Effective as of 10/21/15), we are making a change in the CN loaner process.  We’ll be keeping a small loaner pool at the Field area that the Field techs will keep up-to-date.  When a loaner is taken for use, the Field tech will inform the Build Bench and get another loaner imaged and brought to the field area.  When a loaner is returned from customer use, it will be brought to the Build Bench to be re-imaged.

Base will continue to use the “Request a Loaner” template in COHO, but we’ll now set the Inform Agent as the tech placing the loaner rather than Build Bench lead- this is noted in the template.

Please note that at this time we do not have Mac loaners available.

All,

At long last, Office 2016 for Mac has been released and we can install it freely on CN customer machines!  As of today all Macs built at the bench will have Office 2016, and we are welcome to help customers upgrade if they call in.  Please note that there are installers for both Mac and Windows in that location; at this stage we are only installing 2016 for Mac users.

Steps

• Check OS version.  The machine must be on Yosemite (10.10) or El Capitan (10.11) in order to install Office 2016.
• Check to see whether the customer has local archives (folders on my computer) in Outlook 2011.  If so, make a backup of \Users\<username>\Documents\Microsoft User Data\Outlook 2011 Identities just in case something goes horribly wrong.
• Download and run AppCleaner, available from http://www.freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/, to uninstall Office 2011.  Please note that there are multiple versions of AppCleaner; make sure you download the version appropriate to the customer’s computer.
• Copy SW_DVD5_Office_Mac_Standard_2016_MultiLang_ISO_MLF_X20-44037.ISO from \\software.oregonstate.edu\software\Microsoft Office Suites\Office 2016 to the customer’s computer.
• Double-click to open the .ISO file and run Microsoft_Office_2016_Volume_installer.pkg.
• After installation,  to run the updates you have to open each application. Do not update when prompted.  After all the applications have been opened once and shut down, you can check for updates and the Microsoft Autoupdate tool will update all applications that have been opened at least once.  That should save time over the “open an application, update, close then rinse and repeat” method.
• Once the updates finish, open Outlook. It should ask you to convert the database.  If there were local archives (from step 1) do the conversion.  If not, skip ahead and create a fresh account.

Requests from a Business Center employee to change a title for someone they support do *not* need LRP approval.  By virtue of being a Business Center employee we can assume that their request is valid.  Let me know if you have any questions or need clarification.

A quick update on our official policy regarding Office/Outlook 2011, to clear up any confusion:

• We will install Office 2011 for Mac users; aside from Outlook the rest of the suite is fully functional.
• Our strong recommendation is to use OWA rather than Outlook 2011. This is due to frequent sync issues such as calendars not being up to date, mail items not correctly showing as read/unread between clients, etc.
• If the customer is insistent on using Outlook 2011 we will configure it for them, with an *extremely* strong suggestion to not store any files under the On My Computer section. Best practice is to hide the On My Computer folders from view: Outlook menu -> Preferences -> General, check the box for “Hide On My Computer folders.”   Reasoning: There is no sync or backup of the On My Computer folders. We’ve had several instances of local Outlook database corruption; in these cases there is no way to recover the files and significant data loss has occurred.

To help verify account creation/removal requests, we’ve added an autoresponse for tickets in the CN Accounts queue.  The response will notify the requesting customer that the request has been submitted, provide a ticket number, and will include the contents of the request.