This issue has now been resolved and logging into and editing content on ActivEdition is available again.

ActivEdition editing has been unavailable since about 8:45 Wednesday morning due to an error when logging in.

This means that users cannot change content on AE pages or login to the system.

We reported it to the supplier (C2)  yesterday at around 12. They had problems accessing our servers – but since late morning today they have been able to access the servers. We have to await confirmation from the supplier that they have fixed the issue.

We will update you here as soon as we know more.

Unfortunately, as we are seeing problems with ActivEdition today, we will have to postpone this maintenance until the 4 December.

The ActivEdition web site will experience a brief interruption around 17:00 GMT 27th November in order to carry out essential maintenance.

Content Editing will be unavailable between 15:00-21:00 GMT on 27th November.

Colleagues are advised that from 10 December, the University is changing how you access Microsoft Office applications (Outlook, Word, Excel etc.) remotely.

If you log on to the University network from your home or a location outside our campuses, you will be asked to complete a Multi-Factor Authentication before you can use these applications. This would generally involve either saying ‘Approve’ to a login notification on your smartphone or entering a unique code available on your phone.

We recommend that you download the Microsoft Authenticator App on your smartphone to help you do this. This app is available for Android, iOS and Windows smartphones.

Instructions on how to set up the app are available on the Remote Services Access Guide.

If you do not have a smartphone, the authentication works through an SMS sent to your mobile phone or through a call on a landline.

These changes are part of our work to make the University and its IT systems secure. Every week, around 40 University accounts are hacked – requiring urgent work to secure those accounts. We need your support to facilitate a secure infrastructure that colleagues can use to work flexibly.

If you have any questions or concerns about this change, please email IT Service Desk.

We recently experienced a power outage at 12:15pm that affected our storage which resulted some services being unavailable.

We are working to bring back all affected services and hope to achieve this as soon as possible. If you are still experiencing  problems accessing a particular service please contact the IT Service Desk.

Please accept our apologies for the disruption this has caused.

We are taking part in Movember!

Movember is the leading charity changing the face of men’s health, and this Movember DTS are joining them. Together we can make a difference for men’s health – in prostate cancer, testicular cancer, mental health and suicide prevention. Help to stop men dying too young.

https://moteam.co/uor-dts DTS Movember Crew are raising funds and awareness this Movember for all the dads, brothers, sons and mates in our lives.

Would you please share our message.

This a reminder of the previous message on the 9th of October:

https://blogs.reading.ac.uk/itsnews/2019/10/09/change-to-logging-in-to-university-services-office-365-onedrive-etc/

We are making a change to how students log in to some University services.

From the 5 November you will have to use your University username plus ‘@student.reading.ac.uk’ to log in to University services that have a Microsoft branded login page (Email, OneDrive for Business etc.).

Due to this change, you will need to set-up some security details the next time you login in order to verify your account in the future.

What is changing?

When logging in to University services people used a variety of usernames to login. You will now only use your ‘username’ + ‘@student.reading.ac.uk’.

New way

1. Enter your username (ab123456) plus ‘@student.reading.ac.uk’ added afterwards. For example: ab123456@student.reading.ac.uk
2. Enter your password

How will this look in practice?

1. Go to a University service with a Microsoft branded login page (Email, OneDrive for Business etc.)

2. At this login screen enter your username plus ‘@student.reading.ac.uk’

3. You will be redirected to a University of Reading branded login page. Enter the same details as on the previous screen.

4. The first time you do this you will be prompted to set-up some security details.

5. You will now be taken to the service.

When is this changing?

This change will happen on 5th November. However, there will be a 2 month period where other formats of usernames will still work to avoid disruption.

Need assistance or have a question?

Contact the IT Service Desk on x6262, reading.ac.uk/it or it@reading.ac.uk where our friendly staff are always happy to help.

Storage issue

On the 19th of October we experienced an issue with our storage service which affected the following services:

• N:Drives and Collaborative fileshares
• Web sites, including blogs
• Inbound email from off site (internal e-mail, and outgoing e-mail is unaffected)
• Mailman lists

The supplier of the storage has identified a problem with their software which causes the system to intermittently fail which had led to the unpredictable, occasional outages we have been experiencing. Now we have identified the root cause of these outages we can move onto resolving the issue with supplier in order to improve resilience.

Resolution:

The supplier, Nexenta, are now working on a patch to fix the problem, which is currently being tested and will be available later in November. As soon as this update is available we will work with Nexenta to test and implement the update on our storage system. In the meantime we will continue to closely monitor the services. Until the full fix is available we have put in place a temporary work-around to help keep things running smoothly in the meantime.