TechNews_July2025

Technology News for July 2025 Top News Provost’s Office Launches Artificial Intelligence (AI) Hub: In spring 2025, the Office of the Provost launched a new website serving as a central hub for artificial intelligence-related information and activity at the University of Georgia. The site features details about the Leadership Council on AI, the Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and AI initiatives at UGA. The site also provides guidance on the use of AI, along with resources and tools for students, faculty, and staff. Visit the site at https://aihub.uga.edu/. For questions, comments, or contributions, please contact Mike Wooten at mwooten@uga.edu.

QuestionPro Survey Research Tool Now Available: QuestionPro is the new enterprise survey research tool available to students, faculty, and staff free of charge. This platform includes tools for the creation, distribution, and analysis of surveys, along with tablet-based mobile research and data visualization. EITS launched QuestionPro for campus use by faculty and staff on March 17, 2025, and it is now available to all students. There will be two migration and training sessions this fall, on September 4 and October 6. Registration links for these sessions are available at https://eits.uga.edu/about/initiatives/survey_tool/migrationworkshops/. All recordings from the migration and training sessions from spring have been uploaded at the link above. For more information about QuestionPro, visit questionpro.uga.edu or contact surveytools@uga.edu.

Qualtrics Cost-Sharing Program Planning Underway: To assist departments interested in continued use of Qualtrics after December 2025, EITS has instituted a cost-sharing program.

The deadline to opt-in to the cost-sharing program was May 1, 2025, and cost-sharing program participants have received recommendations for survey clean-ups. Effective January 2026, Qualtrics access will be limited to cost-sharing program participants only, and UGA Single Sign-On will be required. Current faculty and staff who are not part of the cost-sharing program will retain Qualtrics access through December 2025 and have received information on transitioning to alternative survey tools. Students will have access to Qualtrics until August 1, 2025. After this time, they should use QuestionPro as their primary survey tool. For more information, contact surveytools@uga.edu.

Alchemer Survey Tool now Available: For units and departments who need additional survey tools, EITS offers Alchemer on a cost-recovery basis. Once purchased, Alchemer may be used by faculty and staff for survey research and administrative use when alternative tools are not sufficient to meet the unit's needs. Units purchasing Alchemer licenses are responsible for setting up UGA Single Sign-On (UGA SSO) for their instance. Units can purchase Alchemer licenses through UGAmart. For more information about Alchemer, visit https://www.alchemer.com/education/, or reach out to Procurement at procure@uga.edu.

OIR to Launch new Website: The Office of Institutional Research (OIR) will soon launch a redesigned website featuring a modern interface, enhanced functionality, and interactive data visualizations powered by Power BI. This upgrade aims to improve the usability, accessibility, and presentation of institutional data, making it easier for the UGA IT community to explore and leverage key insights. The new site will launch with Tableau reports, along with Power BI reporting. Stay tuned for more details on the official launch date and how to access the new site. For more information about the upcoming launch, contact Allan Aycock at aacock@uga.edu.

IT Services in Action 2025 IT Excellence Impact Awardees Announced: In June 2025, the ITMF Excellence Impact Awards honored three outstanding IT professionals whose work exemplifies leadership, innovation, and service across the University of Georgia.

Ashley Williams from the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences was recognized for her exceptional leadership in managing a complex website redesign project and advancing digital accessibility. Her ability to communicate effectively, guide stakeholders, and lead has strengthened both project outcomes and team culture. Simon Starling from the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources was celebrated for modernizing endpoint management through Microsoft Intune, improving security and user experience. His contributions to training and collaboration have benefited IT teams across UGA, helping to standardize and elevate practices campus-wide. Zehadi Alam from the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences stood out for his leadership in UGA’s shift to cloud-based device management. From developing onboarding kits to automating imaging processes, his efforts have improved IT operations in multiple units while mentoring peers and promoting a modern, secure infrastructure. Together, these recipients reflect the award’s mission: to recognize sustained impact, collaboration, and behind-thescenes excellence that advances the university’s IT community. Learn more at https://itmf.uga.edu/awards.

