2024 ITS year in review

On July 10, ITS launched a new Help Portal at help.unc.edu. The new portal is designed to connect you with tech help, answers and services. New features include an “easy button” to submit a help ticket, an option to request support via email, web-searchable help articles and a fresh look.

The new portal is part of a larger change to a new customer support tool provider, TeamDynamix, from the previous provider, ServiceNow.

The CrowdStrike “blue screen of death” event that began on July 19 affected at least 8.5 million computers worldwide and is being called the biggest IT outage in history. Rough estimates put the cost to organizations and individuals in the billions of dollars.

At Carolina, the CrowdStrike incident affected roughly 5,000 machines. IT staff from across campus, including ITS employees, rallied to manually repair these machines and address the impact at the University.

The Digital Accessibility Office created a comprehensive accessibility compliance plan that everyone on campus can use to meet a major federal deadline.

In April 2024, the Department of Justice signed a final rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to ensure digital content and mobile applications are accessible for people with disabilities. Under the new rule, all digital content at UNC must be accessible by April 2026.

One of Classroom Hotline’s major efforts this summer was switching systems for controlling and programming audiovisual technology in 37 general-purpose classrooms. Classroom Hotline pulled out and replaced 200 classroom computers and 15 projection screens that were old and scheduled to be life-cycled.

Classroom Hotline also installed Listen Everywhere technology in 25 classrooms with assistance from ITS Wireless and Networking teams.

In response to changes to the email landscape, ITS worked to protect UNC-Chapel Hill’s email reputation. To help deliverability, ITS shared guidance and best practices for bulk email senders, made technical changes and tightened email security settings.

These best practices and behind-the-scenes changes work in tandem to protect UNC’s email reputation and give UNC emails the best chance of reaching external audiences.

UNC-Chapel Hill’s TIM upgrade launched in the spring after two years of work. The project was a collaboration between ITS; Payroll Services, a department in the Finance Division; TIM administrators in the schools and divisions; the Office of Human Resources; and the company UKG, the vendor for TIM.

The smooth transition was thanks to the dedication of the University’s TIM project team and its two years of effort.

In August, ITS launched a new way keep up with all the latest tech news from ITS. You can now subscribe to a monthly newsletter, ITS News Tech Connect.

You can also follow us on Instagram to stay up to date with news from ITS, free tech tools and perks, announcements, events and opportunities for all Tar Heels. If text is more your speed, ITS is also on Threads and X (formerly Twitter).

Multiple ITS teams are contributing to the project to expand and renovate Avery Residence Hall. ITS staffers have been engaged since January 2023 — a year and a half before site work began in August.

ITS employees have designed network plans, added fiber optic cables and temporarily removed other telecom cables that could be damaged by or in the way of construction, which is a common concern in renovation projects with existing networks.

Wi-Fi 6E — which ITS is deploying to campus right now — is the most significant upgrade to Wi-Fi in more than 20 years.

The new 6GHz band will make the most difference in densely populated areas, like residence halls and academic buildings. The new equipment requires that teams in ITS redesign spaces and add new access points.

On July 9, the Information Security Office extended the default “remember me” period for Duo 2-Step Verification from 12 hours to seven days.

This extension means that most users will verify their identities less often when they log into systems that require Duo at UNC-Chapel Hill. This provides a more convenient — yet still secure — experience.

UNC claimed victory in the first-ever Cyber Bowl as part of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. The quiz competition encouraged users to engage with cybersecurity by leveraging competition with NC State University and Duke University.

UNC drew more than 2,100 participants, representing 6.45% of the student, faculty and staff population. More than 5,300 players from the three universities logged in to play.

In July, the Digital Accessibility Office celebrated five years of making UNC-Chapel Hill a more digitally inclusive campus. Since its creation in 2019, the office has made significant strides in policy, education and culture around digital accessibility at Carolina. Here’s a look back at the origins and timeline of UNC’s Digital Accessibility Office (DAO) and you can dive deeper with these 5 fun facts about the DAO.

On May 15, Sakai entered restricted access and all Sakai sites were unpublished. Now, Sakai site access is limited to site owners, except for temporary access granted to students with incomplete grades. Sakai will remain in this restricted access state, allowing site owners to review and retrieve content, until the system is decommissioned in 2026.

This completes the transition to Canvas and streamlines the learning experience for instructors and students.

The Carolina Gaming Arena got a major tech upgrade, thanks to a partnership with Lenovo. The ResNET team spent early January unboxing and installing 36 new Lenovo Legion T7 gaming desktops and getting the arena ready for the students.

The space has 36 gaming desktops, three gaming consoles, room for spectators and multiple spaces to game.

On February 20, ITS expanded access to Copilot with Data Protection, Microsoft’s enterprise generative AI tool. All students, faculty and staff at UNC can use the institutionally scoped chatbot and productivity assistant.

Copilot with Data Protection is a more secure alternative to consumer-oriented generative AI services like ChatGPT, Google Bard or the non-enterprise version of Copilot.

The UNC-Guest Wi-Fi network is now available in every campus building. Previously, UNC-Guest was available in select locations, usually deployed at the request of a department.

To prepare for the expansion of UNC-Guest, teams in ITS configured changes to campus’ guest Wi-Fi networks. These changes, which strengthen the security of University resources, include limiting access to some UNC websites from the guest networks.

ITS Educational Technologies introduced Microsoft OneDrive and Collaborations in Canvas this spring. The integration provides a seamless experience for users, enabling them to access, share and collaborate on files stored in OneDrive directly within the Canvas platform.

Teams from Educational Technologies and ITS Systems Administration tested the integration for six months before rolling it out to campus.

In December, the Information Security Office rolled out revamped annual training for IT administrators across the University.

The training is for more than 100 IT administrators across campus who are ultimately responsible for key systems and services. This includes systems administrators, client administrators, network administrators, web developers, web application developers and others.