On Friday, we sent a tech alert to Faculty and Staff regarding our Code42 data backup solution. The alert mentioned that we are sending an email to anyone that has not had a successful data backup for 5 consecutive days. Although the email is from “Code42 Enterprise <noreply@code42.com.>”, the message is legitimate and sent on behalf of Computing Services.

Our previous alert directed users to our extensive Code42 user guide, causing some members of our community to request more streamlined reference material. In response to this input, we created a new tutorial, which shows a sample notification and explains the process to resolve the issue. The tutorial can be accessed using the link below:

Code42 – Backup Email Alert

If you have any additional questions, please contact our University Technical Assistance Center at (973)-443-8822.

As part of the Unified Communications system’s reporting functionality, we have been monitoring a significant number of FDU phone extensions with a large and growing number of unchecked voicemail messages.  Although many of us are off campus at the moment, there is still a simple process to review voicemail messages. 

For those using Cisco Jabber, voicemail messages are available by clicking the voicemail icon on the left pane of the application. Without Jabber, users have the ability to access voicemail by calling into one of the following campus specific phone numbers and providing your ID (4 digit extension) and your PIN number followed by the # sign.

• Florham Campus: (973)-443-8100
• Metropolitan Campus: (201)-692-7600
• Vancouver Campus: (604)-648-4485

To learn how to initially set up your voicemail and for additional information about checking voicemail from on and off campus, please visit the following tutorial:

Cisco Unified Communications Voice Mail Features

We hope that tools like Unified Communications make it easy for Faculty and Staff to support our community even when we are unable to be physically present on campus. If you have any questions, please contact our University Technical Assistance Center at (973)-443-8822.

In November, we introduced Code42, our new data backup solution for faculty and staff members with University owned computers. Code42 backups occur on a daily basis as a background process. While the backup process has been an overwhelming success, from time to time an anomaly might prevent Code42 from doing its job. For example, this can occur on occasion when a PC is having issues connecting to the FDU domain. Starting on Monday May 10^th, we will be sending out an email message to anyone that has not had a successful backup for 5 consecutive days. Although the email will be sent from “Code42 Enterprise <noreply@code42.com.>”, rest assured that the message is legitimate and is being sent on behalf of Computing Services. 

Our Code 42 Tutorial, Section 4: Part 1, explains the simple steps to manually start your Code 42 backup. Running Code42 will not in any way interfere with your computer’s operation. If you have any additional questions, please contact our University Technical Assistance Center at (973)-443-8822.

On Friday May 21st at 8PM EDT, USAN will be will be performing network Edge upgrades. This work will be conducted throughout the evening and our expectation is that it will conclude by 3AM EDT on Saturday morning. 

For the duration of this maintenance period, all users on the Metropolitan and Florham campuses will experience a full outage of wired and wireless internet service. This includes access to the wired and wireless internet, as well as access to New Jersey based FDU resources such as network drives, online grading, Office365.fdu.edu, VPN, and Blackboard. 

Users on the Vancouver campus and off campus will be unable to access New Jersey based FDU resources.

We understand the inconvenience that network downtime can cause for our community. As always, we attempt to schedule this work at times that will be minimally intrusive for the majority of our users.  Thank you for your understanding and please reach out to our Technical Assistance Center at (973)-443-8822 if you have any questions.

We have updated our it.fdu.edu article on detecting phishing scams to include more recent scamming trends and helpful hints. By re-visiting this page, you will learn about the commonalities between many of the most popular phishing attacks and how to proceed if you have replied to one. The new article is located at Spot A Phishing Scam.

University Systems and Networking is always fine tuning our email system’s rules to ensure that as many phishing email scams as possible are blocked before they reach our community. Despite our best efforts, a limited number of phishing emails will always make it through our defenses and arrive to your Inbox. Once this happens, we rely on the an educated and aware community to act as our final line of defense. 

We strongly recommend viewing this page and familiarizing yourself with the information provided. Thank you for your continued vigilance. If you have any questions, please contact the University Technical Assistance Center at (973)-443-8822.

This evening, between the hours of 11PM EDT and approximately midnight EDT, USAN will be performing an upgrade of the FDU VPN software. Our expectation is that this will not be user impacting. In the unlikely event that you experience a service disruption, please contact our University Technical Assistance Center at (973) 443-8822. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Last fall, University Systems and Networking began work on an ambitious plan to modernize the aging wireless infrastructure on our New Jersey campuses.  The components of our existing wireless network are all between 8 and 13 years old, and a host of significant technological advances have occurred in that time. During this project, we will be upgrading all of the Access Points (AP’s) throughout each Residence Hall, Academic and Administrative building and improving our network coverage by adding additional AP’s and relocating AP’s where required.  The end result will be a ubiquitous wireless network utilizing the most current technology to increase the density, reliability and throughput of FDU-Secure for our New Jersey community.

