What's New?

To our campus community,

UC Berkeley Google Hangouts accounts will be upgraded to Google Chat on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022. This is the last step in the upgrade process from Google Hangouts to Google Chat.

All expired accounts in Box will begin to be disabled on Sept. 14, 2022 as part of the Box lifecycle strategy and Service Level Agreement implemented earlier this year. Expired Box accounts occur when the account holder no longer has an affiliation with UC Berkeley. This means that customers may lose access to some content that has been shared with them by an expired account.

Hello One IT community,

Starting Aug. 1, 2022, anyone who wishes to use Adobe Creative Cloud will need to request a new license, valid for one year. On Aug. 14, 2022, the access period will end for all licenses that were generated before Aug. 1, 2022. In order to best support instruction and the daily work of our campus community, Berkeley IT is assessing Adobe software usage to better understand the demand for Adobe Creative Cloud.

What is changing?

On July 27, 2022, UC Berkeley staff, faculty, student-employee, affiliate, and SPA google accounts were provided Google Workspace for Education Plus Licenses. The primary purpose of this license distribution is to increase google account security. 

This license also provides google accounts access to additional features including:

• Google Meet attendance reports (sent via email)

Starting July 25, 2022, several enhancements will be made to the UC Berkeley Zoom Service. We hope these new features will improve your overall Zoom experience:

• Security changes - UC Berkeley Zoom accounts will now be able to disable the authentication requirements for meetings as long as a waiting room or passcode is enabled. These settings can be changed in your account settings.

On Thursday April 21, as part of the new Box lifecycle strategy and Service Level Agreement, the bConnected Team will be deploying a new tool for UC Berkeley’s Box customers called Collaborator Reports. The reports will be distributed monthly moving forward. These reports: 

Students who continue to have a need to use Adobe Creative Cloud software as part of their academic or co-curricular work, or employment at UC Berkeley, must request a license for the Spring 2022 semester via the license request form that will be available on the Adobe Software page starting Dec. 21, 2021.

On January 11, 2022 bConnected keys will be retired. Impacted users have been directly contacted. bConnected keys are most commonly used to "send-as" another email account in Gmail. In order to increase password security, on January 11, 2022 all login processes for Google accounts must occur through CalNet Authentication. Using a “bConnected Key” or password will no longer be an option. If you are using an email client, change the login method to Sign in with Google.

We want to share two key changes taking place to the UC Berkeley provided Box accounts on Oct. 27, 2021. 

Box Storage Limitations (Quotas) 

Starting Oct. 27, 2021, the following quotas will apply to Box accounts created before July 2020:

• Individual Accounts: 50GB 

• Special Purpose Accounts (SPAs): 500GB 

Zoom users can now add pronouns to their profile and choose when to share them during meetings and webinars. Learn more about adding and sharing your pronouns

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Below is a screenshot that illustrates the options for sharing pronouns in Zoom

On Monday, September 13, 2021, Google will apply a security update to select Google Drive files. This affects files that were uploaded prior to 2017 that are shared with a Google Drive shared link. Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms aren’t impacted by this security update.

Who is impacted?

• Owners and managers of affected files will be notified starting Monday, July 26. 

On Thursday June 10th, we will be enabling the “New UI” in our Box instance. This is a significantly refreshed version of the Box user interface, but it should still be largely familiar to Box users.

The major new feature of this release is called “Collections.” Box explains:

Today Google introduced a new storage policy that will eliminate the current unlimited storage option for education in July 2022. Because these changes are similar to those announced by Box last year, we will be taking a bigger picture look at the overall file storage and collaboration strategy for campus. Both Google and Box are funded as part of the Productivity Suite and any decisions about these service offerings will be a part of the ongoing governance conversation with campus partners.

Users are able to sign into the app using CalNet credentials. This will enable quick access to tools like the Daily Symptom Screener, Berkeley Moves, booking a testing appointment, and other tools to navigate the pandemic safely whether you are on campus or off campus. There are multiple options for personas including: Student, Staff and Faculty, and Visitor or Friend Students will now have a Wellness and Aid & Assistance page. The testing pages have been updated.

Last March, Google provided free access to advanced features in Google Meet such as increased participants, live streaming, and recording, in response to COVID-19. These advanced video-conferencing capabilities will be removed from bConnected accounts on Thursday, January 7, 2021.