Back-to-School & UBCIT

Check out some of the top IT resources you may require in your workday, whether you’re a student, faculty or staff, or researcher (Note: some links may not apply to UBC Okanagan).

Don't forget the importance of cybersecurity - find out what you can do at Privacy Matters @ UBC.

How to Book Meeting Rooms

Most board rooms and meeting rooms on campus can be booked in Outlook:

1. Create a new meeting.
2. Enter the subject and start time/end time.
3. Switch to scheduling assistant.
4. Select a room.
5. Find an available time.

Follow our step-by step guide HERE.

IT On & Offboarding for TA's

Please remember, ALL employees, including student hires and Teaching Assistants, need to have the UBCO IT Onboarding form AND the UBCO IT Offboarding form submitted when they are hired/leave the department. This is the only way to ensure they have access to the IT accounts and access they need, AND ensure this access is removed when they leave.

 Details on How To Create Accounts for Student Employees and Teaching Assistants and How to request Zoom Accounts for TA's and Paid Students are further guides on this process. 

IT Project Request Process

Did you know, all IT projects at UBC must meet privacy, cybersecurity, IT, and financial investment requirements (Policy FM11 Capital Projects and Policy FM2 Purchasing), including:

• Software purchases or subscriptions
• Project costs for requirement gathering, installation, integration and implementation 

Contact UBCO IT Engagement Services EARLY to discuss your needs, existing solutions, potential costs, and start the IT Capital Planning Process.

Projects which need integrations with CWL, access to student, employee or financial data may take 12+ months for approvals and development. Additional costs for integrations and IT project resources may also be required.

UBCO Phone Improvements

UBCO IT Voice Services has made some recent improvements to campus phone system.

Off-Campus Calling - No need to dial "8" for off campus calls. Simply dial the area code and phone number for local and long distance calls.

Long Distance Pins - Long distance pins are no longer required for most handsets on campus and will be removed from all desk phones soon. 

1 year data retention for Zoom & Teams recordings Fall 2023

In October 2023, UBC Record's Management will implement an automated one-year retention policy for video recordings. This data retention schedule will affect all employees on both campuses.

While users are not required to move their videos, if they are more than one year old and no action is taken, these videos will be automatically disposed of according to the one-year automated retention schedule. LEARN MORE...

Topics for IT Support

We want to hear from you!

For future UBCO IT Support Lunch 'n' Learn sessions or How-To documents, please tell us what topics would be of interest to you or your department.

Visit our SLIDO poll page to add the topics you want to learn more about. Please add *ONE IT topic per response to allow others to vote. (Note: Workday topics are not in scope; Workday is an HR application)

MFA for Students November 1

Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) will be mandatory for all students November 1, 2023. Failure to enroll may result in restricted access to UBC applications and disrupt the academic experience. MFA  helps UBC provide a secure digital environment to protect students' personal information. LEARN MORE...

MS Teams has Live Transcripts

The Live Transcription feature is now available in Teams. This new functionality provides a written record of spoken text for each speaker, that is available during and after the meeting. Live transcription can make your meetings more productive, accessible and inclusive. READ more.

Workday Student Co-Existence

From October 2023 to September 2024, the legacy SIS and Workday Student will run in parallel, meaning both systems will be live and in use; this is known as the Coexistence Period.  Learn more about the Coexistence Period, including its timeline, impacted groups & more.

Emeritus Status in Workday

Workday was updated in August to add a new job code, PRA, for active emeriti to keep their access to UBC systems that are necessary for active appointees. If this was not done correctly emeriti may have lost access to FASmail. For details on this new Business Process please refer to the article linked or UBCO HR for more details. 

Change to Grad Student eMail

As of April 2023, to comply with our Microsoft License agreement, we cannot provide graduate students with a Faculty & Staff email (FASmail) unless they have an active Workday appointment.

Graduate students are eligble for a student email address (cwl@student.ubc.ca) and can use webmail.student.ubc.ca to access mail.

More details on email for students is HERE.

A.I. in Teaching & Learning

The Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology (CTLT) at UBC Vancouver, and the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at UBC Okanagan, support faculty and staff with the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI or GenAI) in delivery of their teaching and learning. Check out their website for Tools, Resources & Events on using AI at UBC.