GACRC Enhances AI and HPC Infrastructure with Strategic Investment: In fiscal 2025, the Georgia Advanced Computing Resource Center (GACRC) is significantly enhancing the Sapelo2 high-performance computing and artificial intelligence cluster through a strategic investment of $1.5 million. The expansion includes 53 new high performance compute (HPC) nodes, delivering a combined 7,040 compute cores and 41 terabytes of RAM, to boost the center’s capacity for computational research. To further accelerate AI-focused research, particularly for faculty affiliated with the Institute for Artificial Intelligence, GACRC will deploy its most powerful AI GPU server to date: a high-density system equipped with an eight-way NVIDIA B200 GPU assembly (192 GB per GPU). This upgrade represents a major leap in AI training and inference capabilities. Funding for the initiative comes from a mix of university sources, including central university funds, EITS and the Office of Research, reflecting strong institutional support for cutting-edge research infrastructure. For more information, contact Guy Cormier at gcormier@uga.edu.

Campus Wi-Fi Upgrades for January–March 2025: Work is underway on more wireless upgrades in academic buildings and student housing across the Athens, Buckhead, and Griffin campuses. These upgrades are part of EITS’s work to continuously improve wireless connectivity and coverage to support teaching, learning, and student life. The $1.2 million-ayear project, funded by Student Technology Fees, includes wireless refreshments and redesigns in many buildings. Recent upgrades have included facilities on the Health Sciences Campus, the Lucy Cobb complex (CVIOG), Rhodes Animal and Dairy Sciences Buildings A, B, and C, River’s Crossing, the Poultry Diagnostic Research Center (PDRC), and locations on the Tifton and Griffin campuses. EITS also continues to install wireless access in the new emergency call stations as they are deployed. This is part of an effort by the university to increase security efforts. For more information, contact David Stewart at stewart@uga.edu.

Teams Phone Available for Campus Units: EITS now offers Teams Phone, a cloud-based, next-generation phone system provided by Microsoft. Teams Phone allows UGA employees to communicate and collaborate anytime, anywhere, on any device. It integrates seamlessly with the Microsoft Teams application on laptops, tablets, or mobile devices, allowing employees to access all calls, chats, calendar invites, and meetings in one place. EITS will transition all phone lines off the legacy PBX and onto Teams Phone by March 2026. Telephone Services is scheduling departments that have not already scheduled their transition to Teams Phone.

DTRs should fill out a Teams Phone Onboarding Request for their unit at https://uga.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/3190/eitsclientportal/Requests/ServiceDet?ID=54344 as soon as possible. Upon receiving the onboarding request, approximately six weeks prior to the port date, Telephone Services will schedule a large group meeting to address any concerns and answer questions. The Teams Phone transition does not affect AT&T Centrex/HVS users or phone lines outside of the Athens area. As part of this project, Telephone Services has successfully transitioned around 2,300 phone extensions from the legacy PBX system to Microsoft Teams Phone. For more information, contact Steven Duffee at sduffee@uga.edu.

Summer Help Desk Hours: The EITS Help Desk will operate on an amended schedule for UGA’s summer break. This new schedule began May 19, 2025, and is in effect until August 4, 2025.

The hours are as follows: • • •

Sunday: 1:30 - 5:30 p.m.

Monday - Friday: 7:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Saturdays: CLOSED

The EITS Help Desk operates from 101 Cedar Street and can be reached by phone at 706-5423106, by email at helpdesk@uga.edu or via our chat service at hd.support.uga.edu. For assistance outside of our operating hours, please visit the EITS Knowledge Base at eitshelpdesk.uga.edu to access self-service tech tips.

Transition from Omni CMS to Kaptiv8 WordPress by December 2025: Effective December 2025, Omni CMS (formerly OmniUpdate) will no longer be offered as a content management system for university websites. EITS offers WordPress provided by Kaptiv8 as the new recommended vendor for content management and website hosting. All university websites using Omni CMS must migrate to WordPress or another website hosting platform by the end of 2025. The transition from Omni CMS to WordPress was announced in 2023 and began in early

2024. To learn more about options for transitioning to WordPress, visit https://uga.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/3190/eitsclientportal/KB/ArticleDet?ID=158743. For more information, contact David Crouch at dave@uga.edu.

