Information Technology News

Campuswide Calendaring

Currently, campus departments use various solutions for keeping track of employee calendars, as well as scheduling group meetings and activities. However, these calendaring islands do not communicate with each other; any time a meeting involves personnel from multiple departments, it must be scheduled via voice- and e-mail.

As part of its Enterprise Services project, NACS is launching a campus calendaring service using CorporateTime from Corporate Software & Technologies. Our goal is to serve the campus’s needs in electronic calendaring and scheduling, and facilitate the growth of this service throughout UC Irvine.

This new service will allow users to track personal appointments, schedule meetings with one another, include a conference room if appropriate, track tasks and events, and check their calendars while away from their desks or traveling. Client software supports Macintosh, Windows and UNIX (Motif) computing environments, and optional software is available for synchronizing one’s calendar with a personal digital assistant (e.g. Palm Pilot).

Several schools and departments are participating in the initial rollout of this service. Interested users should contact theirComputing Support Coordinator for participation details. Departments who would like additional information on this service are invited to contact us at nacs@uci.edu.

Printing in Labs

For the last few years, NACS has managed a pay-for-printing service in its instructional computing labs in an effort to balance printing needs with the inevitable costs of providing that capability. This service has been so successful (we estimate more than half a million pages will be printed this year) that departments which manage other labs have asked for NACS’ assistance in setting up similar services.

Today, “PayPrint” is available in labs managed by NACS, Information and Computer Science (ICS), Social Sciences, Humanities and the Division of Undergraduate Education’s Instructional Technology Center. There are a total of 20 stations to which users can direct printouts, and the cards needed to pay for and authorize printouts in the system are for sale from vending machines in NACS’ labs in Engineering Gateway and the Humanities Instructional Building, as well as in ICS, Social Sciences, and Humanities.

There is more good news for users of PayPrint! A recent analysis of anticipated costs for the coming year has enabled NACS to reduce the price to $0.10 per page. This will make printing more affordable to students.