Repost from UMBC AI

In this Analytics Community of Practice session, UMBC's Campus Portal Architect, Collier Jones, describes the methodology and technical process for crunching the numbers behind the 2025–2026 myUMBC report. He'll cover how AI assisted in parsing search query behavior, evaluating search response times, and processing topic categorization. This is a hybrid event with lunch provided for registered in-person participants. A virtual link will be sent to all registered participants the morning of the event. Get more information and register here.

DoIT has been working with the Division of Student Affairs to introduce a new, easy-to-use Emergency Settings page in myUMBC. 

The myUMBC Emergency Settings page integrates our campus-wide emergency alert system and required emergency contact information in one place. You may notice new homepage reminders - these will guide you to sign up for emergency alerts or update your required emergency contact information. When you log in, you may see two specific notifications:

• Emergency Alerts: If you haven't signed up, you’ll see a prompt to join. 

• Emergency Contacts: If your contacts are missing, you'll see a reminder. This notification will remain active until a contact is added.

Take Action: Click the notification to go directly to your settings, or access them anytime by clicking your Profile Photo > Emergency. See “How do I update my Emergency Settings in myUMBC?” for more information about the page.

Please take a moment today to ensure your emergency alert enrollment is active and your emergency contacts are up to date. 

If you have any issues, please contact the Technology Support Center via help.umbc.edu or by calling 410-455-3838.

If you manage a myUMBC group, you've probably noticed some things look a little different lately. We've been working on a big round of improvements to the editor and groups experience, and I wanted to walk you through what changed and why.

There's a lot here, so I'll try to keep it organized.

A Much Better Editor

The most visible change is the editor itself. We replaced the old one with a modern rich-text editor that, hopefully, just gets out of your way.

Paste from Word or Google Docs and it just works. Formatting comes in cleanly without a wall of mystery HTML. This one has been a long time coming.

Images are easier to work with. You can paste, drag-and-drop, or upload images directly into the body of your post. No more hunting for a separate upload button. When you insert an image you'll be prompted for alt text (more on that in a minute).

Paste a YouTube URL and it becomes a player. Drop a YouTube link into the editor and it automatically embeds as a video player. In the notification email that goes out to your group, recipients will see a clickable thumbnail linking to the video instead of a broken embed.

Attachments and tags got some attention too. The interface for attaching files is cleaner, and the tag editor now works like a chip input: type a tag, press Enter to add it, click the x to remove it.

One small but important change: the "Silent" option on the post form has been renamed to "Send Notifications." It's on by default, which is the right behavior for most posts. If you don't want to send a notification, just uncheck it. We made this change because "silent" wasn't exactly self-explanatory.

Preview Before You Publish (and Scheduling!)

Instead of going straight from editing to publishing, there's now a Preview step in between.

On the edit form, you'll choose whether to publish immediately or schedule your post for later. Group admins can schedule up to 30 days in advance. Once you've made that choice, you click Preview before anything goes out.

From the preview screen you can:

• See exactly what your post will look like to readers before it goes live
• Send yourself a test email to see what the notification looks like in your inbox
• Copy a shareable preview link to send to other group admins if you want a second set of eyes before it goes live

Then you confirm the publish or the scheduled time from there.

If your group does a lot of time-sensitive announcements, scheduling should make your life a lot easier.

Alt Text is Now Required

We're making a serious push on accessibility, and one concrete change is that alt text is now required on all images before you can publish. If you've got images without alt text, the Publish button will stay disabled until you fix them.

When you insert an image you'll be prompted right then. If the image is purely decorative, you can check "decorative" and move on. Otherwise a short description goes a long way for people using screen readers.

You may notice other accessibility-related changes around myUMBC as we continue this work. We do our best to make sure nothing breaks along the way, but if something feels off please don't hesitate to reach out to me or the team.

Archive Your Content

Groups can now archive posts and events rather than choosing between leaving old content in the feed or deleting it forever.

Each post and event now has an Archive button. Archiving moves that item out of the main listing into a separate archived view. On your Posts tab, there's a button on the right side that says "View Archived Posts" to toggle between active and archived content.

This is especially useful for groups targeting students with announcements. Old posts that aren't relevant to new visitors can be tucked away without losing them permanently.

If you want to do a bulk cleanup, say archive everything before a certain date, submit a ticket and our team will take care of it.

A Few More Things

Events: In-Person, Virtual, or Hybrid. When creating an event you now explicitly choose the format, and the form shows or hides relevant fields based on what you pick. No more filling in a location for a fully virtual event.

Subscription tag filtering. If your group subscribes to another group's content, you can now limit that subscription to specific tags so only the content you care about comes through.

