Inside Tracks

Departmental Policies

Table of Contents

• Remote Access of Computers by ECS Staff
• Computer Ownership and Location
• Software Licensing
• Hardware and Software Requests
• Personal Computer Support
• Software Installation
• Personal Computers on the School Network
• Email Usage
• Accessing Email From Off Campus
• Password Policies
• Computer Logout/Shutdown Policy
• Data Backups
• Computer Sales and Recycling
• Quotas
• Student Workers

Remote Access of Computers by ECS Staff

All of the Mac and PC desktop computers within the school have been equipped with remote control software that allows Eastman Computing Services (ECS) staff to connect to and control the computers via the network. When connected to a remote computer in this fashion, we can view the contents of the screen and control the keyboard and mouse cursor as if we were sitting at the computer ourselves.

The remote control software allows us to troubleshoot problems and assist faculty/staff members with problems without having to travel to their office. We will only connect to remote computers in certain situations:

• When we are on the phone with the faculty/staff member.
• When the faculty/staff member is in our office.
• When we need to access the computer to log a user off prior to server maintenance.

An icon on the screen (in the Windows system tray or the OS X menu bar) indicates when the computer is being viewed and/or controlled remotely.

Computer Ownership and Location

Any computing hardware and software provided to Eastman faculty and staff members is considered property of the Eastman School. Computing resources are provided to Eastman faculty and staff members as tools to assist them with their work responsibilities. Any computing equipment that is provided to a faculty/staff member (other than laptop computers) is expected to remain in the room where it was installed.

Documentation and software that are provided along with the computers at the time of delivery are considered part of the system and should remain in the same location as the computer hardware.

Software Licensing

Desktop and laptop computers provided by Eastman Computing Services come equipped with a standard set of licensed software. Any additional commercial software must be purchased by individual departments.

Our department abides by software licensing agreements and will not install unlicensed or illegally copied software. We will not install a licensed copy of a program on multiple computers unless such a situation is approved in the license.

Hardware and Software Requests

Please make hardware and software requests as early in the year as possible. The Eastman Computing department has standardized on a four-year replacement cycle for faculty and staff computers. We have made an effort to provide networked printers to workgroups throughout the school and each faculty office is equipped with either a color inkjet or black & white laser printer.

Software Installation

Please refer to our Software Installation tutorial for more information about software installation policies.

Personal Computers on the School Network

Eastman provides a wireless network that may be accessed by any faculty, staff, or student with a wireless-equipped laptop. In order to gain access to the wireless network the laptop must be brought to our office to be registered.

The use of personal desktop computers on the Eastman network is not permitted.

Email Usage

Eastman email addresses are automatically provided to all faculty and staff members. It is expected that Eastman faculty and staff will use their @esm.rochester.edu email address to communicate with their colleagues within the school. The school incurs a cost to establish each account and the accounts should be used when representing the school.

We do not provide an option for automatically forwarding email to other addresses. We do not recommend attempting to use mail rules or filters to redirect or forward incoming email as they can be unreliable.

Accessing Email From Off Campus

Outlook Web Access (OWA) is the only supported method for accessing your @esm.rochester.edu email account from off campus, unless you have a school-provided laptop. We have created a guide to accessing OWA.

Faculty and staff members who use school-provided laptops are able to use their normal Outlook or Entourage email clients from off-campus. We recommend establishing a VPN connection prior to running these email clients from a remote location.

Password Policies

Information on password complexity and expiration requirements may be found at the Passwords section of our website.

Computer Logout/Shutdown Policy

Computers should be logged out of at the end of each day to protect the security of a user's documents and ensure that any maintenance that is performed on the computer does not result in the loss of user data.

We create nightly backups of users' data (H drives for Windows users, Home folders for Mac users) which can fail for certain files if those files have been left open by a user that has remained logged in. Logging out ensures that all of your data will be backed up successfully.

We often need to apply software and security updates to individual computers and are unable to apply those updates if a user has remained logged into a computer.

Logging out of your computer is also the only way to ensure the safety of your files and information; if you don't log out of your computer, anyone with physical access to your computer can access your files.

Data Backups

Our department creates periodic backups of important data. Faculty and staff desktop computers (both PCs and Macs) have their users' data folders backed up nightly. In addition, the M (Main Hall) and S (Departmental) drives are backed up periodically.

In the event that a file or folder is accidentally deleted, please contact Computing Services staff as soon as possible to arrange for the restoration of the file. Please be ready to provide at least the filename(s) of the deleted file(s) and their location or path if possible. Recovery requests must be made no later than four weeks after the file was deleted.

Computer Sales and Recycling

The Computing Services department has an annual computer sale in which computers that were replaced that year due to the four-year replacement cycle are sold at greatly reduced rates to members of the Eastman community. Equipment that is no longer useful will be recycled. Please note that we do not accept personal items for recycling and you will need to make your own arrangements for such situations.

If you have personal equipment that you would like recycled, you may want to consider one of the following options.

• Maven Technologies, LLC
  1144 Lexington Ave.
  Rochester, NY 14606
  (585) 458-2460 ext. 239
• Rochester Computer Recycling & Recovery, LLC
  7318 Victor Mendon Road
  Victor, NY 14564
  (585) 924-3840

Quotas

Quotas for Windows accounts are per-user and apply to any files that you have ownership on the server. For example, if you copy a file from your H drive to the S drive, each copy of the file will count against your quota limit.

Eastman email accounts also have a 200 megabyte quota that limits the amount of space you can use on the email server. Please view our tutorial on how to check how much space you have used within Microsoft Outlook.

Student Workers

Departments who wish to provide computer access to their student workers may request the creation of a "departmental student" account to be shared by their student workers. There should be a staff member who sets the password for these accounts and monitors their usage. These "departmental student" accounts are the one exception to our policy of not sharing passwords among multiple people.

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