The initial phase of this project, which consisted of a field study where we walked and mapped every square inch of the Florham and Metropolitan campuses is now complete. We are now ready to begin the massive undertaking of rewiring each area on the Metropolitan and Florham campuses which requires updated cables for our new access points. Starting on May 3^rd, we will begin working our way through campus, building by building, beginning with our Residence Halls. Although this phase will not impact wireless access, our team and vendor’s presence running cables may present a minor intrusion upon certain work spaces. For that reason, we will send an alert with our complete schedule, as a courtesy, as soon as it is finalized. 

Subsequent phases will include installing and connecting the new AP’s, bringing the new network on line, and removing the old AP’s. Our expectation is that our new network equipment will be up and running late in the spring of 2022.  As with all of our major deployments, we plan to keep the University informed of our progress.

We are pleased to announce a major enhancement to our Office 365 platform. Effective immediately, distribution groups, formerly known as mailing lists, can be directly managed by the group owner. Simple managerial functions such as adding and removing members, which would previous require creating a UTAC ticket, can now be completed in a few simple steps.

While USAN has spent much of the last year bringing new and exciting tools to our community, we are also eager to provide continued improvement to our existing platforms such as Office365.  To view our tutorial explaining how to use this new management tool, visit: 

Managing Distribution Groups in Office 365

If you believe that your department could benefit from a distribution group, please fill out the Distribution Group/Shared Mailbox Request Form available at forms.fdu.edu. If you require any assistance with distribution groups or with group management, please call the University Technical Assistance Center at (973)-443-8822.

Fairleigh Dickinson offers a diverse and constantly expanding array of IT tools and technologies to our community. In order to fully unlock the benefits of these offerings, we are pleased to introduce the Lunch and Learn Series. With Lunch and Learn, or perhaps Brunch and Learn for our colleagues in Vancouver, we will provide an interactive and personalized group training session for FDU faculty, staff, and educators. 

This training series was developed by our Director of Systems, Christopher Robley and will be moderated by IT Specialist, Coralia Palacios from our Vancouver campus. All topics will be geared towards the specific needs of the FDU Community and will be taught by subject matter experts. 

We are very excited to announce our first Lunch and Learn on the topic of Microsoft Teams for Education.  The session, taught by Microsoft training professionals, will include instruction on how to create and use Class Teams; collaborate efficiently with internal colleagues and external partners through chat, calls, and meetings; and customize Teams with settings, apps, and advanced capabilities.

Our Microsoft Teams training will occur on Thursday, April 29^th at 1PM ET and will help you to:

• Learn the core elements of Microsoft Teams for Education
• Understand how to use Class teams to create collaborative learning environments
• Explore how to create and manage virtual class meetings and live events
• Learn how assignments can be created, graded, and returned to students in Teams
• Discover how to streamline collaboration with internal colleagues and external partners 
• Gain an introduction to how to tailor Teams to the needs of your institution

All skill levels are welcomed and appreciated. While these training sessions are open to all FDU faculty, staff, and educators, advance registration is required. Whether you are looking for a basic understanding of Microsoft Teams or you are a regular Teams user looking for some neat new tricks, we invite you to register below.

Join us on Thursday, April 29 | 1:00PM ET for a live training featuring Microsoft Teams for Education.

Register Now

If you have any questions regarding the series or if you would like to suggest a topic for a future training session, please contact Christopher and Coralia at fdulearning@fdu.edu.

As with all email domains, FDU.EDU receives a myriad of phishing attempts and many of them are quite similar in nature. The most common variant is the “gift card scam” in which a scammer claims to be an FDU employee and asks you to purchase gift cards on their behalf. Although these messages claim to be from FDU employees, they generally come from Gmail accounts and as such are prepended with the [External] tag.  They usually begin with an innocuous introductory question like “Are you Free?” and many contain a subject line of “[External] Are you available?”.  Although our domain has received some fairly convincing scams over the years,  this scam usually contains enough red flags to be detectable by a majority of people.  

If you get a phishing email, please click ‘Report Message’ in Outlook.  This is the most effective way to make both USAN and Microsoft aware of a phishing attempt.  Email sent directly to members of USAN, while appreciated, is less effective than simply using the reporting tool.

Our organization is constantly adjusting email rules to stop as many attempts as possible while not restricting legitimate external emails from being delivered. Some phishing emails will always make it through the system and we are counting on the vigilance of an educated and aware community to act as our final line of defense. Please take an extra second to consider all of the common hallmarks of a phishing attempt that we have highlighted in our Tech Alerts over the years.  

For more information on reporting a phishing scam, please visit: 

Reporting Phishing or Junk Emails

Thank you for your attention to this matter.