Bryn Mawr College

The Blackboard administrators at Swarthmore have informed us that Blackboard is now back up and functioning normally.  If you are still experiencing any issues please contact the Help Desk.  Thank you for your patience.

We have been advised  by our Swarthmore colleagues that the TriCollege  Blackboard system is currently down and Swarthmore system admins are currently working to address the problem.  They hope that this will be a short term outage and apologize for any inconvenience.

Brief downtime scheduled for Friday 9/11 morning to fix Blackboard bug....

Our colleagues at Swarthmore have advised us that Blackboard will be unavailable for a short period of time following 12 noon tomorrow (Wed 1/20).  The server will be restarted after importing new server security certificates.  These certificates must be updated annually and are scheduled to expire shortly.

Communication Center is now back up and all email, calendars, etc. should now be accessible. We're still completing some final testing, but no problems have been encountered in testing since the system came back online at about 10 am. Should you experience a problem, please call or email the Help Desk (x7440, help@brynmawr.edu). A list of new and improved features is available here. New and updated documentation is available at the TECHBar Documentation Blog.

Communication Center is now back up and all email, calendars, etc. should now be accessible. We're still completing some final testing, but no problems have been encountered in testing since the system came back online at about 7:45. Should you experience a problem, please call or email the Help Desk (x7440, help@brynmawr.edu). A list of new and improved features is available here.  New and updated documentation is available at the TECHBar Documentation Blog. Here are a few highlights: Introducing the Briefcase The Briefcase application is used to save files directly to your “webmail" account, making it easy to access these files ... Read more»

In response to the performance issue we are experiencing on webmail.brynmawr.edu, there will be an outage this evening, Wednesday January 13, for the Bryn Mawr Communication Center (Webmail)  affecting all email access.  After working with the vendor, we will be installing a new version of the Zimbra software which is expected to address the issues that have been identified. We have been working diligently to test this new version and we are confident that it will address this issue as well as several minor issues which have been reported by community members. The server will become unavailable at 5pm, and is ... Read more»

We are monitoring a performance issue on the Communications Center (Webmail) server since our upgrade on Friday evening. This issue is intermittent and primarily presents itself as slowness searching the address book (including autocomplete), and sending email or calendar invitations.  This type of problem can become apparent only under full load, so it did not manifest itself during our extensive testing process over the past few weeks. We are working closely with the vendor to promptly identify a solution. Please be aware that in order to resolve this issue and improve overall performance, an outage similar to the one which ... Read more»

Just a quick reminder that on January 8-9, Information Services will upgrade the College Communications Center (aka Webmail) to Zimbra version 6. The upgrade will start at approximately 5pm on Friday the 8th and extend into the evening with the intention of being fully up and running early Saturday morning.  Status updates will be posted here on the IS blog and can also be found in the right-hand column of the main Computing Web page.  Please keep in mind that while you may be able to log into the upgraded system before it is announced, testing may still ... Read more»

There will be an outage on the evening of Saturday, February 6 for the Bryn Mawr Communication Center (Webmail)  affecting all email access. We will be installing a new version of the Zimbra software which is expected to address a number of issues reported by community members. The upgrade will start at approximately 9pm on Saturday the 6th and extend into the evening with the expectation of being fully up and running early Sunday morning.  Status updates will be posted here on the IS blog and can also be found in the right-hand column of the main Computing Web ... Read more»

It has been brought to our attention that not all of the public printers were defaulting properly to duplex (double-sided) printing.  The reason for this has been identified, and we expect that as of tomorrow this will work properly.  If you continue to have problems with duplex printing, please let the Help Desk know (help@brynmawr.edu, x7440) as soon as possible.

Over the weekend, many community members received a message from "TriCollege Moodle Administrators" with the subject “Tri-co: New user account”. This message was sent automatically from a Tri-College test system. The Tricollege Consortium is testing a course management system called Moodle with a handful of classes on each campus.  You can find general information about the Moodle pilot in the “Moodle” tab on the regular Blackboard system.  This weekend, accounts were created for all current faculty, staff, and students to facilitate access to the system. When these accounts were created, the system generated email messages to each user announcing the ... Read more»

A number of community members have reported difficulties reaching off-campus Web sites and resources.  While the College's Internet connections are not experiencing any problems, both of our providers have made us aware of several issues existing in the area which are affecting us. We have been informed that there have been multiple instances of damage to fiber-optic cables in the Philadelphia and NJ regions which carry a large proportion of area Internet traffic.  In addition, power losses in parts of Philadelphia earlier today caused some intermittent interruptions.  Due to the scope and nature of the damage, carriers are are unable to ... Read more»

Just a quick reminder that there is a planned upgrade this evening for the Bryn Mawr Communication Center (Webmail) which will affect all email access. You will be unable to send email or access the Communication Center. Received emails will not be available until a after the upgrade is complete, and may not arrive immediately as it sometimes takes time for all emails to be delivered. Mobile Devices and Mail/Calendar clients will not be able to contact the server during this period. We expect to be back up and running very early Saturday morning.  Watch the IS Blog for status.

Due to hazardous driving conditions, the upgrade previously scheduled for Saturday evening has been rescheduled to, Sunday Feb. 7th at 8:00 am. The Communication Center will be available again late Sunday afternoon. Thank you, David Schlich Head of Systems

Thank you to all for your patience as we have been working through some responsiveness issues on our Communications Center server (aka Webmail). After working extensively with the vendor for our Email/Calendaring software and our hardware vendors, our Systems group has been able to isolate a number of factors contributing to the slowness that many community members have experienced.  The administrators are now working through resolving each of those issues.  One of the necessary steps  is to make some software changes, requiring a restart of the Webmail server. Email and Calendaring will be unavailable for approximately 30 minutes starting at 11pm ... Read more»

As always, Winter Break is a good time to correct issues and improve services without impacting classes.  In light of this, Virtual Bryn Mawr (PeopleSoft) services will be unavailable tonight ( Monday, January 11 ) from 5:00 pm until approximately 11:30 pm in order to perform maintenance. If this outage presents a major problem, please contact David Sturgis or the Help Desk immediately.

At this time we are experiencing an outage for Virtual Bryn Mawr (aka Virtual Registrar, PeopleSoft, virtual.brynmawr.edu).  One of the related servers has experienced an unexpected problem, which is currently being addressed.  We expect that this will resolved shortly; please bear with us as we work to resolve the problem.

Thank you for your patience.  Virtual Bryn Mawr is now available once again. David Sturgis would like to remind those who may have submitted process scheduler requests this morning that those will need to be resubmitted.

It has been brought to our attention that the voicemail system is not consistently setting Message Waiting Indicators to "On" -- for some folks, this is the "voicemail" light on your phone, for others, it is a tone you hear when you pick up the phone. Please check your voicemail frequently as you may have unheard messages, though you may have not been notified.  Also, be aware that the notification may work sometimes and not others. We are looking into this, and will be discussing the issue with our service vendor.  However, the voicemail system is one of the oldest systems on ... Read more»

Improvements to the wireless network are continuing through the semester. In addition to the new wireless in several residence halls, Cambrian Row, and other buildings over the last several weeks, the wireless network in Park was successfully refreshed over break and a dozen additional access points were installed to alleviate some known congestion points; work is continuing this week as we adjust the coverage to address any weak or dead areas. In the upcoming weeks we look forward to the completion of a number of residence halls including Rhoads, Pem, and Rock which are currently in progress. ... Read more»