As the CSU Channel Islands community forges ahead with the 2020-21 academic year, Information Technology Services continues its work to make necessary updates and adjustments to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19. Our ITS News Blog offers the latest news and updates about technology at CI to help faculty and staff continue their important work in facilitating teaching and learning during this challenging time. The following highlights are but a few changes made over the past several months in preparation for this academic school year.

Jabber: 

Significant upgrades were made to our VOIP Phone System giving campus users enhanced mobile remote calling capability using Cisco’s Jabber client. Jabber is an application that delivers University desk phone calls directly to your desktop or mobile device. With this app, you have the freedom to place and receive calls from any location as if you made the call from your desk. Faculty and staff can improve productivity and easily communicate with coworkers and colleagues with Jabber’s real-time presence information. Jabber can be used on Mac and PC machines as well as Android and iOS devices. Contact the Solution Center to request a license.

Teams Dial-In:

This past summer ITS introduced Audio Conferencing in Microsoft Teams—the ability to join a Teams meeting from a regular phone. Dial-in conference numbers are available to current faculty and staff with an Office 365 mailbox. Contact the Solution Center to request a license for your Teams account.

Outlook Add-Ins:

FindTime is an Outlook add-in that combines the polling functionality of Doodle with the Scheduling Assistant feature of Outlook. You just open an email message, include the “Reply with Meeting Poll” option, and add people. Since it’s a regular Outlook email, you can even use name lookup to add them. You can also designate people as “Required” or “Optional” so you can pick a time based on the people who really need to be there. Then, FindTime suggests meeting times based on people’s Outlook calendar (if they have one). In other words, you’re not picking options out of a hat. Of course, you can also pick dates manually.

Everyone gets an email with a link to vote (yes, no, preferred). You can track responses, send reminders, and add/delete people and date options. When all Required individuals vote, FindTime will automatically add the best meeting time to everyone’s Outlook calendar. FindTime works on Office 365 Outlook for the Web, Outlook 2016, and Outlook for Mac 2016.  Only the meeting scheduler needs to have an Office 365 account, Outlook and FindTime, invitees/attendees do not. Contact the Solution Center for more details on how to request this add-in.

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