RoomRes.smu.edu

SMU's New Scheduling Service

A new service is now available which provides an easy to use scheduling interface for reserving conference and study rooms.  Roomres.smu.edu can be configured to display multiple exchange calendars for various rooms and resources.  An individual can then visit the webpage and immediately see all available times for those rooms.  They can book an appointment in an available slot with just three clicks. That appointment is then entered into their SMU calendar as well as the resource calendar for that particular room.

This solution is currently in use by the Business Information Center to allow students to reserve space in the study rooms.  A few other groups are using this as well to allow faculty, staff or students to easily sign up for appointment times, as students do not typically utilize the calendaring tools within webmail. It is an ideal solution to view multiple calendars in one location (such as a block of conference rooms) and quickly book an appointment.

Departments may request to add calendars to roomres.smu.edu by completing the appropriate form at help.smu.edu.  An exchange calendar will be created for the various rooms if one doesn’t already exist.  Only free/busy information for the calendars is displayed on the webpage, and access to the system requires an SMU email account. 

For more information on this new service or to view a quick demo, click here .

Network Drive Upgrades
(T:, U:,and V:)

OIT has implemented a new server environment which will host the T:, U:, and V: network drives in use by Faculty and Staff. This new environment offers several benefits including real time replication, immediate failover to the backup servers in case of an outage, and free space on the U drive will be accurate based on a user directory. In addition, OIT will be able to increase the storage quota for these network drives in the near future.

As content is migrated to the new environment, the network drive path will be modified. Currently, the drive mapping begins with \\s11usr\folder. In the new environment, the path will be \\smu.edu\files\folder. Computers that automatically map these network drives using the login script will have their paths updated automatically. 

Computers that have manual drive mappings will continue to function with the current path location for the next few years. However, we do encourage you to begin using the new mapping format when officially announced in the next few weeks. Macs that are not yet on Lion will not be able to use the new paths as they are not compatible with the new technology. These will remain mapped to \\s11usr\folder. 

The migration of all data to the new file storage system will be officially announced and take place in April or May. A minor file sharing service disruption may also be announced as part of this migration. Most of the changes are behind the scenes; however, you may notice the new drive path in Windows Explorer. Additional information on increases to storage quota will be posted once the project has been completed.