MyUSI provides informational content through a mechanism called channels. In general, channels provide at-a-glance information with click-throughs to expanded content or Web resources. Channels are similar to the content modules that are aviable on sites such as Netscape.com and Yahoo.com.

Some typical channels that you may see include information like:

• How many appointments are on your calendar
• A preview of the first few messages in your email inbox
• A place to keep bookmarks that is accessible from any computer
• Links USI information
• Access to course schedules or administrative services

This usually happens to USI faculty and staff that have Outlook/Exchange accounts that are checked by myUSI. It usually happens after you have been prompted on your work computer to change your network password. This usually occurs every 60days.

When you change your network password, it also changes your Outlook/Exchange password at the same time. myUSI doesn’t pick up those changes automatically as the Outlook/Exchange email system is external from the myUSI system. Your Exchange account on the myUSI system has your previous password listed, which is no longer valid. You will have to change it to your new password manually.

To do this:

1. click on the e-mail icon in the upper right hand corner of the myUSI site once you log in.
2. You should get an error message similar to the following:
   • Warning:
     Couldn’t authenticate to mail server.
     Could not expand ‘Exchange’ because the system couldn’t authenticate to the mail server. Please enter your password into the dialog box you see.Click here to reload the message list
3. You should also see a pop-up dialog box that looks something like this:
   • Enter Password
     Could not connect to the Exchange account. This could be caused by a number of things such as an incorrect password, or the mail server could be down. If you feel the password may be incorrect, please enter the password and click o.k.
4. Now, type in your new Network/Outlook/Exchange password in the Password box.
5. Then click the OK button in the lower left corner.
6. If you DO NOT see an ENTER PASSWORD dialog box, you probably have a pop-up blocker enabled on your browser! You will need to either disable your pop-up blocker while using myUSI or you need to configure your pop-up blocker to ALLOW pop-ups for the usieagles.org domain. After disabling your pop-up blocker, try the previous steps again.

Your problem should now be fixed.You will have to repeat these steps whenever you change your Network/Outlook/Exchange password.

Other Possible Workarounds and Solutions:

One approach is to delete the email preview channel. Just click the x button and it won’t bother you anymore. You can still access your email from the e-mail icon. If you have to change your password, it will prompt you.

Another option is to remove your Outlook/Exchange access from myUSI. You can do this be deleting it from the Retrieve Other Email section under the e-mail applet’s options tab. Then your usieagles.org email account will show up in the preview. You can still get your Outlook/Exchange email online by going to https://emailnew.usi.edu.

The final option is to have us to set your myUSI email (usieagles.org) account as the default email. Your usieagles.org email account will then display in the channel and shouldn’t ever have an error. If you want to check your Outlook/Exchange email from within myUSI, you can click on the e-mail icon and then you can expand your Exchange account. If it gets an error, you will probably have to reset the password in the Retrieve Other Email section of the E-mail Options tab. If this is how you would like to proceed, let us know.

It probably depends on the tab that you are trying to modify. Some tabs allow you have more control than others. The myUSI tab, for instance, has a few channels that can not be deleted, but they can be moved around. Still other tabs have channels that can’t be deleted or moved around, and others still give you free reign to do as you please.

If you are most concerned about total custimization, the best option is to create a new tab and then add channels and columns as you see fit. You can ultimately create whatever suits you best. If you end up using this new tab primarily, just make it the default and it will be opened whenever you log in.

It is possible, but depends on a number of factors…

myUSI Groups:
All members of myUSI Groups may send email to other members of their Group using the Group tools email interface. Members can also post announcements that will appear in the Group tools interface and in the Personal Announcements channel on the myUSI tab.

Campus and Personal Targeted Announcements:
Targeted announcements appear in the Personal and Campus Announcement channels within the myUSI tab.

Campus Announcements will appear for all members of the myUSI portal, faculty, staff, students, and alumni.

