Tag Archives: software

Software Install Best Practices and Reporting Issues

Team: we have some inconsistencies with how we are doing software installations for customers. To address that, Jade is working on a  recommended best practice document for the software packages we install most often; it will be in ITKnows shortly.

Please note: the preferred method for installing Office 2016 ad-hoc is to do so via Software Center.  

If you install Office 2016 via \\software.oregonstate.edu instead, you will need to update the shortcut for Skype for Business in the start menu as it will be broken otherwise.

If you run into issues doing a software install or with other processes, please do the following:

  • Split a ticket and describe the issue
  • Set Max Cohen as responsible

Thank you!

Call Center Digest 1/12/2016

We have a lot going on. Here are a few highlights you should be aware of.

  • Bitlocker: please read the documentation; there will be a quiz!  Everything you need to know about encryption, MBAM, PINs, etc.
  • Data Warehouse test account (dca_test) password has changed – the new one is in KeePass.
  • Sick leave: Students and temp employees are eligible for sick leave now.
  • New call center techs: Please welcome Chance Jensen, Keith Davis, Derek Lafave, and Randall Boyd.
  • User Plus accounts for techs are gone. Use your admin account instead.

Licensed Software information

I’m working on a complete page for OSU software (There is this helpdoc already.) In the mean time, here are the main resources:

If a software package is not listed on the above sites, the employee or their department needs to purchase a license.


Printer Security Issues

We are getting an increasing number of reports of printers getting hit by the attack that makes them spit out paper with garbled text. These printers need to have security options set to limit access to OSU IPs. We may be able to secure these printers remotely – please ping Chris Kennard if you don’t know how to address it.

Please see the parent ticket for this issue for more information.


Fun Fact:

LeanPub is a very cool site.  Authors get 90% of the sale price, some books are free (with recommended donation) and you can get updates on books as they are being written. It integrates nicely with Kindle.

Mac Self Service

A couple of things about the Self Service app that is deployed to the Macs.

In case you have not looked at the Self Service app, please jump on a Mac and have a quick look so that you can see what it looks like.

  • Anybody who wants to use Self Service will need to use their ONID credentials to log in to Self Service (do not qualify your username with onid\ as Casper does not like domain qualifications).
  • If a customer is having trouble accessing Self Service and they have their ONID credentials correct, the machine is most likely not collected in Casper, in which case, the machine will need to have the QuickAdd package run on it.
  • A customer will only be able to see whatever packages are available for the machine that they are logging into Self Service from. Package deployments are assigned per machine, not per user, so if a person can see the OS X Mavericks installer from their 10.7 machine, but not from their 10.9 machine, it’s because the package is not assigned to be deployed to their 10.9 machine.

Now, on a different note, CJ and I have already fielded a few comments about the way the deployment of the Self Service dock icon happened. While the Self Service app has been deployed to the Macs for several months, we only started talking about deploying the dock icon yesterday as we felt we finally had enough software available in Self Service to make it worth the customers’ while (nobody wants to go shopping in a store with empty shelves). While we were excited to make the Self Service app more obvious to the customers, we should have sent a notice before we started messing around with deployment of the dock icon. I was the one who activated the deployment policy and I apologize for any confusion or unnecessary questions that it may have generated as a result.

So. If we deploy something in the future that is going to be directly visible to the customer or change their user experience in an overt manner, we will follow established procedure by sending a notice to the customers and deploying on Tuesday nights in conjunction with Patch Tuesday updates.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

James Dudzik

Campus MATLAB Site License

The University has purchased a campus site license for Mathwork’s MATLAB software, including MATLAB, Simulink, and a number of other software packages as well as more than 50 toolboxes. The software is now available at no cost to faculty, staff and students for use in instruction and non-commercial research, and it can be installed on university-owned or personal computers