What was the objective?
The IT Department wanted to hear from the community about the various products and services offered to its customers—you! This covered everything from the mobile phones in your pocket, the applications, tools and software you use to conduct your research or run your day-to-day business operations and the laptops and desktops computers, to name just a few.
What have we done with your feedback?
Across the IT Department, many teams have analyzed the feedback provided and have planned service improvements to better fit your needs and requirements. Big changes are also coming to the IT Website, be on the lookout for new functions, features, and information as we continuously update and improve based off of your feedback. Below, are some of the major service improvements that have been completed and others with an estimated completion date:
| Anti-Virus– Live: Download free anti-virus software for your personal machines at antivirus.kaust.edu.sa.
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| NEW | BlackBoard Collaborate – August 2019: New enhancements to allow up to 500 users to communicate at once, up to 5 HD video callers at the same time, updated user interface, mobile friendly, and so much more. More trainings on Blackboard Collaborate will be announced on TheLENS soon!
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| Coming Soon | BlackBoard Ultra – Early 2020: Performance has already been improved with many existing issues resolved. Coming soon is an all new look and feel to BlackBoard to give you a better user experience, and an interface that is mobile friendly and much simpler and easier to use. Training for Blackboard Ultra will be announced soon.
You can download the Blackboard app on the Apple/ Android store to access all your course material (for students) and to add course content (for faculty) using your mobile device.
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| Coming Soon | Trainings for IT Systems & Applications – December 2019: A new feature is coming to the IT site to make it easier for Community members to find and register for upcoming trainings for IT-provisioned systems and applications. Currently, email announcements and LENS posts are sent out to the Community to alert about sessions. |
| NEW | Imagicle Phone Lock Application – Live: We have upgraded our phone lock software to give you more ways to interact with your desk phone. read more here. |
| NEW | IoT Connectivity – Live: KAUST Provides the Wireless IoT connectivity through LoRaWAN and KAUST-IoT WiFi Network. Learn more about this service here. |
| Coming Soon | MyAcademia – December 2019: An all new mobile application that will simplify your course registrations. Available on iOS. |
| NEW | Network Expansion – Live: We have expanded the wireless coverage to include South Beach. Later this year we will include bus stops around the residential areas. |
| NEW | Science DMZ – Live: A fast and secure way to transfer large scientific data sets between KAUST and other Institutes. |
| Coming Soon | Improved KAUST Portal – 2020: An enhanced look and feel, embedded search and mobile rendered services are coming soon to the KAUST Portal as we migrate to the cloud. If you’re new to KAUST, here’s some information on how to use the current KAUST Portal.
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| Coming Soon | IT Service Desk: By the end of 2019, the IT Service Desk will roll out a Virtual Assistant robot to assist with contacting the IT Department. In addition, keep an eye out for new automated service requests under the Self Services tab on the KAUST Portal.
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| Mobile Services: To access the Mobile Request form go to the “Self Service” tab of the Portal, and click on “Telecommunication Services”. | |
| NEW | Data Analytics and Business Intelligence (BI): KAUST IT offers tools for Data Analysis, visualization and publication for descriptive, diagnostic and predictive reporting. In addition, we offer Data Modeling services for your business needs. You may request these services via the IT Service Desk.
A new upgrade of the SAP BI Platform is taking place in September 2019. Introduction sessions and regular training sessions on BI Tools will be offered and announced to the KAUST community.
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| NEW | Upgraded Virtual Machines: All PI groups are granted access to an upgraded 32 cores and 128GB of RAM for research use. Access to these virtual resources is available as a self-service through the virtual platform’s management portal or by contacting the IT Service Desk.
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| NEW | OpenStack: Now running the latest Queens release. |
| Coming Soon | Canonical: By the end of the year OpenStack will be upgraded to latest version using Canonical’s professional services. |
| Coming Soon | Upgraded Connectivity: A project to provide better network performance while accessing centralized Virtual Machines. |
| Coming Soon | Kubernetes: Launch a Kubernetes cluster where you can run your containers. This cluster will also support GPU access enabling you to run ML workloads on it.
Learn more about Virtual Servers and Containers here.
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| Remote Scientific Workstations: Access to remote scientific workstations allows you to run all applications embedded on the system, e.g. latest RStudio. We deliver many development tools, communication software, and easy to use icons to start KAUST scientific applications.
You can run all the scientific applications delivered through environment modules, e.g. module load vasp. (We know there’s hardcore command line gurus out there.)
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| NEW | DataWaha: You can now access DataWaha and Shaheen resources over an upgraded fast network. Read more about the service; read more details about this service here.
You can request an account here.
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| NEW | NICE Deployment: We have deployed NICE (an AWS company) DCV 2017.4 to deliver latest & greatest experience. |
| NEW | Upgraded Servers: We have upgraded to 3 new servers with the latest Intel CPU, more than 500GB of memory and P40 GPU cards. |
| Coming Soon | More Hosts: We are adding 6 more hosts consisting of latest Intel CPU, 1TB of memory, and P40 GPU cards. |
| Coming Soon | Ubuntu 18.04: Update to Ubuntu 18.04 coming soon by the end of 2019. |
| Data Storage: We offer a wide range of data storage and backup capability, with provision to store any kind of data.
Archival capability to backup & store data for as long as you need and fast data sharing capability over the Science DMZ network, using tools similar to Google Drive and Dropbox.
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| NEW | OwnCloud: Upgraded EXRCSDrive Owncloud to allow both data upload and download. Earlier versions had only download facility. |
| Coming Soon | Globus: A newer version of Globus is planned which will allow both upload and download links. Eventually, DataWaha directory will be mounted on Globus allowing to share the data directly from DataWaha.
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| NEW | KAUST Connect Account Request: Now KAUST Proponents can submit account and email new/renewal request online for Service Providers, Research Park tenants, visiting faculty/researchers, and contractor workforce. The online form is accessible using https://kconnect.kaust.edu.sa.
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| NEW | KAUST SMS Request: This SMS service can help application send critical alerts to your mobile number. Please contact messagingservice@kaust.edu.sa to request for further details and demo. The SMS service can be submitted through online form available at https://smsrequest.kaust.edu.sa.
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| NEW | VPN Requests on Self-Service: Now KAUST proponents (Faculty and Staff) can submit new/renewal of external collaborator VPN request through Portal ‘Self-Service’. The external VPN account provides access to KAUST resources remotely to collaborators.
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| NEW | AirMedia Upgrade: All existing AirMedia devices have been upgraded to the newest hardware which means it is faster, more intuitive, and easier for you to connect and conduct your meeting. We have also extended coverage into the huddle rooms around KAUST.
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| Coming Soon | Classroom Room & Lecture Hall Upgrade: Video walls are coming to replace the old projectors in the lecture halls in Building 9. In addition, the classrooms will be upgraded to resolve issues with the new MacBooks that use USB-C.
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| Smart Printing: To get more information about Smart Printing preferences, please visit this link. |
Want to learn more?
Attend an awareness session!
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Have more questions?
Reach out to us at TalkToIT@kaust.edu.sa or visit the IT Walk-In support desk in the IT Building (14) from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. from Sunday to Thursday.
KAUST IT
it.kaust.edu.sa
We make IT happen!