Group inactivity process. After eight months of inactivity, your group will start receiving emails letting you know. You'll have the option to extend the group for four more months, or choose to archive or delete it. Archiving sets the group to read-only so people can still see past content but no new posts can be made. Deleting removes the group itself but keeps individual posts intact since we hold onto public content for the historical record.

My Events page. Go to the Events section in the left nav and choose My Events to see upcoming events you're signed up for, plus upcoming events from the groups you belong to.

Personal posts are now called Messages. For groups that use them, you'll see the updated label.

Questions?

If something isn't working right or you have questions about any of this, reach out to our team and we'll be happy to help.

Over this past weekend, April 4-5, 2026, one of UMBC’s services experienced a disruption, resulting in slower loading times. This affected some users' ability to log in to platforms such as Blackboard, Google Services, and myUMBC. This also caused a backlog of emails for some accounts. The issue has been resolved as of April 6, 2026. No action is needed by users at this time. 

Need Assistance?

If you have any questions or experience further issues, please contact the TSC at UMBC’s Help Service. 

As we approach our late-April accessibility compliance deadline, we want to share a clear roadmap of the changes coming to myUMBC and what they mean for you.

Phase 1: Content Checks & Preview

Coming later during the week of March 23rd.

Content Checks

When editing a Post or Event, you'll see a new Content Checks section that flags accessibility issues before publishing, such as missing alt text on images or broken links.

Previously, you could publish posts and events without addressing accessibility issues. That is no longer the case, flagged issues must be resolved before content can go live.

Preview & Publish

The publish button has been replaced with a Preview & Publish button. Clicking it takes you to a preview of your content where you can:

• Review how it will appear to readers
• Return to edit if needed
• Send a preview of the notification email to yourself
• Share the preview link with teammates for review
• Publish to make it live

Phase 2: Content Archiving

In late-April, any content with unresolved accessibility issues published before January 1, 2023 will be marked as archived. The most common issue is images missing alt text.

Admins will have access to a report showing all of their group's flagged content. If you resolve issues before mid-April, that content will not be archived.

Here's what to expect for content that is archived:

• It will appear under a new Archived filter in your group
• URLs will not change, so existing links won't break
• Archived content is read-only, but you can edit and republish it at any time
• It will display a prominent banner indicating the content is archived and may not be current

For departmental websites: If your site pulls in myUMBC group content, no changes are needed on your end. Archiving will be reflected automatically on your site.

Why This Matters

These changes reflect UMBC's institutional commitment to making myUMBC accessible to everyone. The goal is to make compliance as manageable as possible — catching issues early, giving you visibility into your content, and providing time to act before archiving occurs.

Questions? Reach out to collier@umbc.edu.

Have you ever wanted to promote your club, group, or organization's event or announcement on the front page of myUMBC? Well, here is a quick guide on what you need to know. 

The promotion feature allows you to share content from your myUMBC group to all myUMBC users on the front page, reaching a much wider audience than if it were just posted to a group's page. This is a free feature for departments and official student organizations to use that operates on a first-come, first-served basis. 

Before you are able to promote content to the front page of myUMBC, there are a few requirements that must be met. 

• The post or content you wish to promote must be published in an official and public myUMBC group run by a UMBC department or student organization

• To have the option to promote content, you must be an admin of the group from which the content originates. This does not mean you have to be the creator of the post. 

• There must be an approved thumbnail image to go along with the post

• The content should be appropriate for all UMBC audiences

• Content can be promoted by a group once every 3 days, and only 10 promotions can be scheduled in advance

If these requirements are met, you should have no trouble promoting your content.  

To start, you will need to create a post as normal on myUMBC, including your text, thumbnails, alt-text, and any relevant tags. After you hit publish on your post, you may have to refresh the page or navigate to the main page of your group to find the post. 

Here you should see a box on the right side with the posts analytics as well as buttons to "Edit", "Copy", "Mark Important", and "Pin". If you are an admin for this group and it qualifies as a department or official student organization, then you should see a purple button labeled "Promote".

What's new this fall?

1. Profile

• Under your “Profile” tab, you can find different cards for information about you as a member of UMBC 
• You can find information about your degree, registration, grades, billing, financial aid, parking, and more 
• There is also a list of tabs on the left of the page that has a few more options, including “Housing” and “Timesheets”

2. Guide

• Here you’ll find information about upcoming deadlines/important dates for the campus, basic profile information, and links to various campus resources
• Along the side are different categories of resources for the university
• Student staff will also find links and resources for their position

3. Events

• “Groups” is where you can find and receive information about specific clubs, organizations you have joined, as well as different UMBC Departments
• By joining groups, you can choose if and how you want to receive updates about events going on or general information about the group

5. Help

• The “Help” tab can be used to find links for information or request help on specific topics

Want to learn more about the myUMBC as a site?

Here are some resources about myUMBC

• UMBC Community Standards · About myUMBC 
• Use of Student Data · About myUMBC