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July 18th, 2007: Oracle Calendar Upgrade Postponed

Please note that the Oracle Calendar upgrade scheduled for July 19th - 24th has been postponed. The migration will NOT occur prior to the start of the Fall semester for both technical and operational reasons. For more information, please visit http://brickyard.ncsu.edu/migration/ or contact the NC State Help Desk at help@ncsu.edu or 515-HELP(4357).

December 20, 2006: Oracle Calendar Maintenance Schedule

Starting in January 2007, ITD will begin performing regular monthly maintenance on the Oracle Calendar (Brickyard) system. These maintenance windows will be the first Friday of each month from 6:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m. the following Saturday morning. The first of these will occur on: Friday January 5th 2007. Calendar maintenance reminders will be placed on Sysnews (http://sysnews.ncsu.edu/) in the future.

November 1, 2006: Oracle Calendar Service outage scheduled for November 5th, 2006

Starting Saturday, November 4th at 10 p.m. thru Sunday, November 5th at 6 a.m., the Oracle Calendar system will go offline for maintenance. Estimated time for completion is November 5th at 6 a.m. During this time, the Oracle Calendar system will not be available. Likewise the Webcal (http://webcal.ncsu.edu/) and any other services which require the Oracle Calendar scheduling engine will also not be available.

October 2006 - Update to the Oracle Calendar Outlook Connector

If you use Outlook and synch it with Oracle calendar, we've updated the Oracle Calendar Outlook Connector to version 10.1.3.0.4 in the download section (http://brickyard.ncsu.edu/downloads.php). This update was provided to address several client issues encountered and to provide extended date range views for the calendar.

Things this client provides over the old client:

  • Support for recognizing unique services within a profile [bug 5354921]
  • POP mail server support
  • Multiple options for configuring automatic updates of offline folders
  • Ability to install automatic updates from the About dialog box or from a new system tray icon notifying you when updates are available
  • New system tray icon providing server status information
  • Improved support for third-party products working with Outlook
  • Additional support for features available in Outlook with Microsoft Exchange
  • Option to back up your personal folders before resetting them
  • Interactive progress bar for enhanced user feedback
  • Ability to send and receive messages while you are working offline
  • Ability to customize the display range for your Calendar folders
  • Support for attaching linked and embedded objects into messages
  • Ability to expand distribution lists in e-mails and meeting requests
  • Support for attaching and forwarding any Outlook data file types
  • Support for the automatic preview of messages
  • Ability to cancel opening large messages
  • Ability to preserve the format of e-mails sent as rich text
  • Improved interface navigability for configuring options

Note: The following are the Outlooks supported as of this version:

  • Microsoft Outlook 2000 (with Service Pack 3)
  • Microsoft Outlook 2002 (with Service Pack 3)
  • Microsoft Outlook 2003 (with Service Pack 3)

August 2006 - Brickyard Update

ITD continues its work on rolling out the 10g server for Oracle calendar. While we were not able to meet our goal of rolling out 10g for all of the campus community by the start of school, we are working towards a mid-semester roll out. If you need a calendar account created, please contact the NC State Help Desk with this request; we will need your Unity ID to create an account.

Questions should be directed to: itd_calendar@remedy.ncsu.edu or contact the Help Desk: help@ncsu.edu; 919-515-4357.

March 2006 - Brickyard Calendar Update

We are rolling out the 10g clients. When you have a Brickyard Oracle Calendar account, this updated local client would be installed on your machine and works with Brickyard Oracle Calendar version 9, which we have now, and will work with version 10g in the future. You may continue to use version 9 for now if you choose.
As a warning note, MacOS 9 has been discontinued. Clients for that OS release are no longer being supported or released. If you have MacOS 9, then you will not have a native calendar client past the 9.0.4.2 series.

January 2006 - Brickyard Calendar Update

Progress towards implementing the Brickyard Oracle Calendar for campus continues at a steady pace. Currently work on the upgrade from version 9 to version 10g is in progress. (Delivery of version 10g is critical to the successful whole campus implementation of Oracle Calendar.) Simultaneously, work to test and stabilize the backup procedure is occurring.
Meanwhile, Oracle has released another Critical Patch Update on January 17th to address security. This critical patch must be installed and subsequent testing needs to occur. http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/security/alerts.htm#CriticalPatchUpdates

November 18th - Brickyard Calendar Update

Oracle released a Critical Patch Update with a pre-installation note for the Oracle Collaboration Suite (OCS) in October. The Critical Patch Upgrade was for the oracle databases that support the OCS however, the patch was not functional with OCS. Oracle made the appropriate modifications to the patch and now ITD is in the process of patching the infrastructure. When this process is completed, it will be possible to start loading user data. This data will need to be normalized. In order to accomplish this, an update to the LDAP (directory) information is required. An improved directory interface was created to accommodate this process.
The next step is for current calendar users to check the accuracy of their directory information here: https://ssl.ncsu.edu/directory/updatelisting.php . Current calendar users will be receiving a separate email with instructions next week.
In the mean time, instructional information has been created and is ready for the rollout. A 60-minute Expert Series is planned to provide tips, hints and procedures. Training classes have also been updated in preparation for the spring. http://brickyard.ncsu.edu/training will contain the most up-to-date information on training available. We will continue to update the webpage brickyard.ncsu.edu and send updates to the brickyard list.

Thank you.

September 15th - Update on Brickyard Calendar Roll Out to Campus

Deployment, to the entire NC State campus, is currently waiting for the technical problem of LDAP replication to be fixed by Oracle. NC State has submitted a Technical Assistance Request (TAR) to Oracle and their technical support personnel are currently working to resolve the replication issue. Until Oracle gets back to us with a solution, it is impossible to reliably offer a new date for roll out. Once the TAR has been resolved however, we feel that the remaining work will move along quickly. Confidence levels are high that this final hurdle will be the last troublesome component. In the mean time, those currently owning calendar accounts may continue to use their calendar as usual. We will keep you up to date through the brickyard_news mailing list and with updates on the brickyard.ncsu.edu web page.

Thank you for your continued patience.

September 7th - Update on Target Day for Roll Out

Target date for the roll out for the updated Brickyard Calendar continues to be Mid-September. All calendar users who currently have an account may continue with business as usual. When the roll out is one week away, current calendar users will receive an email with instructions for those who use the local client. Users of the web client: http://webcal.ncsu.edu will not need to make any changes.

August 11th, 2005 - Notice of delay of Brickyard Oracle Calendar Roll Out

As you know, the Brickyard Oracle Calendar will be rolled out this fall and had a target date of August 17th. This date has changed. Before the service can be expanded to the campus community, delivery of a reliable, secure and robust service requires ITD to take the next several weeks to properly address remaining technical issues.

Students -
If you are a student, your account will still be automatically generated when the service is rolled out. Check the brickyard.ncsu.edu web page for updates. You will also receive updates if you subscribe to the brickyard_news listserv.

Current Oracle Calendar Users -
If you are a current Oracle Calendar account holder, you should continue to use your calendar account as you currently do. You will receive additional information via email as we plan the migration of your account to the new service.

Faculty -
If you are a faculty member who has already planned your fall courses to include the use of the Brickyard Oracle Calendar, please contact the NC State University Help Desk for assistance. (515-HELP or email help@ncsu.edu)

We apologize for this necessary delay and you can be assured we are working on delivering this great service as soon as possible. Review announcement to Sysnews, including technical details.

For more information on the upgrade: