Register for easy BlazerID password reset
Having a phone or email address registered with the UAB eNotify service gives users a quick way to reset a forgotten BlazerID password — without having to wait for a follow-up call from AskIT.
Password reset codes can be sent as alerts via text message, voice call or email. The service is also used to deliver Oracle RedFlag alerts to UAB employees when direct deposit, tax withholding or personal information is updated via Oracle Self Service.
Outside of the password change process, B-Alert and eNotify registrations can be updated at any time through the uab.edu/enotify site.
Beginning May 1, all users will be required to sign up for eNotify password reset alerts, and this will be enforced during password changes as needed. Until May 1, sign-up is optional but highly recommended.
"This will free IT staff from a large percentage of time that is now occupied with password resets," Deputy CIO Robert Howard said. "You can get your password reset more quickly, and we can do the work that is most important to the university."
Here is a sample screenshot of the new form which will promot for B-Alert/eNotify registration:
New self-service portal to launch next week
When the self-service portal launches, it will be accessed from the “Need help? AskIT” button on the front page of the UAB IT web site at uab.edu/it.
The current AskIT page, the A to Z list of IT solutions and the FAQs will be replaced with the portal. In the new portal, the service listings will be accessed through the service catalog (searchable by category or constituent group and through an A to Z list), and the FAQs will be located within an expanded knowledge base that also has new articles about a variety of software and hardware items.
Users will need to log in with a BlazerID and password to access the service catalog and knowledge base and to report problems with services. Users will be able to check the status of their requests and problem tickets within the new portal.
The interface is intuitive, but details about how to use the site will be posted when the new portal launches. The new self-service site is a work in progress, and enhancements and changes are anticipated post go-live.
Recommended Computer Specs for Students
2017-2018 UAB IT Recommendations
Apple/Mac: Laptop
MINIMUM
CPU: Intel i5 Processor
RAM (Memory): 8GB
Hard Disk: 128GB SSD
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.10
Networking: 802.11n/ac
RECOMMENDED
CPU: Intel i5 Processor or Higher
RAM(Memory): 8GB or Higher
Hard Disk: 256GB SSD or Larger
Operating System: Mac OS 10.11
Networking: 802.11n/ac
Apple/Mac: Desktop
MINIMUM
CPU: Intel i5 Processor
RAM (Memory): 8GB
Hard Disk: 500GB 5400 rpm Serial ATA Drive
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.10
Networking: 802.11n/ac; 10/100/1000 LAN port
RECOMMENDED
CPU: Intel i5 Processor or Higher
RAM (Memory): 8GB or Higher
Hard Disk: 256GB SSD or Larger
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.11
Networking: 802.11n/ac; 10/100/1000 LAN port
Microsoft Windows PC: Laptop
MINIMUM
CPU: Intel i3 Processor
RAM (Memory): 4GB
Hard Disk 128GB SSD
Operating System: Windows 7
Networking: 802.11n/ac
RECOMMENDED
CPU: Intel i5 Processor or Higher
RAM (Memory): 8GB or Higher
Hard Disk: 256GB SSD or Larger
Operating System: Windows 10
Networking: 802.11n/ac
Microsoft Windows PC: Desktop
MINIMUM
CPU: Intel i5 Processor
RAM (Memory): 8GB
Hard Disk: 128GB SSD
Operating System: Windows 7
Networking: 10/100/1000 LAN port; 802.11n/ac
RECOMMENDED
CPU: Intel i5 Processor or Higher
RAM (Memory): 8GB or Higher
Hard Disk: 256GB SSD or Larger
Operating System: Windows 7 or Later
Networking: 10/100/1000 LAN port; 802.11n/ac
Prepare Your Student Computer for Use at UAB
Preparing Your Computer for Use at UAB |
| Incoming students are required to verify that their computers are up-to-date with the latest patches and antivirus software. This step must be completed prior to connecting to the UAB network using a wired Ethernet (in residence halls only) or wireless (Wi-Fi) connection. Please follow these steps to prepare your computer. When you have prepared your computer, click the link in Step 5 to verify that you have the correct settings. Step 1. Ensure that your computer is running a valid, licensed operating system. For students, UAB supports PCs with Windows XP with Service Pack 3, Windows Vista with Service Pack 2, Windows 7 with Service pack 1, and Windows 8. UAB also supports Macs with OS X 10.6 or later. (Note:Microsoft and UAB no longer supports Windows XP. This means you will not receive updates from Microsoft, which will make your computer vulnerable. Students can download Windows 7 and Windows 8 for free on the software website, www.uab.edu/it/students. Click on Microsoft Agreements and Products for more information. Step 2: For complete setup instructions for WiFi outside the residence halls, click here. A map of WiFi areas can be found here. Step 3. Check for updates that are available for your operating system. Windows operating systems can be updated by clicking on Start, clicking on All Programs, and then click Windows Update.   