CYRUS email system. Of this number, approximately 110 are UMBC faculty and staff whose username starts with "a" or "b". We are restoring the email of all 230 people from our backups last night and expect to have all email restored by midnight tonight.

Since we are restoring from file backup, the the restore will not have any new email received between 10pm on 4/30 and 1:30pm on 5/1. In addition, restoring from backup results in two known issues:

• First, all mail will be flagged as unread; and
• Second, your folders need to be resubscribed too before they will be seen in Webmail or Thunderbird.

DoIT staff have sent a myUMBC alert to those users impacted letting them know of the situation. DoIT staff will work through the evening to correct this mistake and we apologize for the impact this has created during the semester and deeply regret the inconvenience resulting from this mistake. DoIT has taken all necessary steps to assure it will never happen again.

On Wednesday, May 28 at 7am, DoIT will be performing an upgrade of the campus webmail environment on our dedicated Cyrus mail server. The current webmail environment is extremely out of date on both the hardware and software. There will be a brief 5 minute outage to transition to the new server and no data will be lost during this upgrade.  Anyone logged into webmail prior to 7am will need to restart their browser and login again.  Users of Cyrus webmail will notice a more refined interface with new colors as well as some icons that have shifted location.   Anyone wishing to try out the new Cyrus webmail environment is encouraged to login at https://webmail2.umbc.edu. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Technology Support Center at x53838.

Note: This campus webmail upgrade will not impact users who have migrated their email to Google.  

An increasing number of departments are using the Box "upload by email" option as an effective way to conduct job searches. Apart from making it easy to collect applications, committee members can assess and even “vote” on applications remotely, saving face-to-face meetings for reaching consensus on applications where none exists yet.

For general help on Box see the “Need Help” link at box.umbc.edu, but here are some basic steps DoIT recommends for using Box on a search committee:

1. Create an "Applications" or "Applicants" folder, anywhere in Box where you’d like to receive applications.  Maybe add "Qualified" and "Unqualified" subfolders, too, for sorting the received files.

2. Give your committee access to the folder(s) you just created.

3. Find the “upload by email” address function for the "Applications" folder, located under "email options." Note: By default, this address is is NOT enabled for “collaborators only.” This is good, because you want applicants to be able to use the “upload by email” address, too.

4. Include the “upload by email” address in your formal job posting for how interested parties should apply.

5. Ideally, ask applicants to submit their materials as a single .pdf file to the “upload by email” address for your Box folder. Why? A single file is preferable so the search committee doesn’t have to hunt and gather multiple files per applicant (e.g., cover letter, resume, references, etc.).

6. Once you’re ready to begin the review of applications, ask your committee members to add a “Yes, No or Maybe” comment to each applicant’s file in Box before the committee’s first face-to-face meeting. This way, you can spend your time trying to reach consensus on applicants where there clearly is no conensus.

There's really only one intervention that DoIT recommends for step #3 above: create an easy to remember email alias (such as "yourdepartmentjobsearch@umbc.edu") to replace the machine generated, difficult-to-remember email address that is created by default. To do so, submit an RT ticket requesting creation of the alias for your submissions. Your RT request might look like this:

If you're still not sure about the "upload by email" function in Box, here's an FAQ (with images) that illustrates this process:

https://wiki.umbc.edu/x/0QAxAg

Finally, here's a quick video created for a DoIT search committee on how they could "vote" on applications by adding a simple "Yes, No or Maybe" comment to each file in the Box folder:

http://screencast.com/t/0QaHoMSC