Stanford University suspends operations, where feasible, during the winter holiday season, 5 p.m. Friday, December 19, 2014 through Friday, January 2, 2015. Accordingly, many University IT offices will close or provide limited support during winter closure. We will resume full support on Monday, January 5, 2015 at 8 a.m.
More information about service orders, support, and system outages is provided below.
NOTE: Monitoring and support for critical services will be maintained throughout winter closure.
University departments
NOTE: If you need to report a critical service outage or request an emergency repair during this time, please submit a HelpSU request or call 5-HELP (650-725-4357).
A small number of staff will be on hand to provide limited support to university offices that must remain open. These staff members will provide operator services, monitor and support critical applications, process high-priority service orders, and provide priority response to urgent HelpSU requests. You may experience longer-than-normal response times during this period. More details on some public-facing offices is included below.
Unless otherwise noted below, University IT offices will be closed in observance of Christmas and New Year’s Day, Wednesday, December 24, Thursday, December 25, and Thursday, January 1; however the 24/7 IT Operations Center will be staffed to respond to critical repair and systems issues.
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Service orders — telephone, mobile device, network, cable television, data center
Get your orders in early. The cut-off date for orders to be completed before winter closure is Monday, December 8, 2014. Requests received after that date will be processed on a best-effort basis before winter closure, but may not be processed until the university re-opens on January 5. Orders received during winter closure will not be processed until after January 5.
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IT Service Desk (aka Help Desk)
The IT Service Desk will be open, but with fewer staff and reduced hours. Help Desk staff will be available between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on all non-holidays. Requests submitted through HelpSU will be monitored, with priority response given to urgent requests related to system outages. Responses to all other HelpSU requests will be handled as quickly as possible, but you may experience longer-than-normal response times until we return to full staffing levels on January 5, 2015.
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Telephone operator services
Telephone operator services will continue uninterrupted during winter closure, including on the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays. You may call 650-723-2300 (or 0 from a campus phone) as usual to receive Stanford directory assistance service.
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ID Card Office and building access
The Stanford ID Card Office in Forsythe Hall is closed throughout winter closure. During the winter closure period, building access through Stanford’s door access system (i.e., Lenel) is preprogrammed to require card access during all hours. Building managers can alter that schedule as they choose.
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Mobile device services
Support for Stanford mobile devices, including device activation, international plan changes, and technical support, will continue during winter closure through our 5-HELP (650-725-4357) support line. For ordering information, see Service orders above.
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Administrative/Business Applications
All production applications supported by the Administrative Systems unit of University IT will continue to be available during the winter closure. This includes Axess, PeopleSoft (Student Administration, HR, STARS), all Oracle applications (iProcurement, iOU, PCard, iJournals, etc.), EAM (Enterprise Asset Management), Gift Transmittals, Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE) and ReportMart3, Registry web applications, middleware, and integration services (StanfordYou, SUNetID, Accounts application, Authority Manager, etc.), and Stanford Email and Calendar. Staff will monitor applications to ensure they remain running, but no upgrades, enhancements, or non-emergency changes will be made. Help Desk assistance will be available on a limited basis for urgent issues only. Users requiring assistance during this period should submit a HelpSU ticket. Response times may be longer than normal.
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Networking and Firewall Rule Requests
Networking staff will NOT be available to provide assistance on projects OR to implement firewalls rules during winter closure. As always, the network and all network devices will be monitored 24x7 and engineers will address all production network outages and issues. During Stanford's winter closure, the Backbone Networking team will have daily Network Maintenance Windows from 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. in order to make minor changes improve the network's infrastructure. Please be aware that you may experience intermittent disruptions in service during these hours.
In order to ensure that your firewall rules will be completed prior to the winter closure, please have all firewall rule requests approved no later than 5 p.m. on Thursday, December 18th. Firewall rule requests submitted after that time will not be processed until the week of January 5, 2015.
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Research Computing Services (including Farmshare)
The Stanford Research Computing Center (SRCC) administers a variety of servers and services for the research community, including Farmshare and the Stanford Research Computing Facility (SRCF) at SLAC. During winter closure, we will make a best effort to respond to total system, service and/or facility outages. However, staff will not be available to answer specific end-user inquiries, including via email (research-computing-support@stanford.edu). While the IT Service Desk (aka Help Desk) will be open with fewer staff and reduced hours, questions that they cannot address directly will typically be queued for resolution after the winter break, with, as noted earlier, the exception of total service or system outages.
Customers with equipment housed in the SRCF (the high-density data center at SLAC) will be contacted in advance of winter break regarding changes in facility access processes during the break.
Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children’s Health
NOTE: If you need to report a critical service outage or request an emergency repair during this time, please submit a HelpSU request or call 4-HELP (650-724-4357).
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Service orders (i.e., telephone)
Staff will be available to provide the normal service with the following exceptions: On Wednesday, December 24 and Friday, January 2, we will respond to urgent requests only. On Thursday, December 25 and Thursday, January 1, our offices will be closed.
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Telephone operator services
Telephone operator services will continue, uninterrupted, during winter closure, including on the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays. You may call 650-723-2300 (or 0 from a Stanford phone) as usual to receive Stanford directory assistance service. Operator-assisted paging services to the hospitals will also continue during winter closure.
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Paging Services
Paging Services will continue during winter closure. Support is available through 5-7101 (650-725-7101) and via HelpSU. The Paging Services office in the basement of SHC will be open excluding the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays. Loaner pagers will be available at the Stanford Hospital Security Office on holidays and after hours.
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IT Service Desk (aka Help Desk)
The IT Service Desk will be open, but with fewer staff and reduced hours. Help Desk staff will be available between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on all non-holidays. Requests submitted through HelpSU will be monitored, with priority response given to urgent requests related to system outages. Responses to all other HelpSU requests will be handled as quickly as possible, but you may experience longer-than-normal response times until we return to full staffing levels on January 5, 2015.
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Mobile device services
Get your orders in early. To avoid holiday season delivery issues, the cut-off date for orders to be completed before winter closure (i.e., by December 19) is Wednesday, December 17, 2014. Orders received during winter closure will not be processed until after January 5. Support for Stanford mobile devices, including device activation, international plan changes, and technical support, will continue during winter closure through our 4-HELP (650-724-4357) support line.
