ITD News 
News, Tips, and Information from NC State University
Information Technology Division (ITD)
For up-to-the-minute reports on ITD-supported systems, see SysNews
For help with a computing problem, contact the NC State University Help Desk
July 2007
Dear Prompt readers,
Please NOTE!
The planned Oracle calendar outage and upgrade highlighted in the July Prompt was CANCELLED . The current version of Oracle calendar will remain in operation. All calendar users have been notified by email from the NC State Help Desk. For more information, see the posting in SysNews: http://sysnews.ncsu.edu/news/468d3f9f
Please pardon the inconvenience.
Table of Contents
-01- Planned outage: Save your calendars now!
-02- New rules: Change your Unity passwords at least once a year
-03- Heads up: Problems with Office 2007 formats
-04- Newest Blades: SUN awards VCL Academic Excellence Grant
-01-Planned outage: Save your calendars now !
Earlier this month, users of the university's Oracle "Brickyard" calendar were alerted by email that the service would be unavailable for approximately 4 days starting on Thursday, July 19 at 6 p.m.This scheduled outage is needed to install and migrate data to the new Oracle 10g server.
If you are an Oracle calendar user, the University Help Desk reminds you to print out or otherwise save your calendar data for the affected days before the system goes off-line. If you use the desktop client, make sure you are running its latest version (10.1.2), available from the downloads page (http://brickyard.ncsu.edu/downloads.php).
For more information and instructions, see the Calendar Migration Page: http://brickyard.ncsu.edu/migration/index.html
-02- New rules: Change your Unity passwords at least once a year
Unity IDs and passwords are now the keys to many academic and administrative resources at NC State. Until recently, most employees and students were encouraged to change their Unity passwords every semester but were not required to do so. Under NC State's new University Password Standard procedures, everyone will need to change their passwords at least once a year to access secure services such as the new MyPack Portal for financial, human resources, and student information. People with access to sensitive data or other people's private information will need to change their passwords more often, depending on the scope and security level of the data.
To change your password, visit the Password Change page: http://www.ncsu.edu/password
-03- Heads Up: Problems with Office 2007 formats
As Microsoft Office 2007 comes into wider use on campus, an increasing number of people are having problems sharing files. Office 2007 uses new XML-based formats as the default for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access files. These formats (e.g. .docx, xlsx, pptx) cannot be opened by older Microsoft Office programs.
If you use Office XP or 2003, you can download the "Office 2007 Compatibility Pack" from the Microsoft website (http://www.microsoft.com). This patch should make it possible to open, edit and save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files in Office 2007 formats, If you are using Office 2007, choose the Save As "97-2003 format" option when you are saving your files, especially if you plan to share your files with others
-04- VCL receives Academic Excellence Grant from Sun Microsystems
NC State’s Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) has an important new partner. Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) has awarded North Carolina State University an Academic Excellence Grant to incorporate the Sun Blade platform into the VCL environment. The equipment donation is valued at $82,370.00. For for details, see the announcement at http://www.itd.ncsu.edu/news/SunVCL-announcement.php
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