Changes and Maintenance Boyd Data Center Electrical Upgrade Slated for Summer: This summer, EITS will continue upgrades to the Boyd Data Center electrical systems, including replacing outdated, lower capacity circuit breaker panel boards with new high-density panel boards. These upgrades build upon the work completed in 2024, which increased capacity on the Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) from two 500 kVA systems to two 750 kVA systems. The summer 2025 upgrade will utilize the increased UPS capacity and better support the higher power demand in the data center. No impact to campus is expected; however, some servers in the data center will temporarily lose backup power while EITS safely installs new wiring and circuit breakers. For more information, contact Chris Fleming at cfleming@uga.edu.

New CESS Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence: The University of Georgia’s Computer Equipment, Software and Services (CESS) approval process—designed to review qualifying IT projects for risk and compliance with Board of Regents policy—has been updated to include artificial intelligence tools. CESS approval is now required for stand-alone AI tools, such as ChatGPT or Claude, to ensure that all AI-related purchases and projects align with the university’s IT security and risk management standards. For more information, contact Ben Myers at bmyers@uga.edu.

Retiree Account Review Underway: UGA retirees can keep their MyID and UGAMail for access to some UGA resources after retiring. To improve IT security, accounts that have been inactive for one year or more will be deactivated each summer. Starting May 6, 2025, retirees with inactive email accounts began receiving notices with instructions on how to keep their accounts active. Reminders were sent throughout June, and a final notice will be sent on July 8.

To maintain access, retirees must log in to their UGAMail account by July 17, 2025. Accounts that remain inactive will be deactivated on July 31, 2025. For more information, visit https://eits.uga.edu/access_and_security/myid/myid_account_removal/. For questions, contact Shannon Marable at Shannon.marable@uga.edu.

Zoom Student Account Reset Planned for August 8: To ensure we can provide Zoom licenses to all active students in the fall, EITS will perform a reset on student Zoom accounts in August.

During the reset, accounts belonging to students will be temporarily removed from UGA’s main Zoom account. Students who wish to keep their UGA Zoom account during the fall 2025 semester only need to log in to Zoom again after the reset occurs on August 8. Upon logging in with their MyID and password, their licenses will be re-provisioned. During the reset, students may lose access to meetings they are scheduled to host, and custom user settings, including their profile and background photos. We recommend they take note of these meetings and save any photos they wish to keep. The reset will not affect any meetings or classes hosted by UGA faculty and staff, including those scheduled with students. Departmental sub-accounts for Zoom will not be affected, but EITS strongly encourages Zoom sub-account owners to remove faculty and staff who have left the university. For more information, contact Mamtha Ramaraja at mamtha.ramaraja@uga.edu.

LinkedIn Learning Clean-up: To keep the University of Georgia’s LinkedIn Learning license count accurate, annual user cleanups are necessary to remove individuals no longer affiliated with the university. EEITS will conduct this year’s cleanup in August. Notices were first sent to users in June and will continue throughout July. The process will be completed by August 1, 2025, at which point inactive accounts will be archived. For more information, reach out to Dave Crouch at dave@uga.edu.

Fall Biannual Network Maintenance Scheduled for November 2, 2025: EITS plans to conduct its fall biannual network maintenance on Sunday, November 2, 2025. EITS conducts biannual network maintenance in the fall and spring each year to support the network and provide ample bandwidth and internet capacity to the university. The maintenance will result in intermittent outages of campus Internet access, telephone services, and various UGA information systems, including UGA Single Sign-On, UGA websites, and wireless networks. For more information, contact Rayid Tartir at rayid@uga.edu.

New UGA-IoT Wireless Network for Faculty and Staff: In May 2025, EITS launched a new wireless network to support Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The UGA-IoT wireless network is reserved for faculty and staff using IoT devices for research, teaching, and administrative purposes; students are not allowed to access this network. Any faculty or staff member wanting to connect a device to the UGA-IoT network should contact their Departmental Network Liaison (DNL) to get access. DNLs should reference instructions on the DNL SharePoint site for connecting devices. For more information, contact Chris Workman at cworkman@uga.edu.

Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 Reaching End of Life: Microsoft has announced that support for Microsoft Office 2019 and 2021 will reach end of life and will no longer be supported as of October 2025 and October 2026, respectively. EITS is working with departmental IT to ensure that these office suites are updated to the most recent version of Microsoft Office. For more information, contact Justin Sackett at justin.sackett@uga.edu.