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March 30, 2016

Run Advertised Programs -> Software Center

The Managed Workstation Service is upgrading the software we use to deploy applications to managed workstations.  What and When Beginning April 5th through April 19th, we will be migrating all managed workstations to a new management infrastructure which provides improved capabilities.   Most of the improvements won’t be visible, however, this will change how you install additional applications on your computer.  A new “Software Center” will replace ‘Run Advertised Programs’. While Software Center is functionally similar to ‘Run Advertised Programs’, the Software Center provides a better user experience and is more fully integrated into Windows 10.  The link in the More...

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March 21, 2016

Managed Workstation Newsletter (March 2016)

Welcome to the semi-annual Managed Workstation service newsletter, which brings you valuable updates and information to help you make the most of our services. New Capabilities and Improvements Windows 10 Self-service Upgrade: In January, we released a self-service mechanism that allows users to upgrade their Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 computer to Windows 10. More info here.   This has been an overwhelming success, with over 20% of Managed Workstations having already made the switch to Windows 10. Customers running Windows 8 or 8.1 should strongly consider upgrading to Windows 10 as we have reduced the support capabilities provided to those operating...

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March 16, 2016

Managed Workstation Group Management Changes

The Managed Workstation service will no longer make group membership changes on your behalf.   What and When: On Friday, March 11th, we changed our position on whether we’ll manage your group memberships. We no longer provide that assistance.   What you need to do: No immediate action is required on your part. This notice is advisory so you know that if you request a change to one of the groups which currently only we can manage, we will transfer management of that group to you.   More info: In the far past, the service design for Nebula file services...

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March 15, 2016

Managed Workstation service catalog update

A change to our service catalog entry occurred.  What and When: On Friday, March 11th an updated service catalog entry was published at https://it.uw.edu/service/managed-workstation-services/   What you need to do: Nothing. This is purely an advisory to you that we’ve updated the catalog entry that describes the service, so you aren’t caught off-guard.    More info: This update consisted of a couple minor updates: -We updated the name used for the service to be more consistent: Managed Workstation Services -We removed one of the optional service options at additional cost: group management  This last item needs more explanation, and we’ll...

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March 15, 2016

Windows 10 Upgrade

The Managed Desktop service has a self-service capability to upgrade your Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 computer to Windows 10.   What and When: We’ve released documentation and will shortly release a desktop shortcut which enables customers to perform an upgrade to Windows 10.   This allows users to upgrade their computer to Windows 10 at a time of their choice without intervention by someone else, similar to how users can choose to install software packages on their computers.   We will be sending a notice to all Managed Desktop users about this new capability because their desktop will noticeably...

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March 9, 2016

Setting Up a Managed Workstation & Lite Touch

The Managed Workstation service has revised and added documentation for the commonly recurring task of setting up a managed workstation, including new documentation for a capability we provide that you may not be familiar with.   What and When: There are two events in this notification: Notification of new documentation for a capability we believe should have been documented previously. Notification that there are a few things changing about that capability.   New documentation: We’ve renamed the ‘Hardware and Repair’ document at https://it.uw.edu/wares/nebula/hardware-2/ to be ‘Setting Up a Managed Workstation’ to make it more clear that this documentation is where...

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January 6, 2016

Office 2016

Office 2016 Office 2016 is now available to install through Run Advertised Programs. To install Office 2016, you can follow these instructions. Adding software from Nebula

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January 6, 2016

IE Browser Support

Browser support changes will be coming on 1/12/2016. Microsoft will drop support for older versions of Internet Explorer, leaving IE11 as the only supported version of Internet Explorer.  Go to the OS and Browser Support page for information.

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December 24, 2015

Undesired H: Drive Purge

H: drive deletions coming for those without departmental eligibility groups Current staff members who are not in your department’s eligibility group will have their home directory (H:drive) deleted on 1/15/2015. Please verify that all of your staff members have been added to the correct eligibility group before that date. More info: Last summer we revealed that there were a significant number of Nebula home directories which we believed were undesired, primarily associated with individuals who had long since stopped having an association with the university. That was primarily because the Managed Workstation service didn't have an active mechanism to capture when individuals...

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December 22, 2015

Nebula to disable SSLv3

Nebula will disable SSLv3 on Nebula workstations and servers which still have it enabled.   What and When: On Tuesday, January 5th, 2016, Nebula will configure managed desktops and its servers to no longer permit SSLv3.   SSLv3 is broadly used to encrypt sessions, but it is also very old and now considered insecure. Disabling SSLv3 should have little to no impact because there is broad support for TLS and no obvious impact on the user experience to using TLS instead of SSLv3. While the most secure option should be chosen when a client connects to a server, there are...

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