PCs and laptops that have not connected to the University’s networks in over 3 months will be at risk of login issues.

We are aware of a number of devices across campus that are at risk of login issues due to time logged off the University’s network. This will apply to:

• PCs on campus that have been switched off for more than 3 months
• University laptops that have not connected to the VPN for more than 3 months, and have not accessed Eduroam for more than 3 months

You will see the error message “No Logon Servers Available” and will require a technician visit. Due to the numbers of our colleagues returning to campus over the next few months, we plan to contact individuals directly and arrange a bookable time for our User Support technicians to visit you and apply essential settings to your device.

If you expect to be on campus soon and believe your device belongs to the above categories, please let us know when you plan to return to site by emailing dts@reading.ac.uk and that you will require technician support.

On Tues 16 Feb, a change was made to the University’s email system so that email coming from outside the University now goes directly to Office 365.  This improves the availability of staff email – we have had a few instances where incoming email could not be delivered – and brings the benefit of additional malware checking from Microsoft.

Since the change, we have been made aware that some staff have had issues due to email being sent to “@rdg.ac.uk” instead of “@reading.ac.uk”.  The “@rdg.ac.uk” format addresses have been deprecated for many years and are no longer supported.  However, if you have a vital requirement for this format of address, please raise a TOPdesk ticket via the Self-Service Portal stating the details of this. Our team will investigate and liaise with you.

We have recently made an important change to the way Henley programme members access the varied cloud based resources and cloud authentication methods to the learning platforms and resources.

What are we doing?

Historically there has been two Office365 systems at the University of Reading. One for the bulk of the students at Reading (e.g undergraduates and postgrads on typical University of Reading courses) and one setup initially for the Henley programme members (traditionally taught at the Greenlands campus and for distance learning students).
Time has now come to merge these two systems into the primary system. This process involves:

1. Modifying your University Login Username(UPN/long form username): ab123456@live.henley.com (example)
2. Modifying your Primary Email Address (from address): smith@student.henley.ac.uk (example)
3. Move your existing Exchange Online Mailbox (including mail forwarding rules) and OneDrive content to the new system

Why are we doing this?

In order to provide secure access to the recently upgraded cloud based services (library resources, o365 apps),  it is technically not possible to continue under the previous setup. This change is necessary to enable us to deliver future integrations seamlessly along with maintaining account security in accordance with the University Security Policy.

How will it affect me?

The merging of the two systems brings many benefits to you, as well as the business a whole.

From the 1^st of March 2021 onwards,  there will 3 changes as described:

Please note:  On the first login you will be prompted to set up (MFA) Multifactor Authentication by following the on-screen prompts.  This is an important step in protecting your account against unauthorised access as a result of a security compromise.

On the plus side you will now have seamless access to the wider suite of Office 365 products, such as Teams, Forms, OneDrive & PowerApps and will no longer have to be invited as a ‘guest’ to access shared resources.

The single style of logging into resources such as Outlook, TopDesk self-service portal and Blackboard will make for a simpler experience.

Any technical questions, please email the IT Service Desk at dts@reading.ac.uk