Personal Announcements are targeted towards a specific subset of the myUSI population such as Freshmen, or Nursing Majors, or students, or faculty, or some combination. Those announcements will only appear in the Personal Announcements channel if the viewer is a member of the audience that was targeted.

Targeted Announcements can also be configured to only display for a set time period. As targeted announcements require fewer computing resources to process and don’t clutter up inboxes in a manner similar to SPAM, they are more likely to be approved.

All requests for Targeted Announcements should be sent to myusi@usi.edu

Mass Email:
MyUSI includes the ability to send mass email to members of the myUSI portal. Mass emails can be sent to either the entire myUSI population or a specific subset of themyUSI population.

As mass emails require greater computing resources to process and can clutter up inboxes in a manner similar to SPAM, they must be approved by the Director of the Computer Center, Wayne Bohm.

All requests for mass emails should be sent to wbohm@usi.edu

———-

Every request for Mass Emails and Targeted Announcements must include:

• The full text of the message as it is to appear on myUSI or be sent via email, including appropriate dates, times, and locations for the event(s)
  • NOTE: We don’t have the ability to send attachments of any kind. Email messages must be text only with no formatting.
• Information about the intended audience (all campus, students, faculty, students and faculty, freshmen, a specific major, etc.).
• Complete contact information as it is to appear in message which the audience may use in order to find further information.
• For Targeted Announcements that are to appear in the Campus Announcement (for all members of the myUSI portal) or Personal Announcement (for subsets of the MyUSI population) channels, please include start and end dates during which the announcement is to be displayed.

Note:
Do not create and use your own mass email lists in MyUSI as they may violate the Data Communications and Computer Use Policy.

The Academic Services channels that were on the default myUSI tab when you first logged into myUSI and under the School Services tab has been replaced with the Self Service tab.

This eliminates a click or two and is a bit more intuitive.

To find which books to buy, you can do the following:

1. Login to myUSI
2. Click the Self Service tab(or Academic Services channel)
3. Choose Student & Financial Aid
4. Click on Registration
5. Then choose Week at a Glance

You can also can go to Bookstore online to look books up for each class.

Here are a few tips and precautions that you can take to help protect your privacy while using the myUSI portal.

Passwords

Make sure to take extra precautions in order to protect your myUSI password. Do not share your password with anyone. In general, it is also safer if you do not write your password down or leave it in a visible or easily accessible place.

For added security, it is a good idea to change your password to a unique and difficult to guess password or phrase. You can do that by doing the following:

1. Login to myUSI
2. Click on the My Account link in the upper left of the page
3. Type in your current password
4. Type in your difficult to guess password. The longer the better, mixed case is even better, and a combination of letters, numbers and special characters is even better still
5. Retype your difficult to guess password to confirm it
6. Then, click the Save Changes button

Secret Questions

Your Secret Questions can be used to reset your password in the event you forget your current password and the myUSI Helpdesk (812-465-1070) is closed (after hours, weekends, and holidays). Five question and answer pairs are stored for you in the myUSI system. When you click the “Reset your password” link under the login section of the myUSI home page, you will be asked three of those questions and your password will be reset after successfully answering them (case and punctuation are important).

It is important to choose questions (there are defaults, but all questions can be changed) and answers that can only be answered by you. Questions that can be answered by anyone mean that anyone can reset your password.

Not a good situation.

You can configure your secret questions by doing the following:

1. Log in to myUSI
2. Click the School Services tab
3. Click the Change Your Secret Questions link in the School Resources channel
4. Make the changes to your questions and answers
5. Click the Save Changes button when you are done

Browser Security

Make sure to EXIT or QUIT all of your web browser sessions and close any open windows when you are finished using the myUSI web portal.

Computer Security

It is a sad fact that computers are under constant assault by viruses, worms, harmful bots, etc. To make sure that your information doesn’t fall prey to these, as a compromised computer is a serious threat to your privacy, it is important to keep your computer up to date with security patches available from your operating system provider (i.e. Microsoft, Apple, etc) and make use of properly configured firewalls and virus scanning software.