Mac OS X operating systems can be updated by clicking on the Apple icon in the Menu ribbon and choosing Software Update.  Step 4: Ensure that one of the antivirus applications that are listed below is installed. The antivirus programs below are free of charge. Contact the AskIT Help Desk at 205-996-5555 for assistance with antivirus software issues. Windows
|
ChemOffice Professional
ChemOffice Professional is a scientifically intelligent, integrated suite of personal productivity tools that enables scientists and researchers to capture, store, retrieve and share data and information on compounds, reactions, materials and their properties. ChemOffice Professional helps chemists and biologists to efficiently keep track of their work, visualize and gain a deeper understanding of their results and correlate biological activity with chemical structures. ChemOffice Professional is available to UAB students, faculty and staff through a site license arranged by the College of Arts & Sciences. Visit Account Verification Account Verification PerkinElmer Informatics User Account Download Software Activate your software PerkinElmer Informatics User Account
http://sitelicense.cambridgesoft.com/sitelicense.cfm?sid=2085
Enter valid institution email address.
Click "Continue" on account verification screen.
For technical questions and support, click here.
For support, contact Katherine D.V. Hughes at kdvhughes@uab.edu or Bradford Bondurant at brafo88@uab.edu.
Mathematica
Mathematica is a software package used for communicating scientific ideas in a variety of ways, whether this is visualization of a concept in an intro-level course, or creating a simulation of a new idea related to research.
Mathematica is available for free to UAB faculty, staff and students.
How to Get Mathematica
Campus machines
Follow the directions below to download software from Wolfram and request the appropriate activation key. If you do not have administrator access to your machine, please contact your IT support for assistance.
- Create an account (New users only):
- Go to user.wolfram.com and click "Create Account"
- Fill out form using a @uab.edu email, and click "Create Wolfram ID"
- Check your email and click the link to validate your Wolfram ID
- Request the download and key:
- Fill out this form to request an Activation Key
- Click the "Product Summary page" link to access your license
- Click "Get Downloads" and select "Download" next to your platform
- Run the installer on your machine, and enter Activation Key at prompt
Computer labs
- UAB College of Arts & Sciences, contact IT at: 205-975-4500, casit@uab.edu, www.uab.edu/casit
- All other labs, contact AskIT at: 205-996-5555, askit@uab.edu, www.uab.edu/askit
Faculty and staff personally-owned machines
Fill out this form to request a home-use license from Wolfram.
Student personally-owned machines
Follow the directions below to download from the Wolfram User Portal.
- Create an account (New users only):
- Go to user.wolfram.com and click "Create Account"
- Fill out form using a @uab.edu email, and click "Create Wolfram ID"
- Check your email and click the link to validate your Wolfram ID
- Request the download and key:
- Fill out this form to request an Activation Key
- Click the "Product Summary page" link to access your license
- Click "Get Downloads" and select "Download" next to your platform
- Run the installer on your machine, and enter Activation Key at prompt
Are you interested in putting Mathematica elsewhere? Please let IT or Troy Schaudt at Wolfram Research know.
Mathematica Tutorials
The first two tutorials are excellent for new users, and can be assigned to students as homework to learn Mathematica outside of class time.
Follow along in Mathematica as you watch this multi-part screencast that teaches you the basics—how to create your first notebook, calculations, visualizations, interactive examples, and more.
Provides examples to help you get started with new functionality in Mathematica 10, including machine learning, computational geometry, geographic computation, and device connectivity.
