Microsoft Windows 10 Upgrades

Windows upgrades are crucial to ensure you have the latest features and security updates.  Microsoft releases upgrades to Windows 10 twice a year, in the spring and fall.  Information Services will be upgrading Windows over the network during the Winter break, but you can easily perform the upgrade – on your schedule – with just a couple of clicks.  This can be completed either on campus or at home, although depending on your internet speed at home can take an extra hour to complete. 

For more information, please visit our Windows 10 Self-Service Upgrades webpage.

Microsoft Teams Updates

Teams has been a critical communication tool as many employees are working at home and Microsoft has been regularly providing significant updates.   Recently, the video conferencing interface was improved so you can easily have your video call in a different widow than Teams. 

Coming soon is the ability to prevent attendees from unmuting in meetings, improvements in the Whiteboard, and the ability to spotlight a participant during meetings.  For more info please visit What’s New in Microsoft Teams | October 2020.

No action is needed to get these new features as Teams will update automatically, regardless of if you are on campus or at home!

Exchange Online Migration

Starting in January, UM System will be migrating email mailboxes from residing locally in Columbia to the cloud-based Office 365 platform.  This will bring greater integration with other Office 365 applications, shared calendars with students, greater security, and improved reliability.

While most of this process will be transparent to faculty and staff, mobile devices and bookmarks to Outlook Web Access could be impacted. More information will be coming via email and the web in the upcoming weeks.  

Email Security Improvements

As part of the email migration project, new security features will be enabled.  The most visible of these changes is that links in email will be modified to use a Microsoft security filtering service.  When you receive an email with a link, the link will be modified to begin with: https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com .  This allows campus security teams to quickly disable phishing links sent by attackers.  If you have the newest version of Microsoft Outlook, it will still show the original web address inside the email message such as:

But at the bottom of Outlook, it will show up as:

Email security will also be enhanced to automatically encrypt sensitive health and SSN information that may inadvertently be sent in email.  This information should not be sent over email, but if it inadvertently is, the information will be encrypted, ensuring that a breach of a user’s account will not also leak the encrypted data.

Enhanced Building Security

Information Services is partnering with Campus Facilities Management and the OneCard office to improve building security and card access at campus facilities. Soon, all campus buildings will have contactless ID card readers allowing those that need access to spaces when locked to enter using their campus ID cards. The campus is also implementing video doorbell systems at 4747 Troost and 4825 Troost – anyone that does not have an ID card authorized to access the building will need to be “buzzed in” by a tenant/department.

To take advantage of the new contactless card access systems, everyone needs to have a campus ID card that was created after August 2020. The OneCard office is working directly with building contacts to arrange departmental card replacements for employees and student workers/researchers, and with Student Affairs to replace cards for students living on campus. You can check to see if you have one of the new ID cards by looking for a string of numbers at the top of new cards that are not present on old cards.

Google Cloud Platform

UMKC has partnered with Burwood Group to implement Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for UMKC and the other UM System campuses. This engagement will allow campuses to take advantage of improved account creation and login features, improved billing functionality, and will provide a 5% discount to campus users for GCP services.

Burwood is also assisting with industry-standard setup of cloud-based security and networking configurations.

To learn more about cloud services available at UMKC, please visit https://www.umkc.edu/is/fs/cloud/.