You likely have a lot of questions considering the almost ever-changing environment here at UNT and CVAD. You will be able to find answers to many frequently asked questions below. If you have any other questions you may check out our website but feel free to email us if you are unable to find what you are looking for.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Classroom AV Lecterns:
We have made changes to the classroom AV lecterns. The projector and HDTV controls are now included on the lectern computer. We will be emailing some training session information on Monday but if you have any trouble let us know – you can call our Helpdesk (940.565.4522) and someone will come to assist you.
New Faculty Accounts:
Not all new faculty have fully activated accounts (as of 8/25) so you may have some problems trying to access things outside of CVAD. Email and file server permissions are handled by CVAD IT Services and should be completed already. WIFI access may or may not be working for you (we have had mixed reports) but if you need a temporary WIFI account – contact our office. We have a list ready to go.
New Faculty Loaner Computers:
If you are a new full-time faculty member this semester, we have prepared a loaner laptop for you. Please come by our office to pick it up. It will take a few minutes to configure settings and add additional software you may need. But we will do our best to get you in and out as quickly as possible.
Faculty Upgrades: Some of the faculty upgrades have not yet been picked up. If you have not picked yours up, please do so when you have a moment this week. You can make an appointment with our office or come by the Helpdesk and see if someone is available. We will need to get your currently assigned computer returned to our office within seven days of receiving the new computer.
Good luck this semester!
CVAD IT SERVICES: WHAT, WHERE and HOW?
What services do we provide?
At the CVAD IT Services Helpdesk, you can get support for any information technology issue you encounter on campus (email, classroom technology, software, wifi...) If you need new software installed, updates for your computer, a new printer installed – come by or contact our office. Even if it is not something that is handled by our office we can either open up a ticket for you with the group that is responsible for managing that particular system or we can direct you to the right department. Problems with your university-assigned computer, research equipment, classroom audio-visual equipment, software – we can help you with all of these.
We have equipment we can checkout to you (and students): adapters, cables, cameras, tablets, laptops, projectors. Just come by. Take a look at our website for a list of the equipment we have available. Students are a big part of our Helpdesk operations but it is managed by Christopher Smith. The students this semester are Jacob Everett and Theo Cervi.
Where are we located?
- CVAD Helpdesk - ART 371
- CVAD Student Computer Lab - ART 375
- CVAD Digital Fabrication Lab - ART 361
- CVAD Textile Fabrication Lab – ART 366
How can you contact us for support?
Call us 940-565-4522
Email us artsupport@unt.edu
Visit our website https://cvadit.unt.edu
In the classrooms each AV lectern has a “Report Issue” icon in the dock – please report any issues you are having
If you need to contact our office for computer support, the best way to do so is to submit a ticket on our website or call our main number. If you do email us, it is best to use the main address above rather than emailing an individual on our team directly. Emails sent to that email address go to our entire team so your issue will be addressed more quickly.
Meet the CVAD IT Staff: https://cvadit.unt.edu/contact
If you have any questions about information technology resources available on campus, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Are you interested in discounted software for home use? Then check out UNT on the Hub and get great prices on Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Cloud, SPSS and more. For example, you can get the entire Adobe Creative Cloud suite for $9.75 per year. There are quite a few packages available AND make sure you click on "Faculty\Staff" at the top of the page because the price for Students may be higher.
CVAD STUDENT COMPUTER LAB
The CVAD Student Computer Lab (SCL) is located in ART 375 and has all of the software that is available in the computer classrooms plus color laser printers, large format printers, 3D printers and checkout equipment. The lab is managed by Kacey Close, feel free to stop by and chat with him if you have any questions.
The Student Computer Lab hours are:
- Monday - Friday 7:30 am - 10:00 pm
- Saturday 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm
- Sunday 12:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Printers
HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M750 (3)
HP DesignJet Z3200 Photo 24” (2)
Epson Surecolor P7000 24” (5)
Epson Surecolor P9000 44” (1)
Lulzbot TAZ 6 (8) - (3D Printers; Filament)
Software
All computers in the SCL and CVAD Computer Classrooms are iMacs that can be booted into the MacOS or Windows. If a piece of software is available for Mac and Windows – it will be installed on both. Adobe, Microsoft Office and others are all available on both the Mac and Windows. For a complete list of software available in the SCL, Computer Classrooms and Classroom AV Lecterns please visit our website.
The list grows each semester: please send new classroom software requests as soon as you determine that you would like to use the software in your class(es). The approval process at the system usually takes at least a day or two but at busier times it can take much longer. It will require some time to get the approvals from ITSS and the BSS before we can install the software. If the software has to be purchased we will need to get approvals for that as well and process the purchase. New software installs are generally performed on Fridays when the computer classrooms are not in general use.
| LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com): The university has migrated from Lynda.com to LinkedIn Learning. It is the same service just with a new name. All of your playlists and your course history were migrated at the same time. For more information and to access LinkedIn Learning, go to the campus website: https://it.unt.edu/linkedinlearning. The service provides a wide variety of software tutorials that are broken up into small, easy-to-complete sections, though you can also take full courses. Please make sure your students know this is available to them as well. |
CVAD FABLAB: CVAD DIGITAL FABRICATION LAB (DFABLAB) and TEXTILE FABRICATION LAB (TFABLAB)
The Digital FabLab is located in ART 361 and the newly created Textile FabLab is located just down the hall in ART 366. If you need to contact staff with a question or schedule an appointment, please send your emails to the CVAD FABLAB
- The Textile FabLab has not been added to our webpage yet – it will be added within the first month of classes.
CLASSROOM ON WHEELS (LAPTOP AND IPAD CHECKOUTS)
EQUIPMENT CHECKOUT
WIFI, VPN, AND THE CVAD FILESERVER
| UNT Perks - Employee Perk Programs: The university has partnered with several employee perks programs that provide discounts on anything from computers to travel. You can find information on them here: PerksConnect, PerkSpot and Discount Purchase Program. |
FYI ON UNT POLICIES: A FEW THINGS YOU SHOULD BE AWARE OF
I want to take a moment to remind everyone that there are state and federal guidelines, laws, and regulations as well university policies that govern the use of third-party software solutions (including but not limited to cloud-based storage services like Dropbox and Google). There are a variety of popular third-party solutions available and many of them are free and do not require anything to be installed on the computer itself. But they can only be used under certain circumstances. They cannot be used to store student data - that includes classwork or anything that contains any student information. Do not use these solutions in your classes, as part of your course-work or for any university business. These can be used for research purposes but only if no sensitive information is transferred.
CVAD requires that all IT purchases go through the CVAD IT Services office prior to purchase for approval. For most items this will not be a lengthy process – we mostly look to make sure the purchase is not for something that is already available, the purchase is being made at the educational price (when available), and\or that the purchase is for software or hardware that is compatible with existing hardware. IT equipment that is not submitted for review prior to purchase will not be supported on campus and will need to be returned for full credit.
For larger purchases (computers, monitors, printers …) you will need to contact our office so we can generate the quotes. Once we have a quote we will forward it to you and your chair approval. After it has been approved we will work with your department admin to get the purchase through the Business Shared Service (BSS). Computers can only be purchased through approved vendors and in most cases that will mean a Dell if you want a PC (we are required to attempt to go through Dell first but we have found them to be very good partners, especially as of late). The university has “approved standards” for both Dells and Macs but if those do not meet your needs we can order what you need and go to another computer vendor if necessary. The majority of the computers we have in CVAD fall outside of the university’s standards so we are used to it and there won’t be a problem. There is just more paperwork and it will take a bit longer. If you are interested you can see the current standards here: https://itss.untsystem.edu/divisions/mrs/policies/hardware/standard-configurations
All computer purchases have to be made through a REQ and not a pcard.
If you need software or an online service either for a class you are teaching or for your own research - please include your chair on the request (preferably discuss it with your chair before you send it to us). We will either handle the purchase or work with your department admin to get it purchased. Keep in mind that if the university does not currently have an agreement with the software\service vendor, we will have to submit a request to purchase to the BSC. Approval time is currently taking as long as three weeks.
All faculty and staff are required to abide by the security standards of the university (follows state and federal guidelines). The ITSS Information Security website is here. The UNT System Information Security Handbook and other resources are available on the website. The UNT System Information Security Handbook was updated during the 2018 fall semester – it is available as a direct download here.
4.0.2 Only the Board of Regents, the Chancellor, and the President have the authority to incur any obligation or enter into a contract, agreement, or purchase on behalf of the University of North Texas unless this authority has been specifically delegated to a designee by one of them in writing. No commitment for materials, equipment, or services may be made without an approved purchase order or negotiated written contract signed by one of these authorized agents. The designated agents for signing purchase orders on behalf of the University of North Texas are the Chancellor, the President, and their designees.
Authorized Use: The University of North Texas provides computer resources for the purpose of accomplishing tasks related to the University's mission. It should be noted that the use of some of the computers, networks, and software located on or off the University campus may be dedicated to specific research, teaching missions or purposes that limit their use or access.
Our campus has had an increase in the number of phishing attempts and unfortunately, some have been successful. Please review the information below:
--A phishing attempt is when you receive an email that requests information that should not be shared and claims to be from someone you would normally trust so as to not raise suspicions. While phishing attempts to our personal email accounts are likely to try and get information related to our bank or credit card accounts, the ones we get in our UNT mailbox usually are trying to get our EUID password and claim to be from the “IT department”. The scammers may be trying to get your account credentials so they can access the university’s confidential records (as you!) and that would result in a security breach that would have to be reported publicly. Most often, however, they just want to hijack your email account and use it spam advertisements and\or inappropriate content from it. Each of those emails will have your name on it though and even after the issue has been resolved you may receive complaints from people who were spammed from your account.--
Some things to remember:
-The only place you can securely change your password is http://ams.unt.edu – this is the only place we will direct you to for a password change.
-If you receive a message that you suspect is a phishing attempt (any message that asks you to “click the link below” to change your password or provide confidential information) – just send it to us and ignore it unless you hear back from us. If it turns out to be legitimate, we will let you know. If your account were actually locked out because you missed a special announcement (the university rarely does this), we will take care of it. Getting your account unlocked in that situation takes just a few minutes. Getting your account unlocked after it has been successfully phished and started emailing inappropriate messages to the UNT address book takes considerably longer. If there is a serious deadline coming up for something like this, we will let you or your supervisor know directly so you are unlikely to get a surprise email that is legitimate.
-If you make the mistake of clicking on a link in an email that takes you to a site where you type in your password or provide any other confidential information – change your password immediately at http://ams.unt.edu and then contact us. Change your password first as every minute could be hundreds of emails going out. Let us know as soon as you can we can usually prevent the account from being locked.
-When you get a message that starts with [EXT] in the subject line that means it is from an email address outside of UNT. You should consider any email with the [EXT] tag that makes any request of you or appears to be university business as suspicious. Forward suspect emails to us.
-You can get more information on phishing here.