The UMBC Division of Information Technology team is taking key steps to continue providing secure accounts and workspaces and ensure your information is protected. Several cloud service providers are phasing out unlimited cloud storage, including Google, Box, and Microsoft.

Google storage has been unlimited for all UMBC accounts for many years, and the amount of data some users have in their accounts has increased drastically. Google no longer provides unlimited cloud storage for higher education users. We must take action to reduce the amount of data we are storing as an institution in Google, and to this end, quotas have been established in Google for all UMBC accounts.

Please note that every effort is being made to ensure existing users in our campus community are not adversely affected by the storage quotas. Your data is important. Existing users have been provided additional space based on their current Google storage use. New UMBC accounts will be given the default quotas below to ensure we remain under our storage limits. To assess your stored data and check your storage usage, visit your Drive storage page.

If you have questions or concerns, please reach out to the Technology Support Center at 410-455-3838 or submit a ticket.

This wasn't specific to UMBC, it was a larger outage within Google itself. Other UMBC services like Blackboard and Peoplesoft were unaffected. 

At this point we don't have any additional information on the cause of the outage. 

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. 

Damian Doyle

Associate Vice President of Enterprise Infrastructure

DoIT - UMBC

DoIT has begun transitioning users off mailing lists to Google Groups and myUMBC. We expect this transition to be completed by the end of June 2017. Sympa, the campus software used for handling email lists, is being discontinued, triggering this migration. Mailing list will not be going away. Instead, the software used to access and administer them is changing. DoIT is working with list owners to talk about migration strategies, and how Google Groups & myUMBC can be used to make sure that the transition is as painless as possible for list owners and administrators.

Google Groups functions like the traditional Sympa mailing list. You can read more about Google Groups here. 

If you are mainly using your group for announcements and events, we recommend using myUMBC Groups. myUMBC is a robust platform for managing your group for both internal and external communications. 

With myUMBC Groups, you’ll have more control over who joins your group, what their positions are, and the ability to make the group either public or private. Through subscriptions, you can also pull content into your group from other myUMBC groups and from outside of myUMBC. There are additional features in myUMBC, such as events where you can track attendees and participants. If you have an important post, you can pin it to the top of your group for members to see. Groups can have customized avatars and banner images to give a more unique feel. 

For any questions about this transition, please contact Damian Doyle: damian@umbc.edu

DoIT would like to announce that you can now use your UMBC gmail address with Google Inbox by Gmail. Inbox is available on the Google Play Store, Apple App Store and can be accessed on the web by going to inbox.google.com

Google Inbox offers several features not found in regular Gmail. Highlights lets you see things like attachments and pictures without having to open your message. 

When you add a reminder, it will help you accomplish it by including relevant info like phone numbers and links. In addition, Inbox bundles your messages in groups like finances and purchases by default, but can be disabled if needed. 

The Android version of the UMBC app is now available on the Google Play Store. The app requires Android version 4.1 and up. There is no login required, as you can access all the features as a guest. If you do have an account, log in once to the UMBC app and from that point forward use a 4-digit pin to quickly log in later.

The design is slightly different in the Android version, Home, Search, Places, and Events are moved to the top but users should expect the same features found in the iOS version launched last month. If logged in, the UMBC app will feature content and resources tailored to you.

In the Home tab, users can browse both the myUMBC and UMBC mobile friendly site and quickly check for updates. Search has a built in QR code scanner and shows what you have used recently, what others are looking for and myUMBC favorites. 

 

Places will display office hours, maps, and upcoming events while Events will show you what is happening now and upcoming events on campus. Just like the iOS version, the app will be updated with more features in the future making it more robust.