TechNews_June2025

Technology News for June 2025 Top News 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. All recordings from the spring semester migration and training sessions have been uploaded at the following link, https://eits.uga.edu/about/initiatives/survey_tool/migrationworkshops/. More QuestionPro migration and training sessions will be available in the fall 2025 semester. 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. For more information, contact surveytools@uga.edu.

Google’s Gemini and NotebookLM now Available: Effective June 1, 2025, UGA students, faculty, and staff have access to two new AI tools from Google. Gemini is Google's AI chatbot, designed to analyze and generate text, code, audio, images, and videos. NotebookLM is a research and note-taking assistant that generates source-grounded responses based on uploaded materials; NotebookLM can also create reports and podcasts to summarize the content. Both tools are securely integrated within UGA’s Google Workspace environment, which offers enhanced data protection compared to personal Google accounts. For more information, visit https://eits.uga.edu/stories/NotbookLMandGoogleGemimi/ or contact Justin Sackett at justin.sackett@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 of 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.

IT Services in Action GACRC Teaching Cluster Available for Summer 2025: A small high-performance computing cluster devoted exclusively to teaching duties is available for use during the Summer 2025 semester. The cluster, which is supported by the Georgia Advanced Computing Resource Center (GACRC), was also in use during the fall. Faculty members interested in discussing the capabilities of the teaching cluster and how it might integrate with their coursework should contact Dr. Guy Cormier at gcormier@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. Departments that have not already scheduled their transition to Teams Phone should use the following form to select a preferred month for the transition, https://forms.office.com/r/ZV9nw3we4B. EITS Telephone Services will do their best to accommodate the chosen month. Once the form is filled out, the onboarding request should also be completed, https://uga.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/3190/eitsclientportal/Requests/ServiceDet?ID=54344 . 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. 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.

Mission-Critical Systems Inventory due June 9, 2025: The University System of Georgia (USG) requires an inventory of “Mission-Critical” systems every fiscal year, and the 2025 inventory process is currently under way. This process requires the assistance of UGA’s Departmental Network Liaisons (DNLs) to review and identify critical systems by marking them appropriately in the IP Management System (proteus.uga.edu). The USG IT handbook defines a Mission-Critical system as “a system which contains confidential or sensitive data” or “serves a critical and necessary function for daily operations.” DNLs should ensure the systems in Proteus are accurately documented, account for any new systems implemented or decommissioned over the past year, and record all changes accordingly. The deadline to complete the mission critical systems inventory is June 9, 2025. For questions or assistance, 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 will be sent throughout June and July. 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 ensure the UGA LinkedIn Learning associated license count is current, annual user cleanups are necessary to remove users who are no longer associated with the university. EITS will conduct an account clean-up this summer to remove users who are no longer associated with the university. EITS will send notices to affected users. The clean-up will be completed August 1, 2025, when inactive users will have their accounts 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.

Tech Tips New 2025 Student Technology Guide Available: This summer at new student orientation, EITS will distribute an updated version of our New Student Technology Guide. The updated guide maintains the same streamlined look and feel, while updating content and incorporating more information about UGA technology services. Newly added sections cover our generative AI Tools provided by Google, Gemini and NotebookLM, which are available for all students, faculty and staff online and through the UGA Mobile App. Additionally, the guide includes information about Wepa and other resources available in the Miller Learning Center (MLC), such as Tech Lending and the Digital Media Lab, and previews the new Digital Engagement Wing at the MLC coming in Fall 2025. The guide and a checklist for incoming students can also be found on the EITS website under the New to Campus section at https://eits.uga.edu/newtocampus/. Printed copies of the guide are available now. To receive printed copies, please contact Emily Enelow at emily.enelow@uga.edu.

Wi-Fi Available for Guests at Orientation: Are you bringing family, friends, or supporters to orientation this summer? Make sure they stay connected with our free self-service guest Wi-Fi network, UGA_Visitors_WiFi. Guests on campus can easily connect via the self-service portal without needing to contact the Help Desk for a password. Fill out the form in the portal and use the SMS verification code to access the network. Full instructions are available on our Knowledge Base: https://uga.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/3190/eitsclientportal/KB/ArticleDet?ID=15450.