Access step-by-step instructions ranging from how to create animations to basic syntax information.
Search Wolfram's large collection of materials for example calculations or tutorials in your field of interest.
Teaching with Mathematica
Mathematica offers an interactive classroom experience that helps students explore and grasp concepts, plus gives faculty the tools they need to easily create supporting course materials, assignments, and presentations.
Resources for Educators
- Mathematica for Teaching and Education—Free video course
Learn how to make your classroom dynamic with interactive models, explore computation and visualization capabilities in Mathematica that make it useful for teaching practically any subject at any level, and get best-practice suggestions for course integration.
- How To Create a Lecture Slideshow—Video tutorial
Learn how to create a slideshow for class that shows a mixture of graphics, calculations, and nicely formatted text, with live calculations or animations.
Download pre-built, open-code examples from a daily-growing collection of interactive visualizations, spanning a remarkable range of topics.
Access on-demand and live courses on Mathematica, SystemModeler, and other Wolfram technologies.
Research with Mathematica
Rather than requiring different toolkits for different jobs, Mathematica integrates the world's largest collection of algorithms, high-performance computing capabilities, and a powerful visualization engine in one coherent system, making it ideal for academic research in just about any discipline.
Resources for researchers
- Mathematica for University Research—Free video course
Explore Mathematica's high-level and multi-paradigm programming language, support for parallel computing and GPU architectures, built-in functionality for specialized application areas, and multiple publishing and deployment options for sharing your work.
- Utilizing HPC and Grid Computing—Free video course
Learn how to create programs that take advantage of multicore machines or available clusters.
Learn what areas of Mathematica are useful for specific fields.
Comparison between Mathematica and Matlab
In general, Mathematica is a high-level complete system, while MatLab is a low-level core with specialist toolboxes. Most engineering colleges at research universities maintain both products, including UAB. Because MatLab has separate toolboxes, each toolbox can only assume the functionality of the basic, core system; Mathematica is an all-in-one software which is interconnected nicely. For example, in Mathematica, purely numeric commands can perform symbolic pre-processing for richer and more accurate results, which is not possible in MatLab because of the design. This overall concept applies to the vast majority of Mathematica’s commands when compared to MatLab.
Engineers and other groups on campus value the following functionality, which is unique to Mathematica:
- Very sophisticated symbolic algorithms for closed-form solutions to problems
- Much easier to create mouse-driven interfaces to visualize variations in equations or simulations,
- The highest quality and most accurate graphics engine available for symbolic and numeric graphics,
- Support for both machine precision and arbitrary precision,
- Automatic switching between algorithms for best results,
- Solves any order ODE (rather than only first-order in MatLab),
- Integration for any n-dimensions (rather than only 3 in MatLab),
- Wolfram Language included to program in procedural, functional, object-oriented, or rule-based style makes language easier to learn (rather than procedural only in MatLab),
- Mathematica’s high-level language requires less code to develop algorithms or ideas than MatLab
- Text and equation typesetting document interface with slideshow mode (not available in MatLab),
- Load-on-demand data sets to use in addition to importing a wide variety of types of data
- IDE based on Eclipse, which researchers more commonly know and work with (rather than MatLab’s home-grown IDE).
- Import of MatLab data sets supported for high-quality rendering of MatLab results in Mathematica
To learn more about Matlab and access it, click here.
Support for Mathematica
Windows installation instructions
Mac OS X installation instructions
Linux installation instructions
Mathematica is available for free to UAB faculty, staff and students, thanks to funding from UAB IT.
For assistance with using the Mathematica software:
- Contact Troy Schaudt, Wolfram Research Inc., at 800-965-3726, ext. 5588, or by e-mail at troys@wolfram.com. Find support for Wolfram here.
- Find support for Wolfram here.
Key performance indicators
The KPI charts measure, for example, how tickets are submitted to AskIT, the kind of issues for which customers are seeking help, the length of time tickets are open and the scores from customer satisfaction surveys/feedback.
Setting goals, measuring the results, communicating to our customers and acting on these Key Performance Indicators are critical to UAB IT's becoming a more service-oriented organization.
KPI charts by month:
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
